Mr. Media Interviews  

There are a lot of famous uses of the word dude in pop culture. Sean Penn, as Spicoli, in Fast Times at Ridgemont High comes to mind. Or Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Party on, dude, indeed.

Or there’s the landscape guy I saw this morning parked at the Quickmart who had Palm Dude sloppily stenciled on the side of his pick-up truck.

But none of those three rises to the level of the Dude, Jeff Bridges, star of one of the craziest, most-layered Coen Brothers films ever, The Big Lebowski.

If you’re not already a fan of the 1998 movie, you want to go out and rent it when we’re done with this edition of Mr. Media. And if you’re already a Lebowski dude yourself, you’re gonna enjoy today’s guests, Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt, founders of Lebowski Fest and authors of the new book, I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski.





BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: So I’m a late-comer to the whole Lebowski thing. A buddy of mine, Jim Doten, college friend for almost thirty years is going to call in and have some questions for you, but he’s been after me for years to see the movie and get into this. I don’t know. It just never grabbed me, but then he told me about the book. I went out. I watched the movie. I think I sort of get it, but I’m really hoping you guys can tell me how in the hell did I become a Lebowski?

WILL RUSSELL: How many times have you seen it?

ANDELMAN: One and a half.

RUSSELL: Oh, so you need an additional one and a half times. For me, it took three.

SCOTT SHUFFITT: Maybe a White Russian in there, too would help.





ANDELMAN: For people who might be listening who don’t get how this became a whole big cult and a movement, what’s the basic plot to the movie?

RUSSELL: It’s basically a case of mistaken identity. The main character, played by Jeff Bridges, he calls himself “The Dude,” he basically gets confused for a millionaire, and some thugs come to his house, and they urinate on his rug. And then they realize that they have the wrong guy, and all sorts of madness ensues when The Dude tries to get compensated for his rug. He runs into a band of roving nihilists, some porn stars, a kidnapping, a ransom hand-off, and he basically drinks nine or ten white Russians throughout the film to try to keep his mind limber to solve the crime. It’s basically like a Raymond Chandler-type mystery except they’ve got, instead of like the sure-footed detective, they’ve got kind of this bumbling stoner played by Jeff Bridges, and then John Goodman is his hot-headed Vietnam vet buddy. And it’s just a really funny movie.

ANDELMAN: How did it become this mythological movie? It’s gone way beyond your average whodunit or comedy or even a buddy film.

SHUFFITT: Man, that’s a good question. I don’t even know that I know. To the best of my knowledge, it’s just a film that a lot of people enjoy, and I think that a lot of people can relate to the characters. And I think that a lot of people want to be Dude-esque and just take it easy. It was written very, very well. It’s a really good comedy. It’s shot really well. The imagery is beautiful. So I guess you add all those things together, and we end up with what we have now, which is…

RUSSELL: …out of control.

SHUFFITT: Exactly.

ANDELMAN: And Scott, how do you define “Dude-esque”?

SHUFFITT: Just wanting to take it easy and relax and have a bubble bath and have a Caucasian every once in a while and enjoy the simple things in life like your rug and that sort of thing.

RUSSELL: Bowling.

SHUFFITT: Yeah, bowling.

ANDELMAN: Bowling. Let’s talk about bowling. Where does Dick Nixon and bowling fit into all this?

RUSSELL: That was actually a publicity shot that was shot in the basement of the White House, and Nixon’s PR people wanted to kind of warm Nixon up to the people, and they thought, “Hey, let’s get him bowling and that way, the common man can relate to him.” I don’t think he was actually a very good bowler. I think that was simply just a publicity shot to try to make Nixon seem a little more likable. I don’t think it worked, though.

SHUFFITT: No.

ANDELMAN: Looking back on history, I think you’re probably right about that.

RUSSELL: I think maybe W should come out with a bowling picture. Maybe that might help things for him a little bit, you think?

ANDELMAN: I think that would help you guys promote, but I don’t think it would help him any.

RUSSELL: Yeah, I don’t think there’s much that can help him at this point.

ANDELMAN: I want to bring in a very good friend of mine, Jim Doten. Jim has been a friend for almost thirty years. We were college freshmen together and have stayed pals, and he is the one who, for years, has been trying to turn me on to The Dude and told me about your book, and I’ve asked Jim to come in. He’s calling in from Miami, and I’ve asked him to come on. I know he’s got some questions. Jim, are you there?

