Welcome back to New Thinkery. My name is David Barnum. With me, as always, is my good friend Eric Abler. How are you doing, Eric?
I am doing very well. I was not expecting that, though, but I am regardless I have recovered and I'm doing well. And who's our good friend, Alex Prey? How are you doing, Alex?
I'm doing well. How are you guys? I'm doing well. It's great that the three of us are such close friends.
And we're here to talk about a movie, right? Yeah, the Big Lebowski with the Big Cut Cowsky. How are you guys? Greg Rehr.
The Big Cut Cowsky himself. I do well, Greg. How are you? Good, good.
I'm doing great. I'm excited to have Eric back. When do you have your... What?
What is your wife doing? All his life. All his life. Yeah, that's right.
I mean, that's what the doctors prognosticate. We have to trust the science, Greg. Yeah. So we're talking about the Big Lebowski.
Yeah, Greg has been pushing. Yes. He pushes these films outside. I try and keep them at bay for months.
And so my big Lebowski or Idiocracy, he's like, Greg, he's been running to the ground. No, no, no. Here we are. He wants to do office space.
It's like the two of us. So Eric is here to help salvage from the episode. Yeah. I thought he was here talking out of it.
No, I'll do the best I can. You might imagine, you know, the Big Lebowski is a classic, but not in the Greco-Roman sense. So I'm a little out of my element, but I'll do the best to try to keep up with you gentlemen. You were saying it's your wife's favorite comedy?
It is. And in fact, it almost led to me not marrying my wife because I had originally watched this in the late 90s with a well before I met my wife, with a then-girlfriend. And I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. And I was also really annoyed by how many people quoted it constantly.
And I felt like it was an overrated movie. And I remember, rather early on in my relationship with my now wife, I offered this opinion that it was a kind of overrated movie that was good, but not great. And she thought that this was a Neanderthal perspective on my part and forced me to watch it again. And I did like it better.
And now I've actually again for this, and I liked it better still. So I do think it gets better with time. Unfortunately, though, I do think it has, you know, it's quoted a bit too much. Also, the Princess Bride was another movie in my youth that people were always quoting all the time.
And that movie's worse than the Big Lebowski. I think it's actually quite good. But, you know, and I just sort of got annoyed by people doing that. So, you know what?
Well, the jokes are on your wife, Eric, because now she's had a child by the scene at all. That's right, yeah. Take that. I don't like them apples.
You know, with the anti-Semitism, Alex. I called himself an Neanderthal. So Alex, you put it really well a minute ago. You said that your hatred of the movies, really, because of the people that seem to like it.
You know, I think Eric now agrees with me. No, he's films. Remember when you were in college, you got the same film posters on the wall. And I just grew to hate all of this.
Like I can't never watch Scarface again. I'm not a classic. But you like it, Greg? A Scarface, yeah, like Scarface.
Okay. Yeah. Greg's a big fan of Kyle's of cocaine on his desk in his office. Yeah, that's right.
And you get to sit on. And he's like a little friend. Yeah. But for all the movies, another one that always bothered me was old school, remember that Will Ferrell movie?
God, if I had to hear another person call, say, you're my boy Blue, I would have shot them. Will Ferrell, people said that to you? A lot of people said that to you. They would just scream at drunken parties.
Like, this one, I grew with Eric. This is one, I saw it a couple times a long time ago. Wasn't really that into it. And then watching it again this time, I feel like I didn't understand the irony of the film, as well as I do now.
Still hate the people that like it, but that like think the dude in the hero, hasn't there been a religion established around the dude? I almost joined that religion by accident. Because this is a true story. You guys know that I performed the weddings.
This is how I love this to make you laugh. You performed the weddings? You do what my sisters do? Well, sure.
Eric, you know, he's not the host. When we say he performs, it's usually after the wedding. OK, you're such a susceptible, gullible, religious fool. You're like one of those guys who will drive 300 miles to see a water stain on a wall from a leaky spout.
It looks kind of like a microwaved Virgin Mary or something like that. This is the way he's trying to get Alex and I to go to Sedona, Arizona, where they're like power crystal vortexes, because he thinks it aligns with our Shralsianism, which is not how it works. But off with the magic spaceship in the great, Greg, Greg, you almost joined the religious. Sorry.
Sorry. That's a true story. I almost joined the other religion of doodism. So I performed a number of weddings.
And the very first time you have to get ordained. And I had a number of tabs open on my computer trying to figure out which online religion I wanted to become a holy man in. And I was actually going to choose doodism. But this other one that I chose on accident because I was like, click more information.
It was like, congratulations, you ordained. I was like, oh, well, I don't need to go back to doodism. But I thought doodism would have been a little more fun. The church of dood or something like that.
You know what's one I like? It's basically a joke religion. But the idea is you say it's your religion. And you're allowed to wear religious headwear on your passport and stuff.
And so people do it. And then they wear a pasta colander on their head in the thing. Well, that's one. So should I just summarize the plot of the movie with that?
Yeah, no, I mean, we made a lot of jokes. But I'm not sure. But we'll see. It's like, no, yeah.
So open it up. The reason I want to do is just because I was asked to show and discuss some of the students this semester. And this is the one I chose. Partly, I chose it on the basis of my colleague who had done a big sleep in the fall.
And maybe we'll get to this in just a moment. But this seems to me to be a set up of a number of different kinds of movies. A Western sort of these weird sort of episode, I used to say episode as an adjective. Episodic.
Episodic sort of movies where there's different episodes, obviously, film the war. And in specific, it seems to be the big little bow, seems to be a set up of a big sleep. A big sleep in the choice of a very complex plot that was very doable to follow. Didn't seem to be very interesting.
Humphrey Bogart's the main character, right? And so I watched it in preparation and I've forgotten. And it's just this elaborate attempt to extort money from somebody that's that's the big sleep. And the big little bow ski is similar.
There are two main plot lines if you can call them. The first is this horrible comedy of errors botched kidnapping, rantsome thing, this sort of comic. And they're all kinds of comic, and the second one, the second one, the second one, less attended to, plot lines as far as I can tell is, there's a bowling tournament that's happening. And that seems to be another plot line.
So the story is there's this very rich guy named Lobowski, Jeffery Lobowski, who's married to a much younger woman, a kind of trophy wife, as it were. He seems to become sick of her. She seems to have been kidnapped. There's a ransom letter.
The people who try to extort money from the big Lebowski try to go get some money from Little Lebowski. I'm missing this out a little bit, but they show up at the dude's house, the Little Lebowski. And the demand of money, they put his head in the toilet and then they pee on his rug. And so that seems to be the end of it, except then Big Lebowski's friend Walter, who's a military guy, encourages him to go and get his money for the rug from the big Lebowski, since he's the guy that actually is on my first place.
I jinxed, I jinxed, I jinxed. The girl ends up never having been kidnapped in the first place. The alleged kidnappers, by the way, or their pretend kidnappers, are self-styled German nihilists, naturally. I'm sure I'm missing a ton, the bowling alley bowling alley, and then at the very end, there's a fist fight where the German nihilists demand their money from the dude and Walter.
And also Donny, who talked about people talking about them characters as well. And that's kind of it. There's no real plot. I think just like the big sleep, the plot is secondary, or even tertiary, to just the comic episodes, which is probably why it's so quotable and people latch on to the quotes.
That's at least mine. But I'm sure I missed some stuff in the plot. So go for it, Eric, if you have anything I'll add. Yeah, let me just throw in one thing there, which is that it's an incredibly complex series of misdirections, et cetera, et cetera.
To summarize, it would be kind of tedious, I think, to the throw-up turns, because none of them amount to anything, really. Like the whole thing kind of resolves. Nothing happens. The ex of Donny guy, Swirlo.
And the baby Lebowski is made. Yeah, I think the plot is also very forgettable. I mean, so a minute after you saw it and someone said, what's it's about? If you started to actually go through all the action, you would very quickly get confused as to what happened when and how significant it was and so forth.
Yeah, you can actually lay out the plot very quickly, it seems to me, under the circumstances, because so much of it ends up being not that important, ultimately, it's sort of a prop for the gags and various other things that are going on in the script. I didn't even really pick up on a lot of the plot details until the second or third time I watched it. Like, Oohie or whatever, the main German nihilist is floating in the pool early on the plot. And so I didn't pick up on that the first one.
The main kidnapper is there with Bonnie, and he knows that she's going out of town, which is why I think he forms this fake kidnapping plot. Just all kind of little stuff like that. Let me say one other thing about the plot here, which is that the movie opens by saying that the dude is like, this is Jeff Lebowski, but it's the version played by Jeff Bridges, not like the one that's in a wheelchair. Not the big Lebowski.
Not the big Lebowski, yeah. And it begins by saying that he's like the right man for the moment or something like that. And I'm like, Ooh, he's gonna rise to the occasion and do something grand and noble. Nothing happens.
And so, which gets at where the big things, you talked about the German nihilist, but the German nihilists are kind of pathetic nihilists. The whole, in that they care very much about justice and the kind of money concerned and all that sort of stuff. But the whole movie feels kind of nihilistic. The guy fitting for the moment.
And why? Because it's a series of meaningless events with a meaningless listless kind of drifty guy. And so the whole thing that seems to be like, takes place in the early 90s, seems to be a kind of send up of a kind of 90s sort of aimlessness. A couple of minor points.
One is that it begins with this narration, you're right. And the narrator is this cowbell, because he actually appears twice in the film in addition to the times when he jumps into interject by narrating. And one of the things he says about the dude is he's the right man, like you said for the moment. And what is it that makes him the right man for the moment?
He's lazy. The narrator, the quality of the characteristic that seems most to capture what the dude's about is a kind of laziness. He says he might be the laziest man in Los Angeles. And therefore, apparently, Los Angeles is full of lazy people.
We don't have a big audience there, so we can rail against the Los Angeles. Because LA is so full of lazy people, he might very well be the most lazy human being in the world. So you're right that it focuses on his nihilism. And I wonder if, you know, as I was rewatching the movie the second or time, I was wondering if these aren't sort of variations of nihilism or responses to nihilism.
And so the dudes might be like, well, there's no meaning. So just chill, just divide, get high, drink Caucasians, or white Russians, apparently, as they're alternatively called. Don't get married, don't have kids. Oh, it's unclear.
Yeah, he was never married. Yeah. And then the nihilists, the German nihilists are different as well. They're other nihilists in the film, I think.
Well, Jeff Bridges' character. So the dude, I don't think sees himself as a nihilist. If I remember correctly, when he's told that Uli is a nihilist, he says that sounds exhausting, or words to that effect. So he doesn't really think of himself in that way.
I don't even think he's sort of attracted to it. But at the same time, there's a sense in which, you know, his own life is rather meager, and he's not doing necessarily that much more than, you know, than a nihilist might do. Right, right. Well, that's I think the difference.
A nihilist who calls herself a nihilist is a little too serious, right? Whereas the nihilist, like, so here's a couple nihilistic things about the dude. When he gets his head shoved in his toilet. And he doesn't bother.
I mean, bothered to do it as far as he's drawn. He doesn't want to drown. But like, he's, the toilet seat is pretty disgustingly safe. Super disgusting.
And like, when the top seat is up and not the bottom, you can see a ring from like the bottom. So it's like, it's so disgusting. And look, this is intentional. They have to make the seat look like that for the film.
So they mean it so that you see another one. They peed all over the toilet just for the film? Absolutely. Over and over again, and made us, that's wow.
They put David's body. Oh, got it. Okay. But the, the other one is the similar scene where he's sitting in his tub, like super relaxed, smoking a joint.
And then he gets the message. And I forget what the message is. But he's basically the little flier out man or whatever. And he's relaxing, listening to whale sounds.
That's like, yeah. They come in, they throw like a ferret in his tub. He's like, ah, ah, he's screaming. It's one of the funniest thing about the movie.
It's like, he's a very like feminine scream. And then they take the ferret out. And it's like he's back to normal. Like, I'd be like, my adrenaline would be up.
I'd be like, oh my God, oh my God, give me the fuck out of here. Like, I'd be so upset. He just like goes back to normal. So there's like a, there's just like a level at which you just kind of moves on from a pretty traumatic situation facing the toilet, whatever, or like his house is tragic.
He's like, oh, be in the end or whatever. And then he goes and has sex, you know, like he's just totally easy. Well, he's the, I mean, all the things that he does in the film, all these little episodes, I mean, you guys should correct me on this, but it seems like he's almost always the vehicle of somebody else. Like, it's not his idea to go get the rug from Big Lebowski.
That's Walter's idea. Mod Lebowski, the daughter of the Big Lebowski. He's, that's the person you're saying he has sex with. Like, it's her initiation.
She's trying to get pregnant. And he doesn't know that. It seems like every single, like, um, to being involved with the ransom, that's Big Lebowski's idea to enlist the dude. So he's just like this guy that goes along and does everything.
I mean, he seems like an empty vessel. And at one point where it seemed like one would become angry, he's reminded of George Bush's words and echoes them, right? He's like, this aggression will not stand, man. You know, like that's, he just echoes what he's heard, which is by the way, I'll just say before we move on from him, I think it's important is like when he was a young man, he was not in any way this easy going, right?
He was super idealistic. He was a member of two different far left radical student organizations, one called the Students for Democratic Society. And then the other was that this, uh, he was a member of a small group called the Seattle Seven, which was itself a subset of something called the Seattle Liberation Front, which was founded by a university Washington professor in 1970. So he was extremely committed to things.
He says, oh, passives, he says, am I, am I misremembering that? Okay. So there, he does have some attachment to some ideas. So you're trying to jump in here.
Yeah. I mean, it strikes me that one way of looking at this. So there's two guys with the exact same name, Jeffrey Lebowski. And they turn out also to be examples of two very different American types.
So you have, you know, the dude, Jeffrey Lebowski, who is obviously this bohemian when in the sort of post-coital conversation with Maud, she asked him to explain, you know, what his life has been like and the sort of explainings. How folks at home with post-coital needs? I'm going to wait till David's back on so he can, ah, what do you know, speak of the devil. David, Alex wants to know if you could explain what post-coital means.
