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Opinion

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This article was published 22/02/2012 (4945 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Dude abides.

And so does his film, The Big Lebowski by the Coen Brothers. This 1998 movie started out unclassifiable (a neo-noir stoner comedy with political allegory, dance numbers and bowling?) and has since become a certifiable cult hit. Here in Winnipeg, the annual LebowskiPalooza (Saturday at the Garrick Centre) celebrates all things Lebowski, uniting film fans, achievers and nihilists in a slackerish spirit of perpetual bathrobes and unspillable White Russians.

As we head into the fourth annual Winnipeg LebowskiPalooza — Canada’s biggest and best Lebowski bash — this could be a good time to think about why The Big Lebowski has become such an enduring, endearing cult classic.

First off, all cult films are essentially loser films, and I mean that in the good way. The Big Lebowski came right after the Coens had snagged some Oscars for Fargo, and many people found this shaggy, shambly little flick a bit of a letdown. It opened to mixed reviews and so-so box office.

The Big Lebowski isn’t just a loser film, though. It’s also a film about losers. Jeff Bridges plays a guy who’s legally known as Jeffrey Lebowski but prefers to be called The Dude, “or His Dudeness or Duder or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.” An unemployed 1960s holdover who bowls with his friends, smokes weed in the bath and drives a steadily deteriorating 1973 Ford Gran Torino, the Dude becomes an accidental detective, wandering into a kidnapping plot in ’90s L.A.

The movie seems to be about winners and losers. Our Lebowski gets mixed up with another man named Lebowski, a mansion-dwelling Republican millionaire. “Your revolution is over,” says the rich version. “Condolences. The bums lost.” By the end of the movie, though, the Coens have upended conventional American notions of success. That’s one of the reasons Lebowski fans ironically self-identify as “achievers.”

As a cult classic, Lebowski also stands up to repeated viewings. This can be a real hazard with those supposedly so-bad-they’re-good cult flicks like The Room or Birdemic (which is more so-bad-it’s-horrendously-awful). Lebowski has legs because it can be watched over and over, with pleasure and even increasing enlightenment. (Who knew that the original Port Huron Statement was so much better than “the compromised second draft?” Or that you could write a cheque for 69 cents at Ralphs?) It’s got layers, man.

The third factor — which is intimately related to repeatability — is quotability. Lebowski is jammed with quotable lines, though many, unfortunately, are not quotable in a family paper. Achievers often greet each other, woo each other and fight each other using only borrowed lines of dialogue. (“The rug really tied the whole room together.” “Hell, I can get you a toe by 3:00 o’clock this afternoon… with nail polish.” And the classic: “Shut the f up, Donny!”)

Finally, a cult classic needs something unpredictable, the ferret in the bathtub, if you like. The thing about cult films is that they need to happen by accident. There’s nothing worse than a cult wannabe, parading its premeditated quirks or calculated freak-out-the-squares naughtiness with an eye to future cult status.

Somehow, the weirdness of The Big Lebowski feels right. Take the darling spectacle of the German nihilists ordering breakfast. They may very well “believe in nuzzing,” but that doesn’t mean they don’t like pigs in a blanket. It all adds up to a vibe that is indefinable but irresistible. I mean, almost all of the Coen Brothers’ films operate at cult-like levels of oddness. But you’ll notice that nobody is organizing a Barton Fink Fest or a FargoPalooza or a Burn After Reading Rave.

The Big Lebowski just has something that makes people want to gather in its name. A lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. Let’s raise a glass of Kahlua, vodka and cream to LebowskiPalooza, The Big Lebowski, and the way the whole durn human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca