The real life ‘Dude’ who inspired ‘The Big Lebowski’
The Coen brothers are known for their off-beat characters that seem destined for cult status, but the one that will always stand out as the most quintessentially Coen-inian is Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, the forty-something Los Angeles slacker played by Jeff Bridges, who is at the heart of the 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski.
The film has so many quotable lines and larger-than-life characters that it can be easy to forget that its plot is actually pretty twisty. The filmmakers were loosely inspired by the noir detective novels of Raymond Chandler, who created the private investigator Philip Marlowe, but it goes without saying that the Coens’ take is much more absurdist than cynical.
The story begins with a case of mistaken identity. One evening, The Dude is assaulted in his apartment by two enforcers of a porn mogul who believes he is a different Jeffrey Lebowski. When his wife is kidnapped, the real Lebowski hires The Dude to deliver the ransom. Complicating the situation is The Dude’s bowling buddies, led by John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak, a swaggering Vietnam veteran who hatches a plan to keep the money.
The word ‘iconic’ gets tossed around far too often, but there is no other way to describe Bridges’ character. The Dude is a laid-back zen master who enjoys White Russians, bowling, and the odd joint. He remains calm in a crisis, no matter how out of hand his friends are getting, and although he is undeniably a comedic figure, there is more than a hint of divine coolness about him. The Dude abides, giving all of us something to strive for.
As it turns out, Bridges’ character wasn’t just plucked from the aether; it was modelled off of a real person. Jeff Dowd is a writer, producer, and political activist who met the Coens while they were promoting their debut feature, Blood Simple, in 1984. Called ‘The Dude,’ Dowd is known for his laid-back charm and penchant for White Russians. In the words of the film critic Roger Ebert, he is also “tall, large, shaggy and aboil with enthusiasm.”
Unlike Lebowski, however, Dowd has led a pretty proactive life. In the early 1970s, he was a member of the Seattle Seven, a group of passionate anti-Vietnam War activists in Washington who were arrested for ‘conspiracy to incite a riot’ after demonstrating at a courthouse in 1970. He also played an instrumental role in helping Robert Redford found the Sundance Film Festival.
Dowd was the overarching inspiration for The Dude, but when it came to several specific details, it was the Coens’ friend Peter Exline who filled in the gaps. According to the filmmakers, he lived in a shabby flat and liked to say that it was the rug that “tied the room together,” a line that becomes something of a catchphrase throughout the course of the film.
The idea of being an inspiration for a comedic character in a movie would terrify most people, but The Dude is a pretty great legacy, all things considered. Bridges can’t help but make the character wildly charismatic, and the infinitely quotable dialogue is pure Coen brothers gold, even if they did just repurpose the words of their unsuspecting friends.