I think it's, it means crying, right? And like really just sad tears. And that's what I always thought it meant. It was where you're streaming allegations.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the sounds of sirens and back.
So the dude sort of stands for bohemianism. And he hasn't done very much with his life. Obviously, with this kind of meager existence. And the only thing you can point to is that he was involved with the poor here on statement, the famous S1.
The original. Whereas not that watered down later version. Right. Right.
Which he thinks is the second version, which is garbage. And then the other, the big Lebowski who has the same name is obviously the bourgeois. And when the dude goes to his mansion, the sort of oily assistant points out that he's met Nancy Reagan. So, you know, this is a sort of example, and he's very much a pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and so forth.
And he turns out to be sort of just as much of a fraud, it seems as the dude as far as his own career is concerned. So there was, you know, Greg sent along to us this Thomas S. Hibbs piece, the human comedy perpetuates itself. And I was annoyed that it actually talked about Bobo's and Paradise by David Brooks, just because I had thought about that myself.
And that obvious, that book comes from 2000 in this film is from 1998. So they couldn't have been thinking of that. But it seems like it offers a very different impression of those two types. So Brooks's argument, such as it is in that Bobo's and Paradise is very much about how the contemporary American elites are this sort of seamless blend of bohemianism from the 1960s, but also the bourgeois characteristics of the Reagan 80s.
But this is wonderful as far as Brooks is concerned. It seems like the movie, the Big Lebowski is sort of offering the exact opposite, that, you know, the dude is, I think portrayed more sympathetically than the Big Lebowski is in the film, but he really is a kind of meager guy where he's sort of a comedy point because his life has been so kind of meaningless. And both of them, both of these character types, I think are portrayed in a very sarcastic, negative impression overall. Yeah.
So to go back to that poor Huron thing, the second one he said was compromise. And he makes it a point to point that out, right? He says like, no, we were really pure. In fact, pure with the first one.
The second one was compromise and all this sort of stuff. And so then you start like spelling that out and you realize that, oh, the dude is not like all that chill, right? I mean, he's, and he does, he is the kind of patient of other people's agency urging him this way. And he's kind of shifted around.
He most shows his agency, I think, when he complains about his buddy Walter screwing everything up, or he complains about, I just want to my rugby and like, or whatever. Like, so there's a kind of comic sense in which he takes his like relaxation and life of, of kind of meager. He's like very too seriously. Yeah.
And so there's a kind of purity he's striving for, reflected in his early idealism that he still has a connection, right? Like, oh, I'm not compromised. I refuse to be compromised. My garbagey rug really tight the room together.
You know, like this, like, and the only thing he takes seriously, yeah, is that and is a little boldly, but it's really just about comfort, relaxation ease of life. I think Walter, so I mean, I don't know if it's the right way to think about it. I do think that nihilism runs throughout the film and that maybe they're not all nihilists, but they all sort of seem to be responses to nihilism or maybe an attempt to come to terms with the meaninglessness of life, different attempts to do that. And they all seem dimly aware of its meaninglessness.
And so like, for example, I mean, Walter seems extremely committed to things, right? He seems extremely committed to his having been to be at Navette, which Eric has an interesting anecdote about from the internet. He seems extremely committed to his Judaism, right? He doesn't roll on Shabbat.
But then we learn at the very end that, all right, he's actually only converted to Judaism for his ex-wife. Like, there are all these various attempts to latch on. And it's stupid. It's stupid in this case, right?
Or is it the dude says to Walter, you live in the past, man. He's like, oh, yeah, I'm living in the past. I got 3000 years of whatever. Moses and Sandy Kofex.
Yeah, Moses and Sandy Kofex. But yeah, I'm living in the past. But it's so knee jerk. But if you know what's, if you know you're putting it on, then you can't, I mean, like, can you make your own horizon, right?
Like, it seems like a nihilistic response. Like he's desperately trying to latch on to something, even though he can't do that. Which is also, I don't want to tell what David said to say, but it also, you know, he's viciously anti-dimalist. I think if I remember correctly, there's a point to which he says that Nazism is actually superior denialism because at least it's an ethos, I think, is something that he says.
So if somebody who takes his Judaism so seriously as a result of his ex-wife, you know, to say that means something. So he's sort of viciously attempting to fight off a sense of nihilism, even though, you know, at least his Judaism is not terribly well grounded because, you know, toward the end of the film, the dude suggests that his interest in this is not really purely religious, but a way to try to hang on to his ex-wife. Yeah. And I mean, the German nihilist, right?
I mean, at the very end, I mean, the ways that Alex said, they're very committed to money, for example, but also fairness, right? But at the very end, when they were demanding the money that they think that they deserve, like, desert is not nihilist. They say it's not fair. And then, and then Walt says, fairness, I thought you guys were nihilists.
You want to cry, baby? And they'll take whatever they have in their wallet. Like $4. Yeah.
Okay, that's fine. It's like, it's symbolic. It's like, how can you be a narcissist? That's the money.
Yeah, it's symbolic. I'm just remembering. So it's part of the, what the movie is doing then, trying to show that actually nobody can consistently hold on to this. So even the movie itself is nihilist, right?
The tumbleweed begins with this sort of weird, like, you're just blowing in the wind. The narrator, at one point in the middle of the movie, roughly the narrator appears on screen next to the dude and he says, sometimes you eat the bar or sometimes a bar e to you, which is a kind of nihilistic trope. Like, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I don't know if you cough this with the very end of the movie, after Donnie's dead and they're going to get his aftertches.
I don't know what you call this. Not the undertaker, but whatever he is, the guy there, he's talking to them behind him in the wall. It says, uh, storm 103 15. And it's as for man, his days are as grass.
Like, this is like, I would say this is maybe David at his most nihilistic, right? Like, our lives are meaningless. So, I don't know, it just seems like it persists throughout the film. And maybe with the film, not King David, the second post famous, David, we know.
Yeah, then I was, I see that angle, but one thing that seems to endure throughout is their friendship. Is it fair to call it that? I mean, they, they may not have to pass you to intellectualize what that means, but they show up for one another. And it's not because of the bowling, which they take seriously, but always like semi-serious.
I mean, no, it's a gun on a guy for trying to, I know, but really, he's there and he's always ragging on Donnie, but like it's clear that they show up for one another, right? We already talked about this. We were, we were, we were. Why had to go running here.
We didn't talk about. Okay, we didn't talk about. No, you're right. He rags.
Walters was ragging on Donnie. He's like, Donnie. Yeah. And then Lebowski is always like pissed off at Walter for not being easy.
So like, like Donnie is kind of annoying. Like he does kind of like stay like nonsense off to the side, but he's so harmless that you feel bad for him. And then Walter's so damn annoying. Like you completely sympathize with the dude, right?
You just want to like, you just want to like punch him in the face. He's awful. But also like, you wonder like why are these three guys together? Like Walter doesn't like Donnie.
The dude doesn't really like Walter. The dude doesn't pay attention to Donnie. You know what does Donnie really pay? Donnie's just kind of there doing his own thing, sitting quiet until he says something that gets himself yelled at.
Well, he was right. He was right about the John Lennon thing versus Vladimir Ilyich. But you know, they must answer. And when the dude is in trouble, Walter also presses the action.
So I was going to say he comes to his friends defense. But it's more for his own purpose. It's not so right. Sorry, I'm just taking my counter.
Walter's almost right on almost every point. He's like, this is made up. That's not real. And you're always like, I remember watching the first time.
I'm like, this guy's a blow heart. He doesn't be talking about it. So is he right by accident or does he actually possess insight? I think we can kind of show these right by accident.
Like, oh, come on. They could have found it to anywhere. I could get you a toe by 250. Like, if you just do whatever polish on it.
It turns out that is what they do. Fuckin' amateurs. Yeah, he calls them amateurs, but there's no one more amateurish than Walter himself. I mean, he screws up everything along the way.
So he is correct about the plot, but I think it's by accident because he's actually deeply incompetent when it comes to pretty much everything. I mean, also when they go to Larry Sellers' house, you know, he screws that up and then, you know, hitting the car afterwards. I mean, he's an idiot. That one's hilarious.
But then, every once in a while, he gets something right, but it's almost more by accident. Also, I think because he's motivated by reasoning that will help himself. So obviously, you know, when the dude is upset and he thinks that this might be a real problem, you know, Walter's more concerned in some senses with the bowling tournament and worried that this is going to have an effect on them continuing to bowl. So he comes up with, oh, it's not that bad.
This isn't a real, you know, I'm not sure that this is genuine insight from his part, as opposed to his interest in coming up with a rationale that fits whatever he needs at that particular moment. So why are they friends to get back to David's question? Like, this is a genuine puzzle, I think. Like, what does it that unites them?
Or is it just ridiculous in the movie doesn't make any sense that way? Yeah, you put that in the notes. I was thinking about that. And I thought, I don't know how, I don't like worthwhile insight is this, but it struck me that whenever the dude gets really worked up, Walter just completely changes, telling him, he's like, come on, take it easy and relax.
Like, you're not going to the bowling team. Like, he suddenly becomes chill. And I wonder if part of why the dude likes him is it gives him a foil to tell it to chill out. Like, his best friend is super uptight and really too eager.
