Joel and Ethan Coen's hilarious comedy "The Big Lebowski," which stars Jeff Bridges and John Goodman, came out in 1998 and became something of a cult favorite. In it, Bridges plays a memorable character called Jeff "the Dude" Lebowski who is based loosely on a colorful guy named Jeff Dowd. Like his fictional alter ego, Dowd was one of the Seattle Seven, who in 1970 were accused of inciting a riot when a political demonstration got out of hand. But Dowd went on to carve out for himself an unusual career in the movie business as a consultant to independent filmmakers. I spoke with him in connection with the DVD release of the Widescreen Collector's Edition of "The Big Lebowski," scheduled for October 18, 2005. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
I.R. It must be interesting to be the inspiration for a character in a movie that's become a cult phenomenon. How did the character of the Dude get started?
J.D. Well, I always had that nickname. It always followed me because of my size. And "Dowd," and stuff like that. And then in the '60's, I was always talking and doing stuff in those days. It [the nickname] kind of spread around. In those days, everyone had nicknames. Joe was "the Dog," Chip was "the Monk" [presumably Joe Kelly and Chip Marshall of the Seattle Seven], I was "the Dude." People tended to have nicknames. And then when Joel and Ethan were working on "Blood Simple," they used to like to riff on that name. And they used to like to get on the phone and go "Dude, Duder, Duderino."
I.R. So it started with the name itself then.
J.D. Yeah. Also, they [the Coen brothers] also kind of knew about my past. There was a time in the '60's in which I was an activist. And in the '70's, after that period, we kind of hung out and hung pretty heavy. We hung pretty heavy for a while, indeed. And drinking White Russians and Tequila Sunrises and any other drink of the moment. And smoking a little of whatever it was. And then there was that idea of that kind of character.
Much of this is a buddy movie. Most buddy movies have this one guy who's always getting another guy into trouble. Butch gets Sundance into trouble. Or the guys in the "Odd Couple" or "Lethal Weapon" or you name it. The Walter character [played by John Goodman]—in many ways it's his movie—he's the guy who's always scheming to get the Dude into trouble. Or doing things like pulling a gun out in a bowling alley.
I.R. So some of it came out of traditional structure, and other things came out of just knowing things about you.
J.D. It's very much a Raymond Chandler-type story, you know, dosed on acid.
I.R. [laughter]
J.D. Joel and Ethan are incredibly big students of other movies. At one point … What's the movie with Fred MacMurray? The Billy Wilder movie? "Double Indemnity." I'm trying to tape "Double Indemnity," and I’m watching it with my girlfriend, and I taped it incorrectly, and it came up 15 minutes short. So we call up Joel and Ethan, and they do a blow-by-blow, frame-by-frame, account for my girlfriend Sarah of the last 15 minutes of the movie. I mean, "Edward G. Robinson walks into the room, a low-angle shot." I mean, it's just unbelievable. And it's just bang. And they can do the same thing with any one of 50 other movies. And a guy like Quentin [Tarantino] can do the same thing too.
They [the Coen brothers] are real students of film. And they love to do things in various genres. "Miller's Crossing" is in one genre. And they love to stretch them to the extreme and mix genres. That's what they were doing to a large extent in "The Big Lebowski."
I.R. Did you work with Jeff Bridges at all to make sure he got the character down right?
J.D. Yeah, for a while, and that's all it took. I'm a pretty quick and easy study to mimic. And he did do it. And he did gain some weight. In the script, the description reads, "The Dude is a character in which casualness runs deep." Okay. So I think he got that. When my daughter saw a poster of the movie, she said, "Daddy, where did they get all your clothes?"
I.R. [laughter]
J.D. Which, of course, were not my clothes. They were something the costumer and Bridges were good enough to do. The jellies—the footwear—were actually his. He actually had those jellies and used to wear them.
I.R. But at least as far as your daughter was concerned, they got it pretty much right.
J.D. Yeah.
Page 2: Jeff Dowd on the ways he is like the Dude in "The Big Lebowski" and on the ways he is different.
