The Dude Always Abides

“The Dude abides.”

We’re pouring a White Russian and heading back to 1990s Los Angeles to break down the Coen Brothers’ iconic cult classic, The Big Lebowski.  

In this essay episode, host Luke Ferris takes a solo dive into the film’s unique balance of LA noir, system structures, and cultural iconography. Despite The Dude being everywhere in modern pop culture, Luke shares what it was like watching this classic from start to finish for the very first time—and why holding it all loosely might just be the ultimate life lesson.

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Sources for this episode:

• Royalty-free music and sound effects via Artlist.com
• Official Trailer | The Big Lebowski | Screen Bites

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

A former coworker, mentor, and friend of mine used to wisely say to me on Friday afternoons, Luke, the work is gonna be there on Monday. He was a seasoned worker with a Rolodex of experiences and roles across his career. He was from California originally, but found himself fundraising for a nonprofit in chilly West Michigan. He was smart, savvy, and knew exactly when to get his shit done and when to let things slide. He had an almost monk-like and methodical approach to his work. We called him the dude.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

This is a very complicated case, Mom. You know, luminal. Is this your homework learning? I would like my undies, man. Let's go. This could be a lot more complex. I mean, it's not just it might not be just such a simple uh you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Welcome to Least Important Things, a podcast about movies, friendship, and finding meaning in the most important of the least important things. I'm your host, Luke Ferris. You can call me Luki, Lucius, Luca Reno, or just whatever. The 1998 film The Big Lebowski was directed by the Cohen brothers and starred Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, and a slew of Hollywood character actors. This story is about a burnout slacker and hippie who gets involved in a case of cat and mouse with a business mogul with the same name. He and his bowling buddies are thrust into a world of crime, deception, and money, just hoping to come out on top and make the finals of the bowling tournament. Actually, I'll just read the back of the VHS. Let me take my glasses off. The dude, one cool guy, who one day comes home to find two thugs have broken in and ruined his favorite carpet, the one that made the room hang together. The thing is, they did it because he's got the exact same name as one of the richest men in town, Lebowski. But hey, no problem, he'll get even. At least, he'll get someone to pay for new carpet. Which is one of the best back of the DVD, back of the VHS descriptions, because it describes really nothing about what this movie is. It's a movie whose iconography is more widely known than the actual plot of the movie. From the posters of dorm room walls to animated gifts on your iPhone, the Big Lebowski's one-liners, images, and moments are a foundational part of modern pop culture. And here's a secret. I've never seen it from start to finish before. That was until a couple of weeks ago, when I had some time off and decided to do a Jeff Bridges double feature with the 1980s romantic thriller Against All Odds. Yes, with the titular track sung by Phil Collins. It's a good one. It's not that I had never watched or wanted to watch the big Lebowski. Just never got around to it, man. So just relax. But maybe like you, the iconography and most famous scenes were a part of my pop culture upbringing. The dude was everywhere. It's actually why I've been enjoying watching the pre-Lebowski Bridges and movies because his public persona is intertwined with the dude. So I'm very late to the bandwagon, but I'm I'm so late to the bandwagon and to this trend that I might be actually ahead of it. Does that make sense? However, while watching the movie all the way through for the first time, the caricature and symbol of the dude wasn't fully what I expected compared to the actual movie and the plot. While many of the late 90s and early 2000s dorm rooms were covered with giant movie posters of the Big Lebowski, the actual structure of the movie was very familiar to traditional Hollywood storytelling, specifically the noir genre. But instead of Humphrey Bogart, Nicholson in Chinatown, or Harrison Ford and Blade Runner, the dude is not an anti-hero sleuth detective or private dick. He's just a dude. But he similarly gets thrust into a world of the unfamiliar, the dangerous, the provocative, and has to navigate the murkiness of the gray morality disguised in high society. It's an LA noir homage with Donny's modern dialogue and a protagonist that looks like the weird neighbor down the hall, rather than some golden age tall, dark, and handsome movie star. If you want to learn more about the noir genre, I discussed it in my black and white movies episode from season two. Now, like many cult classics, over time people have had a lot of theories about what the movie is actually about. Some of the more common ones are what I just said, it's a noir retelling in the 90s. Some people think it's a commentary on the Gulf War or Vietnam. Some think it's an Alice in Wonderland retelling. While there's some more absurd theories like Donnie is a figment of Walter's imagination, or every character in the movie knows they're in a movie except for Donnie. But for me, I really see all of those theories and the many messages embedded in the movie about the systems we're all a part of. Whether you own a small business, work at a corporation, work for the government, or are a stay-at-home mom, we have to participate in these systems. Life is a system from the seasons to water to the very faculty of life. Yes, the circle of life. Sorry to get a bit far out here, but this movie uses the dude as a stereotypical burnout hippie who's not beholden to any system and juxtaposes it with his best friend Walter, who's aggressive toward any system and a foreshadowing of how our dualistic culture has been propagated through the internet and social media. There's a bigger message, I think, from this movie about how all the systems we interact with are flawed, and that no matter how hard we try or don't try, we don't have control. The dude was thrown into multiple swirling systems through his arc: the art world, finance, legal, pornography, crime, religion, political correctness, and the structure of a bowling league, yet he navigates them all with a laissez-faire confusion. Honestly, he's less chill throughout the exposes of his hero's journey than we are meant to believe in the caricature of the pop culture. Because he realizes once he's drawn into these worlds that it's really stupid, and his friend Donnie doesn't get it. He wants him to push it and to exploit it. But the dude really wants is just the decency of who is responsible for ruining his rug, and he wants to be compensated for it. To quote George Costanza from Seinfeld, we are living in a society, and all the dude wants is the decency of a micro justice. Yet he learns that asking for a small societal fairness leads down the rabbit hole of a bigger societal injustice webbed throughout all systems. What we learn from the dude in this film is to hold it all loosely and to abide. A beauty in the oftentimes criticized flat ending of the big Lebowski is the dude doesn't really get the girl, and he really isn't the hero. He actually kind of loses in the end. But it doesn't totally ruin his state. He actually doesn't change in the end, which if you follow typical hero's journey storytelling, there's supposed to be a change at the end. But the dude doesn't. He's kind of back to square one at the end of this. Ultimately the thing that stood out to me in watching this movie is that everything can fall apart. The systems and structures that disappoint us. But what matters is our friendships and the people we love. No matter how flawed or how much they annoy us, that's the thing worth coming back to. Worth holding on to. Even if it's as simple as a friend at a bowling alley. That's in the end the only thing worth committing to and putting your faith into, no matter how flawed it is. It's all kinds of bullshit besides it. And it can be frustrating and annoying in a battle to stay afloat. But in the end, life is never as good and it's never as bad as we think. And as the dude would say, the dude abides. And the work will be there on Monday.comslash least important things. You can find us on social media where you can see what we're up to, and we'll talk to you next time on least important things.