And he's the most laid back guy. It's like, it's good for him, maybe in his own head to like constantly telling this guy to chill out. But also when he gets too serious, he kind of chucks him back in return. And yeah, I don't know why Walter is friends with him other than like, it takes a pretty patient, dude.
Good. But guys, did you, so I have a question for the group. Did you pay attention carefully? Yes.
Oh, when Donnie's has his heart attack to their actions? Yes. How would you categorize? He was, they were sincere.
Yeah, it wasn't simply that like, it's especially for Walter, like, he was upset because his friend got it wasn't like a joke anymore. Right. Or he was done here. I have an answer for this, by the way.
Did you notice what he said? No, no, no, that's, I'm genuinely asking. I can't call him. He said, choppers are on the way.
That's right. That's right. He's having a flashback. Also, I would say, I do think that there's an undercurrent of love between these people, even though they're sort of constantly annoyed with one another and picking at one another.
I do think that before it goes off the rails and starts talking about Vietnam, which is one of Walter's obsessions, that the original kind of eulogy for Donnie is a little touching. It's actually kind of nice, especially coming from someone who's done nothing but bit bit Donnie and telling him to shut up, you know, throughout the entire movie. But you get some sense that he actually really liked this guy. You know, why he acted that way all the time is not clear.
But he really did kind of like him, I think. And I do, and there's also a hug between the two of them and the dude gets mad, but the one of them actually goes off the rails and starts talking about Vietnam and so forth. But then they have a hug after that. Oh, the man.
They're not very good at showing it, but they actually do sort of like one another in a sort of perverse way. I'll say with some of my closest friends present company excluded, although we should probably talk about why I'm a rural friends, like some of my closest friends, like we do this. We get together and it's like, if you didn't know us, you'd be like, why are they so mean? It's like, well, because we're so close, we can actually like we've been friends for 30 years.
Like I can call my friends names and, you know, like we can say terrible things about their dead parents and people like, oh my God, what's wrong with you? And they're like, we're friends. We're just joking. I'm not that close with you, Greg.
You're welcome. I mean, I, there's something else to talk about the friendship. I don't really know. It's a curiosity to me.
I mean, maybe this would be a struggle. Like, just like very simply on the face of that. Like one seems to be militaristic and the other is a pacifist. So how are they friends, right?
Like Walter seems to be extremely, now Eric, I remember talking about this right before you guys have gone, but he has a slightly review of it. Like he seems like super aggressive. Like he totally thinks that the Iraq war, which by the way is lurking in the presence of the entire movie, it sort of bookends the film. The film seems in some way to actually be about the Iraq war.
Although that may not be obvious. And he's totally supports it up until the final scene where he sort of mumbles about how it might not just be for oil, but I don't know. And then the dude is obviously not, he's from the process of Vietnam. But he seems like the friendship is the one so Vietnam vet.
When I was out of the room, I heard Eric and Eric, I want to say I, this happened to me. I've seen this film now five or six times. It sort of was a college, you know, you're stoned. Like after one, but it's not just that.
It's complex. So you said something. I think I heard you correctly. You can watch this film.
And then a second, you know, after having seen it, forget all about it. This has happened to me constantly. Well, the one constant though, I think in a film of like slippery services, services is the friendship of the three men and the essentiality of the bowling alley. Right.
Like that's a magnet. Everything else is smoking mirrors. Everything else is in the movie. So I don't know.
He's not at all that it's core, but I didn't think any of you guys are playing. Don't you think that there's a sense maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe this is going to hit close to home, but that especially with male friendship, sometimes people are friends because they've always been friends. Yes. And if someone meets the two of you, you know, the two male friends more recently, like why are you friends with this person?
You seem to have nothing in common with them. You don't have any. And then you're sort of like, well, you know, I met him in third grade and you know, we've sort of stayed in touch or whatever. And some of these things are sort of inexplicable.
But at the same time, obviously they share a level bowling. So they do have one thing that, you know, keeps them together. Also, I don't think we know them are strivers too. I don't get the impression.
We don't get to find out too much about Donny's life situation or Walters, but they don't seem like they're doing that much better than the dude necessarily. So they're at the same level, I guess. Yeah. And we don't know anything about the backstory of the friendship, how far back it goes.
Probably know they could be childhood friends, but I don't know if they're ages. Maybe they're ages think I can't tell. Yeah. So I think the Germans have this saying, I think it's the Germans.
Somebody told me that friendships after a certain age are impossible ability. And just because you don't go through life's lessons, you know, after you saw Eric, the two of us met, I would count you as a good friend of mine, a genuine friend of mine. But that's so rarely drawn in life, right? Back after that's why I cried when you left Kensington.
Yes. It was really. The day after you left David, at the fire station in Kensington, the flagswear would have been half masked. And I never went inside and found out why I have no idea.