JIM DOTEN: I’m there. Good day to you, too, sirs.

RUSSELL: Good day to you.

DOTEN: You guys are my heroes here.

RUSSELL: Oh, what’s a hero? C’mon now.

DOTEN: I really enjoy what you’re doing. We get onto the website whenever we can to check it out. We’re on your mailing list. Tell me how the Lebowkski Fest came about.

SHUFFITT: Actually, Will and I were selling some t-shirts at this really, really lame tattoo convention. No one was there so everybody was just bored to tears. We started going through lines from the film and before we knew it, the people next to us were going through the lines. The person across the hall was, “Hey, did you know this about The Big Lebowski?” And in that moment, we kind of realized that there was this little community, and one of us said, “If they can put on this lame tattoo convention, why can’t we put on a Lebowski convention?” We grabbed a thing of Post-It notes and took down a couple of lines, and that is basically what Lebowski Fest became and still is.

RUSSELL: It was just born out of boredom. And then we realized that we weren’t alone in our obsession of this movie, and it was like this great realization. It was like oh, awesome, there’s others out there. So, yeah, we just did it as a joke. We thought maybe 20 of our friends would show up maybe, not that we had that many friends. It ended up like we had about 150 people show up from different states, and we couldn’t believe it. We just kept going with it. As a matter of luck and I think with the help of the internet, I think it’s been able to grow. Now we’ve done Lebowski Fests all over the country and even overseas. Pretty wild.

ANDELMAN: Did you guys ever worry that you would be confused for Star Trek fans?

RUSSELL: Yeah, we often kind of get compared to Star Trek fans with a qualifier. It’s like a Star Trek convention but not as many geeks or more bowling and more drinking. We’re cool with that. We’re all kind of nerds at heart. To obsess about anything is a little bit nerdy. They are kindred spirits, the Trekkies.

DOTEN: We like to think of ourselves as cool nerds, if those two words fit together.

RUSSELL: These days they do, yeah.

ANDELMAN: Why do you think you took to Lebowski? Jim and I were talking last night, and I said, for me, it probably would’ve been Caddyshack, perhaps, that I would’ve had the same kind of connection.

DOTEN: …or Animal House.

ANDELMAN: Or Animal House, yeah.

RUSSELL: Yeah, it’s strange. It’s like you can’t really describe why you fall in love with something, but when I first saw The Big Lebowski, I just thought it was okay. I didn’t really get it. And then I ended up seeing it a couple more times, and then on the third watching, it just hit me how hilarious it was. The first time you watch it you kind of get caught up in this whole who-dun-it and who peed on whose rug, and all that stuff doesn’t really matter. It’s about the characters. The dialogue is really funny and quotable. I just found myself just loving these lines and always quoting them with friends. Still to this day, it just cracks me up. I’ve seen it over a hundred times, and I can still put it in, and it’ll make me laugh out loud.

DOTEN: Absolutely. When you’re having a bad day, you put on The Big Lebowski.

SHUFFITT: Absolutely.

DOTEN: It totally shifts your way of being.

RUSSELL: Donny, Walter, and The Dude are there for ya.

SHUFFITT: That’s right.




DOTEN: I have a question for you all. Are you employed?

SHUFFITT: What day is this?

RUSSELL: We try not to work too hard.

SHUFFITT: Exactly.

DOTEN: Is this full-time for ya?

SHUFFITT: We do other things. I’ve had a little store in Louisville, but we do work a lot on this, getting the Lebowski Fest together. When it comes time to do one, there’s a lot of planning and stuff. We kind of spread it out. We try not to work in shifts or anything.

RUSSELL: That’s right.

DOTEN: Okay. Working in shifts. That’s a line, Bob.

ANDELMAN: I know. I know.

DOTEN: It went over his head. We got to initiate him.

ANDELMAN: I have to watch another one and a half times, I guess.

DOTEN: One and a half times. And then if you don’t like it, then you probably will never like it.

ANDELMAN: Well, I liked it the first time.

DOTEN: Oh, okay.

ANDELMAN: I was sorry that I’ve wasted all these years not getting in on it.

DOTEN: Not achieving.

ANDELMAN: Not achieving.

RUSSELL: Absolutely. It’s never too late, though.

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© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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