Forget Citizen Kane, this has been my favorite film of all time ever since it was released in 1998, and consequently I have wanted to do some drawings or caricatures of the central characters for some time. As a friend once said of the movie, Joel and Ethan Cohen seemed to somehow capture “lightning in a bottle” with this film.
Whilst not necessarily their cleverest or most philosophical movie, it’s definitely their funniest, and beloved by their fans, and specific fans of the movie alone. A huge cult following has developed: "Lebowski Fests" across the US and UK, social website clubs and merchandising usually associated with Sci-Fi flicks and mainstream actioneers. Like often with such a phenomenon it’s somehow affirming when think to yourself: “Wow; I’ve loved this all along, perhaps it’s not just me who’s weird about this thing…”
A great cast, brilliant writing, and fantastic performances across the board make this one of the nerd’s most quotable films of all time; along with such movies as This is Spinal Tap, The Blues Brothers and Withnail & I.
On an analytical level the film was a real attempt by the brothers to produce a Raymond Chandler–style crime-thriller, at a burned-out-stoner/hippy pace. Their work is typically layered in so much meaning and reference to other films and filmic tradition.
All of the Cohen Brothers films have a bumbling central male character who is thrown into circumstances beyond his control, a strong central female character (usually a love interest) who is in control and often acts as a catalyst for him to overcome his adversity, and a male patriarchal antagonist, who is more often than not the embodiment or barer of the problem he faces.
The Big Lebowski is also a twisted plotline full of red herrings, bizarre characters who are introduced and fall by the wayside, and double crosses, just like the hard boiled crime fiction of Chandler and Dashiell Hammett who inspired the Cohen’s to write it, only with idleness, White Russian cocktails, pot, bowling and incompetent friends thrown in to muddy the waters.
Oh, and a Toe. And Nihilists. And a marmott. And a Pomeranian. And Persian rugs. And a bag full of underpants...
(Best seen rather than told about…)
I’d sat down to draw The Dude once a couple of years ago, and was distracted. What was left were a couple of eyes, nose, and a mouth in quick pen line sketches staring back at me from my notebook. I discarded it, and knocked this up in a little over an hour, and it makes me proud to say I didn’t sharpen my HB pencil or apply an eraser to it even once!
The Dude Redux
I did a quick version of the drawing with the darks inked, and ran it through autotrace to soften the pencil lines, and narrowed the picture-plain to stretch his face but it seems to lose something.Hmmn... See what you think.