But I have a piece of direct out of the function. Oh, I'm sorry. It's hard to make friends after a certain age because you don't get into these trials as you would when you're younger. So of course we all have friends from our childhood that have been grandfathered in.
You wonder, you don't articulate this right when you're talking to them. But one wonders if I met someone so now, would I be? I had a buddy from high school who was kind of dumb. We hung out well into like grad school and stuff.
He didn't go to grad school. He was dumb. But we eventually one day was like, why are we even? Alex Alex, there are plenty of dumb people in grad school.
No, he's way dumber. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, was it not going to be a grad school or sign of smartness?
I mean, I was going to say it. But you know, one's career opportunities are perhaps less than from such a choice. Man, you're really doing justice to the memory of Irving Babbitt. I told you from saying Bobitt said, anyway, he was asking why, why, I don't even know how your friends are doing here.
A smart guy. And I was just like, no, each other since middle school. But he said that to you right to your face. He said that to me.
And then he kind of drifted off. We didn't hang out that much later. And I feel like he was just like, I'm dumb with this. This guy.
So I don't know. I don't know whether he won't listen to this. He's a dumb guy. He can't even fall asleep right now.
But can I talk about the Iraq war stuff? And I was thinking about how is, why is this the backdrop to this story? And the way I would put it is that it seems to me like both are things that were very, very serious, but only for very, very short periods of time. Right.
Like the Iraq war is a big deal. And it's over in a matter of weeks. Right. Same thing with the dude.
Like he gets involved in this crazy nefarious plot that he's German nihilist. There's the big Lebowski. There's the artist daughter. There's a whole lot of smoking mirrors.
He's just trying to get his rug. Maybe that's a symbol of the oil. I don't know. But the whole thing is base motives.
And then it just kind of resolves itself. And it's over. And then it's, you know, Saddam's still in power. You know, everything sort of results.
I think the rug symbolizes territory for integrity. Because he says like this is a private residence man. And he says Walter, I think it's Walter says to him, there's a lion in the sand. And they cross it, which I once they bush also said about literally about the invasion of Kuwait.
And you know, this is the right. What's a standing Kuwait? I've heard more than Iraq. I've heard.
But the idea being that I wonder if the one brothers aren't saying that this little invasion would be a deal. I mean, like, ultimately, who cares if one despot, I mean, this would really not listen to you. But who cares if Iraq invades Kuwait? Why is it such a big deal?
I know, I do get a sense. I mean, maybe because I'm a little bit older and I sort of remember this a bit more when it happened at the time. And obviously now when's the second invasion of Iraq happens, people don't really care that much about the first one. It's just not as big of a deal.
But I do remember at the time that people were talking about what a surreal experience that war was. It was insane. Because it seemed like it was on CNN. And it was like, if you were in the military, you had nothing to do with it.
It was happening. You could watch it on television. It was really your war in this real sense. There was no sacrifice that Americans were making necessarily unless they were in the military.
So it sort of felt like it wasn't really happening, even though it was for a moment, something that everyone was very concerned with. I distinctly remember watching, you may remember this, Eric, when the seal, there was a seal, an amphibious landing, and CNN was already there. Like they showed up, like the Navy SEAL showed up and they're like, hey, this is not very secret. Like CNN caught you before the Iraqis said.
But no, it was widely supported by the way. I mean, it was Bush's popularity went through the roof. You know, and by the way, this was like the first big deal after the Cold War, right? So like the quite the one on the Pimos in the 80s, still a Cold War still.
I mean, after the fall, Berlin Wall, and so like people, like what do we do now? What's the world we're going to go like? And it was like, oh, no, we're going to actually the US is going to try and help people maintain territorial integrity, although of course it was about the oil. Yeah, it was real.
So what year was this movie? I mean, it's 98, you said? 1998. Yeah.
So here's my question is it seems to be a kind of comment on what war looks like. It's not like Vietnam anymore, whereas this traumatic life-changing experience with flashbacks. It's something on TV. It's like getting involved in some weird plot over a small thing in your life and then you move past it.
So this movie I've been made five years later in my 2003 afternoon. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think the idea that the dude could be anything like a hero and not just like, mostly irresponsible, like another way to put it is if you had George W.
Bush on those TV series talking about 9-11. And he's just like, yeah, I don't know what's going on. And they're just kind of just, he would look like an irresponsible loser, a bad citizen. And I wonder whether this movie, I mean, this is part of what's frustrating about it as politics seems so serious, sometimes too serious, but there are really serious issues at play.
It's not like the 90s, the so-called holiday from history, right? It's not like the 90s. It's in many ways quite serious, both domestically and abroad. And somebody like the dude is guilty of a kind of dereliction of his duty as a citizen.
Yeah, that seemed right to me. But the dude pulls his gun in the bowling league, which is a hilarious scene. Either of you guys are already talking about Jesus. Okay.
