CRIB NOTES ON THE BIG LEBOWSKI IN EFFECT. The Coen Brothers' 1996 film Fargo could well go incognito as a seventies picture in the Polanski/Altman/Penn tradition were it not so pretty and fussily made. Such pictures were suddenly, without warning, in fashion again at the time of Fargo's release. The 1997 Oscars had almost invalidated the new-found Independent Spirit awards: four of the five Best Picture nominees were independently financed and distributed by the "mini-majors": The English Patient (Miramax); Fargo (PolyGram); Shine (Fine Line); and Secrets & Lies (October, now owned by Universal), possibly in response to the previous year's uniquely unchallenging line-up.

The Coens were awarded Best Screenplay--they behaved on stage. Frances McDormand was predictably granted the Best Actress statuette, vindicated after years of struggling to break out. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune had declared during the March of Fargo's initial theatrical release that he would not see a better movie in the remaining months of the year, and many Academy members apparently agreed. Ethan later reflected on Fargo's success: "If a movie like Fargo succeeds, then clearly nothing makes much sense, and so, you know, you might as well make whatever kind of movie you want and hope for the best."

That philosophy is what yielded The Big Lebowski, Fargo's successor.* Described by William Preston "Golden Throat" Robertson (he provides background voices for the Coens) as "bowling noir,"** Lebowski is a Raymond Chandler-inspired (specifically, The Big Sleep) comedy in which a hapless junkie of pot and bowling becomes entangled in complex extortion schemes because he shares a name with the richest man in town. While the bowler (Jeff Bridges) prefers to be called "Dude," he is alternatively known as Jeff Lebowski, resulting in several men breaking into his apartment to desecrate his rug. Distraught, simply because that rug "really tied the room together," Dude is encouraged by Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), a gun-toting vet who relates everything in his environment to his experiences in the Vietnam War, to visit the "big" Lebowski and demand compensation for his urine-stained rug, since this was clearly a case of mistaken identity.

Skimming a series of contrivances, Dude is hired to find Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), the other Lebowski's wife; he meets the Big Lebowski's daughter, Maude--a dominatrix performance artist--who wants him to inseminate her; he discovers a disbanded German disco group called Autobahn now famous for their dabbling in pornographic cinema and terrorizing the rich as The "Nihilists"; he and Walter trash an expensive vehicle they think was stolen by a thirteen-year-old; he meets Ben Gazzara as porn czar Jackie Treehorn, whose drugging causes the Dude to dream of dancing, Busby Berkeley-style, to Kenny Rogers music, accompanied by a Wagner-dressed Viking Maude and a group of women wearing ten-pin hats; and so on. Inevitably, after such mayhem, the mystery seems like an afterthought, a flimsy excuse to "tie the room together."

Ideas contained within The Big Lebowski's screenplay found their seeds in the real life. A friend of the brothers, "Uncle" Pete Exline, complained of depression within earshot of the Coens one day. They attempted to cheer him up by complimenting his place; Exline responded that he was quite proud of his living room rug. He also told them a tale of the time he caught teenage joyriders red-handed: after Exline's stolen car was recovered, he discovered inside it homework that one of the careless kids had left behind. In the meantime, the Coens had become acquainted with (gonzo) filmmaker John Milius, a known gun fanatic who repeatedly invited the brothers to his house for some recreational shooting. An image began to form: the combining of Exline and Milius into a super-crazed Vietnam vet waving "homework in a baggie" before a guilty youth. Then Ethan and Joel recalled a contact they had made upon arriving in L.A. for the first time, Jeff Dowd (nickname: the dude)--"the Pope of Dope" to his friends. What if, the siblings ventured, "Dude" had a rug he loved that was somehow ruined, and teamed with his unstable 'Nam vet friend to rectify the situation, which would somehow lead to the "homework in a baggie"?

"Fargo, which was allegedly based on real events, in truth contains mostly made-up stuff. Whereas The Big Lebowski, which purports to be fiction, actually is based on real-life people and events," said Joel Coen. The fact that all of these character models existed in L.A. convinced the Coens to set the story there, sharing geography with Raymond Chandler's mean streets. This would be an homage to the hard-boiled writer, if a thousand times more mutated than Blood Simple's Valentine to film noir or Miller's Crossing's ode to Dashiell Hammett and Red Harvest. If one takes Robertson's summation to heart, then The Big Lebowski does not structurally stray far from Chandler's formula: "Chandler novels [feature] a detective who, over the course of the novels, becomes increasingly desultory and depressed to such a degree that the mysteries frequently come looking for him, rather than vice versa."

