The Big Lebowski

Mark is a good man, and thorough, as he tries to figure out what makes The Big Lebowski so transcendent, why the Dude's abiding is meaningful, and if anything of consequence actually happens in this story.

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Hi everybody, and welcome to Mark Overanalyses Film! Today, I will be discussing 1998’s The Big Lebowski. Partly because, somehow, 1998 was 25 years ago. 

Before I begin, a brief reminder that I am available for story coaching and reading at Markoveranalysesstory.com. 

The Big Lebowski was written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen. When I was considering this film, there were a couple of thoughts, or really reservations in my head about analysing it. One: there’s something in how perfectly formed it is that makes it feel a little hermetically sealed. It’s so tight, it’s kinda hard to see an ‘in’ somehow. Secondly, the Coen Brothers are always at least flirting with nihilism, chaos, coincidence, and meaninglessness, and they consistently play down any grand interpretations of this film. So, is The Big Lebowski “about” anything? And can it really be this entertaining and coherent if it isn’t? 

One more thing, related to this: this is the second film I’ve overanalysed that I would regard as a ‘flat’ or ‘2 Dimensional’ story. Now that’s not to suggest any kind of lack here. All it means is that rather than the protagonist needing to change themselves, what needs to change is their knowledge of the situation. Another difference is that in a 3 dimensional story, the whole point is that we wonder if someone can or will change. In a 2 dimensional story, we wonder if the protagonist’s status quo can maintain or withstand the pressure of the situation or antagonist. This is why 2 dimensional stories are so common in TV stories. At the end of the episode, the heroes have maintained the status quo, and the next episode can test it again.   

So, with all that in mind, I’m going to diverge slightly from my usual approach. First, as ever, I’ll look at the fundamental features of the protagonist. Then, in order to simplify the plot, I’ll look at the main players in the kidnapping story one by one. Then I’ll briefly go through the overall story shape by looking at the acts and sequences of the film. Finally, I’ll talk about the main things I learned along the way. So: protagonist, plot, story, analysis.

Ok, let’s get into the 5 Questions about the protagonist. 

Q1: Whose story is it? 

This is the story of The Dude, His Dudeness, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing. He’s a 40-ish resident of Los Angeles in whom, according to the script, “casualness runs deep”.  

Q2: What is his life dream?
Life dream here refers to what it is that the protagonist wants or is aiming to do when the film begins and the story has yet to properly start. Now, when I studied under my mentor Mary Kate O’Flanagan, she told us that there are 3 possible answers to this question: 1. The life dream is within reach. 2. It’s unattainable. Or 3. In rare cases, the protagonist is living their life dream. I think The Big Lebowski is one of those rare cases. The Dude is doing exactly what he wants to be doing with his life: takin’ her easy. 

Q3: What is his Want?

Want here is what the character is trying to achieve in Act II of the film, from the moment they really begin their journey until the moment they are at their most defeated. As such, it is a SMART goal, in that it is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. Wants are especially important in 2 dimensional stories, because they are pretty much the whole point. They tend to be pretty basic as well, in a good way. And so it is here. At minute 25, The Dude is propositioned to be the bagman for Bunny Lebowski’s kidnappers and to see if he recognises them. Solving this case, or answering the question “Will The Dude make some money out of Bunny Lebowski’s kidnapping?” is the thing that drives the next 70 minutes.

Q4: What is his Need?

Need is the human quality or piece of wisdom that the character lacks at the beginning of the story. Or, at least, that’s how it normally works in a 3 dimensional story. Again, in a 2 dimensional story, the protagonist already has what they need, and the question is: can they maintain it? Now, this really gets to the mystery of what makes The Big Lebowski tick, so I’ll talk more about this later. For now, suffice to say, our question, in the parlance of our times, is really “Will The Dude abide?”

Q5: Does he get what she wants and/or what he needs?
For a film as flat and seemingly nihilistic as The Big Lebowski, the answers here are perhaps both surprisingly strong yes’s, as we will see. 

Ok, now that I’ve attempted to answer the 5 key questions, let’s have a look at The Big Lebowski’s sequences. 

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Now, normally at this juncture, I would go through the sequences of the film in some detail. But The Big Lebowski is famously influenced by Raymond Chandler, and especially The Big Sleep. And The Big Sleep is famously so convoluted that even those involved in making it don’t know what really happens in it. So I will go through the story in brief, but first, as a way of understanding it better, I will introduce all the players in the kidnapping ‘A’ plot and their motivations.

So, first, there’s the source of all the trouble: Bunny Lebowski. Apparently, she’s a sex addict, but all we know for sure is that she’s a young, beautiful trophy wife who has starred in Jackie Treehorn’s porn films and that Jackie believes she owes him money. Perhaps because of this, she takes off towards the end of Act I, and comes back of her own accord at the end of Act II. Her disappearance, which ultimately means nothing, thus frames the second act. 

Second, there’s the guys who cause the inciting incident: or, the event without which our story as it is would not happen. These are publisher, entertainer, political activist, and upstanding Beach Community Member Jackie Treehorn and his incompetent goons. Said goons enjoy soiling furniture, asserting their non-moronicness, and paraphrasing Julius Caesar’s assassin. In another life, they could have worked for Boris Johnson. Jackie sends his goons to intimidate Jeffrey Lebowski, but his Classics loving henchmen mistake our protagonist for a millionaire, and thus bring The Dude into the story. Later on, the goons return and bring The Dude to see Jackie when the creative force behind Logjammin’ becomes convinced that The Dude might know where Bunny is. He drugs our protagonist while his goons trash The Dude’s apartment looking for, presumably, either the money or a clue as to where Bunny might be. They find neither, and that’s really the end of Jackie’s involvement. 

Third, we have the eponymous Big Lebowski himself. Jeffrey Lebowski is a vain man who pretends to be wealthier than he is. He meets The Dude when The Dude arrives looking for a new rug. Then, he brings The Dude in at the end of Act I when he believes that Bunny has been kidnapped. And he does so to set The Dude up. He’s taken a million dollars from a foundation set up by his dead wife, and wants to keep it for himself. So, he gives The Dude a weighted briefcase with no money in it. So, it’s worth noting, at the end of the film, it appears that the Big Lebowski does actually succeed in embezzling the million dollars. 

Fourth, we have the Nihilists. They believe in nothing but music, fairness, and opportunism. Head Nihilist… they might also believe in hierarchies… Head Nihilist Karl and Bunny are social and professional acquaintances, so when Bunny takes off, Karl decides to send Lebowksi a ransom note to see if they can make a million dollars. This is what triggers Lebowski to bring The Dude in and triggers the second act. Then, they’re the ones waiting under the bridge who collect Walter’s underwear at the end of the 3rd sequence. They send the toe of their 4th member towards the midpoint, and then come looking for the money from The Dude right after. After that, they really don’t have any more cards to play, so they turn up desperate men at the end of the story to offer a kind of climax. Appropriately, they end up with nothing. 

Finally, we have Maude Lebowski and her goons. Ironically, Maude and The Dude have something in common. They both start out wanting their rug back. But then, Maude learns that her father has taken a million dollars out of the foundation for this apparent kidnapping, and she propositions The Dude to try and get the money back. She does not realise that The Dude believes that he unwittingly kept the money, then had it stolen by a 15 year old kid. She does, however, arrive at a 3rd motivation: she wants The Dude to get her pregnant. She reveals this, along with the revelation that unwraps the whole thing, right at the end of the second act.  

So, in summation, Bunny takes off. The Nihilists pretend they’ve kidnapped her. Jeff Lebowski pretends to pay them, but keeps the money. Maude wants the money, but mostly she wants to get pregnant. And adult cartoonist Jackie Treehorn wants the money Bunny owes him. Whether or not he pursues Bunny and Lebowski after the credits roll, we will never know. But really, there’s no reason to think he won’t. 

There is, of course, also Little Larry, but really he just took the car for a joyride. Where the briefcase ended up doesn’t really matter, as it just contained phonebooks.

Now, that doesn’t take into account The Dude, Walter, Donnie, The Stranger, or The Jesus. But we’ll get to them as I briefly run through the main plot points to show The Dude’s journey and see if it means, well, anything.

