Jeff Bridges’ secret prequel to ‘The Big Lebowski’: “Not many people know this”
Ever since The Big Lebowski was released in 1998, audiences the world over have professed their desire for a sequel that sees Jeff Bridges return as ‘The Dude’, but the Coen brothers aren’t having it.
Bridges has voiced his enthusiasm for the prospect before, but he knows that it’s hard to will such a thing into existence when the writers and directors responsible for one of modern cinema’s definitive cult classics would rather do anything else than return to the well.
John Turturro did get the chance to reprise his role as the title character in the spinoff The Jesus Rolls, but based on the way Joel and Ethan told the story, they approved the star, writer, and director’s request to play the bowling-obsessed sex offender again so he would leave them alone and stop asking.
Despite being an Academy Award-winning veteran who’s been knocking out top-notch performances in countless genres for well over half a century, ‘The Dude’ will always be Bridges’ career-defining role. He knows that, he embraces it, and sequel or not, the character will continue to abide.
However, ‘The Dude’ may have sneakily pre-abided, although the star’s tongue was planted at least halfway into his cheek. What happens when you take Bridges and reunite him with Julianne Moore? You get a woeful fantasy blockbuster that was delayed by two years, and when it was finally released, flopped at the box office and became one of the worst-reviewed movies of both actors’ careers, obviously.
In Sergei Bodrov’s Seventh Son, Bridges’ knight, Master Gregory, is embroiled in a centuries-long battle with Moore’s witch, Mother Malkin. Naturally, she escapes from imprisonment with revenge on her mind, setting them on a collision course that you will under absolutely no circumstances give even half a shit about, because it’s a terrible, terrible picture.
The dream sequence from The Big Lebowski, this was not. And yet, Bridges hinted they may well be connected. “Not many people know this, but I think we just let this out of the bag, that this film is actually a prequel,” he teased. “There are some kind of weird parallels. I think of Maude flying, ‘The Dude’ liked to smoke and drink it, and Gregory, I’m sure he has some kind of smoking mixture.”
As for Moore, she understood how those dots would be joined. “There’s that sense of, ‘Oh, I know those guys! They were in a movie together before,'” she conceded. “So, that kind of comes along with you, and it was something I hadn’t really anticipated, and it’s cool. It’s a really cool thing.”
Unfortunately, even if you watch Seventh Son with the mindset that Master Gregory and Mother Malkin are direct descendants of ‘The Dude’ and Maude Lebowski from the 16th century, and the characters were fated to meet in The Big Lebowski because of the history established in Bodrov’s flick, it’s still pish.