I don't have a theory on it. He's so wonderful at creating these memorable characters that enter an exit, but that's not an explanation. He pulls a gun on that guy. He freaks everybody out.
He pulls it on Smokey. Sorry, that's right. We're Smokey. Yeah, yeah.
He's like, look, does, but he doesn't pull it on the fascists. Yeah. Yeah. When they were attacking him with, like, they were approaching with wets with a sword.
Yeah. Right. If there's one time you can pull the gun. Get away with it.
It's huge. Yeah. Yeah. And said he just bites an ear and hits another one.
Does he kill one of those guys dog scene? Yeah. I know Donny dies. But anyway, that's a good question.
I mean, I don't have the answer to it. I'll just say the same question that occurred to me as I was watching at this last time. Like, why doesn't he pull a gun? And I was wondering if he's like the anti-Indian Jones right when the guy brings the sword out in Indiana Jones shoots him and he doesn't do it.
Does he want to fight? Is that what's going on? I also wondered if it like he, if the dude had sort of convinced him to put the gun away after the cops had been called the last time. Yeah.
I don't know. I'm tempted to say that this is some turning point in his love life where he's going to make his stand and be real. Right. That's something.
I think that's a great. I think you're on the right track, which is that because it's an extremely petty situation. It's over a 20 bucks. He's like, dude, we're going to get discount or whatever the dude says.
He's like, we're going to get this guy. This is not a big deal. And so either he doesn't have his gun or something like that, but he does. It seems like the same guy, but maybe he's set aside the gun out of like respect to his friend.
I don't know. But I think he wants to fight. Yeah. Like he's going to fraud your whole life and you sense it.
This would be a legitimate situation to kind of step up. So I think rightly sees himself as a kind of protector of his two friends who, you know, like the dude's a pacifist. He's just too lazy or stoned to give a damn. But during the fight, he's terrible.
He just like holds up his kind of bag. Yeah. I do have a thought about the Jesus, by the way. I think that the dude is actually among other things, a comic equivalent of a Old Testament prophet, like his hair, his man or address.
And then I do one and then I look, everyone's Jewish in the film, not at a word, of course. And they're both Polish, by the way, Walter and Lebowski are both Polish ancestry. I think that's sort of curious. But I think there's things like the dude's wearing a robe.
It's several times. He's Jewish wearing slippers. Jeff, I mean, it's a Polish name, no? What about you?
I don't know. No. It's Polish. You just have to try any kind of...
No, no, no, of course he's not biased anyway. But I think he's meant to be a sort of... I mean, I suspect there's something common going on about him being a prophet. But that's just something.
Maybe that's not there. There is a strong sense of place in the movie. I mean, I know we want to wrap this up so we want to go on forever. But we haven't really talked at all about the fact that the setting has lost angels and seems to be very important to the film.
I think also related to that is there's that opening scene where you see the tumbleweeds so that you think this might be a kind of western as it goes across. But then you see the big city of Los Angeles, which is the end of the western theme as it goes through. And it seems like the movie is really strongly connected to Los Angeles. And part of that is might be what we talked about beforehand about a sense of laziness or what have you.
But that also gives you a sense of the sort of great heights of richness. The big little house is very, very wealthy. Also Jackie Treehorn is very wealthy too, and this kind of gaudy house versus the kind of hovel that the dude lives in. And Larry Sellers' house is not so wonderful either.
And the neighborhood doesn't appear to be so wonderful either. So it is very strongly connected to a place I think more than most people... But really quick, Eric, last question before we go on. Sorry.
Why is the narrator in the 10-gallon hat to go back to your western comment? It'd be interesting why this election of that type of person, you could have anybody at the bar explaining the dude. Yeah, I mean, I thought that there was, you know, and I'd be interested to hear what you guys all think about this, but I thought that this was sort of a send-up of a western in which the dude kind of plays this role of the man in the white hat, but he really isn't a man in the white hat and so forth. So in the same way that it's kind of mocking noir films, it's kind of mocking westerns at the same time.
There is the detective character that says, oh, you're like me, you're like a detective, I'm a shamelessly think he means he's Irish, right? So I think he's the comic equivalent of the detective of the cowboy. I think I'm serious to the profit. Like he's all these things at once.
Yeah, they're wonderful filmmakers. I mean, it took a lot of... Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Well, this was fun. Always fun. We should just go bowling around. I'm gonna go get some Nautilus to go attack us so that we can do this.
He's completely like clogged arteries, has a heart attack, and we can dump his ashes and the Folgers pod. What? Yeah, that's wrong. What's wrong with you?
Why are you guys... I'm gonna go get the ashes of Folgers pod and toss them off the meager promontory. The folks at home won't realize this, but Alex is wearing glasses that are shaped just like Walters in them. They are actually a little bit.