The Sequences

There are traditionally, but not always, 8 sequences in a film. A sequence is a combination of scenes that are tied together by having a single overriding dramatic question or tension, and they tend to be between 10 and 15 minutes in length. A good way to think about it is that every 10-15 minutes, the audience should be on some level asking themselves a different dramatic question. Now, as far as I’m concerned, there’s probably 10 sequences in The Big Lebowski. But also, I think to analyse this story, it’s handier to think of it in terms of a Shakespearean-esque 5 acts, each of which contains 2 sequences. Act I functions as a regular Act I would, and introduces the world right up until The Dude starts his main adventure at minute 25. Then, Act II is where the first and easiest attempts are made to solve the problem. This is from the moment in minute 25 that The Dude is hired until minute 52 when The Dude learns that Lebowski has received a toe. Act III is then where The Dude approaches and then explores a moment of key breakthrough. Said moment bifurcates this act. Act III runs here from the moment in minute 52 where The Dude tells Walter about the toe until minute 66 when The Dude finds Little Larry’s homework in his front seat. Act IV is basically where things start to go really wrong. Here, this is from the moment they learn who Little Larry is in minute 66 until The Dude thinks he’s going to get roped into fatherhood and learns where the money actually is at minute 91. This kicks off our Act V, or a traditional act III in a 3 act structure, and this runs for the last 20 minutes of our film. One of the things I like about this way to analyse it is that it’s nice and symmetrical. The 5 acts are, in order, 25, 27, 14, 26, and 20 minutes long. The first 2 acts are 52 minutes long. The last 2 acts are 46 minutes long. And the midpoint comes right in the middle of our middle act. You love to see it. 

Anyways, that’s enough fussin’. The first sequence is ‘Life as it is’. So, we’re introduced to The Dude generally being a deadbeat, postdating by a year a check for 69 cents. But we very quickly have our inciting incident when Jackie Treehorn’s goons attack the wrong Lebowski and pee on his rug. The first sequence then ends when The Dude makes his first big decision: he will approach Lebowski for recompense. 

Once Lebowski is less than compelled by The Dude’s case, he has Lebowski’s right hand man, Brandt unwittingly help him steal a rug from the mansion. So, we have a new tension: “Will The Dude get in trouble for stealing the rug?” Within this sequence, we also first meet Bunny, and see that Walter has something of a hair trigger temper. Literally. But soon, The Dude is reassured that the reason Lebowski and Brandt are calling so much is not because of the rug, and he discovers that Bunny has been kidnapped. The Dude agrees to hand off the money in exchange for 20 grand… and the rug. The Dude is off on his new adventure, and so we end Act I, and we enter Act II.

Act II begins with sequence III, the first attempts to solve the problem. This sequence also starts with our “What’s The Plan?” scene, wherein we see what our long Act II is going to look like. And so, here we see The Dude bowling with Walter and Donnie, while watching their new nemesis The Jesus. Importantly, The Dude not only explains that he’s agreed to do the hand off, but also his theory that Bunny kidnapped herself. There is, we are told, money, intrigue, and bowling ahead. But sequence III has the tension of “Will The Dude make the hand off?”. And once The Dude has had his new rug stolen back by Maude, we discover that he will not. Walter takes over and… things do not go well. So, The Dude does not succeed in making the hand off. But it should be noted that sequence III generally ends with our protagonist making their first UNconscious move towards their Need. Now, in a 2 dimensional story, this means they make the first big step in the right direction to them maintaining their status quo. So, just as soon as they fail in their mission, Walter concludes “Fuck it, let’s go bowling.”

So, we know that The Dude is going to have to face Lebowski at some stage, but in between times, we discover that his car gets stolen, and we meet this story’s Femme Fatale stand-in: Maude. Maude also provides a major step forward for the plot: she tells El Duderino that Bunny works with Karl the nihilist and Jackie Treehorn. But no sooner has The Dude found out about this then he and his beverage are forced into Lebowski’s limo, where it is revealed that Lebowski has received a toe. Now, it’s worth noting before we move on: it would seem that as far as Mr Lebowski is concerned, everything is going according to plan at this stage.

So, with new shit having come to light, His Dudeness enters Act III and the 5th sequence really needing to find that car and the briefcase therein. Now, things on the surface don’t look great, but it’s worth slowing down a bit around here. Because, as is so common around the midpoint, things really do start foreshadowing the ending quite a lot. First of all, in the cafe, Walter is actually right when he tells the Dude that that was not Bunny’s toe. Then, at minute 55, we have what I would consider our plot’s midpoint. Two things happen here. 1. The Dude’s understanding of the case takes a huge leap. And 2. The stakes are raised significantly, with The Dude directly threatened for the first time. So what happens here? The apparent kidnappers reveal themselves. They threaten The Dude at home with castration, but there’s no reason to believe that they would know that he would recognise them. But he knows that Uli is an acquaintance of Bunny. The fact that Uli, Bunny’s associate, is claiming to have kidnapped her is the moment of breakthrough of key knowledge for the plot. And, it should be noted that The Dude has 2 confrontations with them: one at 55 minutes in, and the other 56 minutes later in the climax. Then, we have what I would consider the story’s real midpoint, or the protagonist’s first conscious move towards his Need. The Dude, importantly for theme I think, returns to his bowling alley. There, Walter, once again correctly tells him that he will not get castrated if he has anything to say about it. But also, The Dude reflects that he could be sitting here with just pee stains on his rug. The problem, really, is that he went looking for something. But then, at minute 59, The Dude encounters our narrator, known in the script as The Stranger. He tells him one thing: sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar eats you. In other words: there are ups and downs in life, and you have to take the good with the bad and keep going. And that lesson is going to sound awfully familiar at the end of our story. 

So, we’ve had our moment of key breakthrough, which means we are in sequence VI, our honeymoon sequence. That means that everything is going fairly well for The Dude at this stage. He’s gotten some life advice from The Stranger, and now Maude calls and invites him over, where again things will go well. Maude tells old Duder who Uli is and that there’s no way he kidnapped her. But things are about to turn for The Dude after one more piece of good fortune: discovering homework in his car. 

At that, things cease to go well, and at minute 67, we enter Act IV, and our 7th sequence. So, The Dude invites Walter and Donny on his mission to get back the briefcase from Little Larry, and it ends in disaster. Things go so badly that The Dude ends this sequence by telling Walter that he wants to handle things on his own from now on, which is a sure sign that The Dude is moving away from his Need. 

But things can always get worse, and at minute 74, we kick into sequence VIII, as The Dude’s home security system is breached when Jackie Treehorn’s non-moron goons turn up. The Dude is soon drugged, then kicked out of Malibu by a real reactionary police chief, then kicked out of a taxi for dissing The Eagles, then arrives home to find it tossed over. Things are pretty terrible. And then to Duder’s great surprise, a naked Maude appears out of his bedroom. Now, this is part of the pinballing effect of The Big Lebowski. Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar eats you. But also, Maude serves 2 other functions here. I’ll talk about this more later, but The Dude generally does better the closer to home he stays. The more he *ahem* stays in his lane. So, no sooner has The Dude slept with Maude then he learns that she is planning on having his baby. Which, apparently, is not part of The Dude’s life plan. Though frankly, it’s hard to see how having a millionaire heiress that looks like Julianne Moore as a special lady friend could be all bad. But anyways, it turns out he needn’t worry, as Maude reveals 2 important pieces of information. 1. She doesn’t want The Dude to be any kind of father figure to her baby, and 2. Her own father has no money of his own. And so, our protagonist has that classic moment of realisation just before the story’s final act where they figure out the whole thing. So, The Dude calls Walter, and they ride off to confront Lebowski.

Act V, or Act III in a 3 act structure, has 2 sequences: a false resolution and a true resolution. Now, one of the best ways, I find, to analyse what a story means is to compare the midpoint and the true resolution with the low point and the false resolution. And The Big Lebowski is interesting in this respect, because, as an unconventional film, it has an unconventional ending. To wit, what feels like a typical true resolution is the false resolution and vice versa. So, in The False Resolution, The Dude explains everything to Walter: Lebowski set them up. And it should be noted that Walter is foreshadowing what is about to happen. He wants to know: why is this an emergency? And The Dude doesn’t really answer, but questions the grounds of Walter’s Judaism. And so it is that when they get to Lebowski’s mansion, none of it really matters in the end. Bunny has returned as if nothing happened, and Lebowski points out that The Dude has no way of proving that Lebowski was the one who in fact kept the money. 

And so, apparently none of it really matters, and as we enter The Big Lebowski’s true resolution, we find the bowling team right where they are supposed to be: bowling. Except something is off. Donny, for the first time all film, does not get a strike. And we hold on his expression as he feels something is wrong. And we soon find out why. The Nihilists are waiting in the parking lot, and what started out as a fake kidnapping for a million dollars devolves into a meaningless fight over whatever petty cash is in their wallets. Walter fights them off, but Donny has a heart attack and dies. Walter eventually attempts to spread Donny’s ashes across the Pacific, but, well, the wind doesn’t really help him out. So, they’ve lost a man, and most of that man is now all over The Dude, who is understandably upset. But then Walter says what he said at the first unconscious move towards The Dude’s Need: Fuck it, let’s go bowling. We once again return to the bowling alley. The barman says he’s sorry to hear about Donny, and here at our ending, The Dude now repeats the lesson he learnt from The Stranger at the midpoint. Seeing The Stranger, he puts the idea in his own parlance: he’s had strikes and gutters, ups and downs. And then, he perfects it with his iconic final line: through all of this mayhem, The Dude abides.

Epilogue

So, what to say about The Big Lebowski? There are two main things I’d like to look at: The Dude as protagonist and the meaning, or non-meaning, of The Big Lebowski. But I will also talk, at some stage, about bowling.

Being the giant nerd that I am, I’m interested in how The Dude works as a protagonist. The Dude is, we are told, in the running for laziest man worldwide. And you would think that a lazy protagonist would be a passive protagonist, and passive protagonists kill a story dead. If our protagonist is not making choices, the story quickly starts to feel baggy and shapeless. So how does The Big Lebowski stop this from happening? Well, there’s a couple of devices employed. 

First, the Coen brothers have been absolutely clear that they were heavily influenced by the works of Raymond Chandler in creating The Big Lebowski. That’s why it was set in LA. And it makes total sense to have The Dude’s story to have a Chandlerian quality, where the convoluted plot and many interested parties gives the story a momentum of its own. There’s a concept in writing called Chandler’s Law, which is based on a quote from Raymond Chandler himself: “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” And indeed, The Dude’s front door is breached no fewer than 5 times in 112 minutes: by Jackie’s goons at the inciting incident, by Maude and her goons near the end of the 3rd sequence, by the Nihilists at the midpoint, again by Jackie’s goons at the beginning of the 8th sequence, and finally once again by Maude at the end of the 4th act. The first of these incidents are what get The Dude involved in the story. The 2nd and 3rd introduce The Dude to characters that he wouldn’t otherwise meet. And the last 2 especially are exemplary of Chandler’s Law as The Dude is pretty much all out of ideas as to what to do himself. 

But this is not necessarily enough to drive The Dude to really make decisions, so the story has another device for The Dude to have to push against. Laid back or unwilling protagonists are quite common, but they pretty much always need a far more aggressive or dynamic partner to push them into action. Harry has Sally. The narrator in Fight Club has Tyler Durden. Amy in Booksmart has Molly. David Huxley in Bringing Up Baby has Susan Vance. And The Dude has Walter. Walter is the one who tosses out the ringer suitcase, throwing The Dude’s life into chaos. Walter’s the one who ruins The Dude’s chances of getting info out of Little Larry when he decides to teach the Social Studies flunking brat what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass. Walter’s the one who refuses to give the Nihilists the change in his pocket, resulting in a brawl and the eventual death of Donny.

With so much pressure applied, The Dude then has no choice but to make choices which define both his character and the story. After all, with so much pressure applied, The Dude must find a way to abide, which brings me onto my second point: the meaning or meaninglessness of The Big Lebowski. 

Protagonists, their choices, and whether they do or don’t fundamentally change define stories. In a 3 dimensional story, the focus is on a character who needs to change, whether they can or not. In a 2 dimensional story, it’s a question of whether or not the protagonist can maintain their status quo against the pressures piled against it. Now, almost all of the Coen brothers’ movies could be described as morality tales about fools chasing or succumbing to money. Blood Simple, No Country For Old Men, The Ladykillers, A Serious Man, Burn After Reading are just a few examples. But The Big Lebowski and Fargo feel especially close in this regard. While other Coen brothers films might be closer in tone to The Big Lebowski, both this film and Fargo are 2 dimensional stories with what feels like a more traditional hero who abides both the chaos and the callousness that surrounds them. And it’s perhaps no coincidence that The Dude and Marge Gunderson are probably the Coen’s most beloved protagonists. In Fargo, Marge is full of love, tenderness, and good manners, but she has the resolute fortitude to run up against all of this chaos and callousness and still return home more or less the same as when she had left it. 

And The Dude, in his own way, does something very similar. A sense of chaos and meaningless runs through The Big Lebowski. The final fight is over about 25 dollars. The whole plot revolves around a misunderstanding that resolves itself. On top of that, everything feels uprooted. The Dude, Walter, and Donny feel anachronistic and everyone else feels even more divorced from reality than they are. So much of the dialogue is repeated and, having been removed from its original context, becomes absurd. Further, ideologies are consistently undercut. On one side of The Dude’s belief spectrum, Jeffrey Lebowski’s competition-focused, achievement-based, money-measured Reaganism is shown to be a hollow lie. On the other, Autobahn’s nihilism is shown to be complete bullshit. How can you be a nihilist if you can’t get your head around unfairness? Meanwhile, Maude’s artistic focus makes her seem cold and indifferent. Whether she’s talking about johnsons, coitus, acquaintances claiming to be kidnappers, or underprivileged children, she sounds like a sentient calculator. Finally, the only person presented as pure hearted, the only player of note who is not chasing the money, dies for no good reason. 

And yet, in the face of all this, The Dude wanders around like a tumbleweed that somehow found its way onto the streets of Los Angeles, and never loses himself. 

But, just before I wrap up, there is one final note I’d like to make on the meaning of The Big Lebowski, and it relates to, what else? Bowling. The Coen Brothers have once again played down any interpretations around the use of Bowling in this film. They’ve said, essentially, that they just found the idea of these guys identifying themselves as bowlers quite funny, whilst bowling also felt usefully anachronistic and to provide a useful aesthetic. But there are a few things to note here. One is the fact that these guys are so focused on a sport at all. Sport is, after all, at an essential level, redundant, especially when it’s indoors and so understated in physical activity. And bowling is a sport that highlights this more than most because: second, the whole point of The Big Lebowski is that The Dude has all of these crazy adventures (as he says himself: strikes and gutters), but he eventually ends up in the same place. And the whole design of bowling has this circular feel to it. You roll the ball, knock down some pins, the pins line up again, and the ball returns to you, and you are right back where you started, with hopefully some points on the board. The smooth, rolling, circular nature of the sport is a perfect allegory for the adventure The Dude goes on. But thirdly, there is a certain class element to bowling… and bowling has literal lanes, and you stay within them. Whether this is suggestive that The Dude can’t step out of his lane without getting beaten back into it, or whether The Dude succeeds in staying in his lane against the vicissitudes of his adventure, well, that’s a whole other podcast. Now this may well be a stretch, so please feel free to take it with a pinch of salt, but from a certain point of view it appears to be reflected in the bowling dream sequences. In the first dream sequence, The Dude flies through the sky following Maude, until a bowling ball drags him down the ground and he becomes imprisoned in one as it rolls along without him in control. In the second dream sequence, he places a bowling ball in Maude’s hand, and they roll it together, only for him to find that he is the one being rolled. At the end of the lane, the Nihilists await. The Dude is the one dealing with the consequences of these forces.  

One way or another though, The Dude is able to maintain a carefree attitude, an enjoyment of the simple things, a loyalty to his friends, and a love of takin’ it easy. In this way, The Big Lebowski shows one thing over all else: despite all of the chaos, callousness, and seeming meaninglessness of modern life, just like Marge Gunderson and her basic decency, The Dude — and what he represents — abides. 

This has been Mark Overanalyses Film. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, rate, follow, recommend, and whatever else it is that’s good for this kind of thing! A special thanks to Mary Kate O’Flanagan who taught me everything I know about film, including these methods. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves, and see you soon.