The Coens contemporized Chandler's milieu to today's surreal L.A.: the femme fatale became a bondage artist yearning to have a baby, not revenge; the rich man--the BIG Lebowski--who hired the dude can't afford to pay him; the mystery lacks suspense; and the everyman detective is without a doubt an everyman first and a (reluctant) detective second. Though probably the most uneven work of the Brothers Coen to date, it's one of their only films in which their God complex doesn't preclude the hero's satisfaction. That's just one of the ways it's unique to the canon: The Big Lebowski also reaffirms their Midas touch with dialogue and characterization, and Goodman's obnoxious performance stands out upon repeat viewings. (I must also geekily note that it's their first film with a full set of opening titles.) As observant Jew Walter Sobchak, Goodman is the culmination of all those screaming extras from previous Coen efforts like Drop Johnson in Miller's or the suicide witness in The Hudsucker Proxy. In fact, the entire cast is terrific, save Julianne Moore as Maude; the Coens have mined this territory before, the fast-talking, screwball comedy dame with an inexplicable attraction to her intellectual opposite (see Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hudsucker).

The Big Lebowski is a real treat on DVD, the best a Coen Brothers film has looked and sounded on home video yet. Letterboxed at 1.85:1 and 16x9-enhanced, the image is clear and exceptionally detailed. There are sporadic shimmering effects (which my Pioneer DVL-700's downmix capabilities may have contributed to more so than the disc's authoring), and the overhead shot of the (Persian?) rug at the top of Chapter 5 is a digital mess in any respect. (A full-frame version of the film is also available on this dual layer DVD; it reveals a bit more top and bottom information than the widescreen, but indeed compromises the left and right sides of the frame.) I really can't complain about any other facet of this amazing transfer. The colours are outstanding (check out "The Jesus"' gaudy purple outfit!), and blacks are deep and crisp. This DVD showcases the best aspects of Rick Heinrichs' production design and Roger Deakins' wide-angle cinematography.

While the surrounds aren't particularly active (they are used for ambience and pipe up during the frequent musical interludes), the Dolby Digital soundmix is great. I saw The Big Lebowski in a THX-certified theatre, and while the 5.1 track did not duplicate that experience, I was impressed by its range and focus. Dialogue is always intelligible. Although the DVD also includes a 30-minute "making of" featuring interviews with the Coens and some of the cast, it pads out what was probably 15-minutes' worth of talking-heads with an overabundance of film clips. Still, it's nice to hear from the Coens at last, even if their comments are not particularly enlightening (especially after reading Robertson and Cooke's book). Additional bonus materials: cast and Coen bios (which inaccurately list Crimewave as a Coen brothers' film--they only wrote the screenplay; Sam Raimi directed) and the teaser trailer (letterboxed), which is terrific. The disc's silent main menu is animated: neon bowling pins are repeatedly struck as the actors' faces appear in quick succession on a circular sign at the top of the screen, a la "Gilligan's Island"'s steering wheel credits. (The sub-menus are also amusing, but not animated.)

(Aside: The cover art, depicting a glowing Walter and Dude, looks cheap. What, pray tell, was wrong with recycling the original poster, on which the Dude embraces an opera-ready Maude below the clever tagline, "Times like this call for a Big Lebowski"?)

The Big Lebowski is the Coen brothers' "dirtiest" movie; it's also not as cohesive as their previous works. (There's a looseness to their style here that is both a refreshing change and a bit distressing: America's "coldest" filmmakers are at their best at their most inflexible.) It takes a certain sensibility to make The Big Lebowski and a certain a certain sensibility to appreciate the end result, but I long ago put my misgivings aside and abided, like The Dude.-Bill Chambers

*There was anticipation for The Big Lebowski that exceeded the pre-release buzz for any other film by The Coen Brothers, and PolyGram made perhaps an error in judgment by splattering the word "Fargo" all over the picture's ad placements and promotional material. There was a not-outrageous desire to capitalize on the Oscar darling's success, but those expecting another American masterpiece were surely unprepared. After all, Fargo had reached out to an audience previously unfamiliar with--rather, unconditioned to--the "Coen universe." Alas, The Big Lebowski failed to live up to the expectations of critics and audiences alike. Even Siskel panned it.

**Quotes from The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film by William Preston Robertson and Tricia Cooke, available at Amazon.com from W.W. Norton & Co.