Trivia for
The Big Lebowski (1998) More at IMDbPro »

• The screenplay was written with Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and Sam Elliott in mind.
  
  
• The bowling alley scenes were filmed at the former Holly Star Lanes near Santa Monica and the 101 Freeway exit ramp. The bowling alley has since been torn down and a new elementary school stands in its place.
  
  
• The house in which the dude meets with Jackie Treehorn was designed by architect John Lautner. The movie makes it look as though it sits on the beach, in actuality it sits on the side of a hill overlooking the city of Los Angeles.
  
  
• A lot of the Dude's clothes in the movie were Jeff Bridges's own clothes.
  
  
• The Dude never actually bowls.
  
  
• The Jellies sandals that Jeff Bridges wears in the movie were his own.
  
  
• Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman makes a background cameo appearance during the interpretive dance scene as another member of the theater audience. Kaufman's own script, Being John Malkovich (1999), also contains an interpretive dance sequence.
  
  
• Almost all the music on the soundtrack is revealed to be playing on a radio at some point. Examples: "The Man in Me" in the first dream sequence fades out after The Dude wakes up, but we still hear it, tinny and distant on his Walkman. "Hotel California" plays through out the entire scene with Jesus at the bowling alley, and even during the brief flashback, apparently as a song playing on the alley's PA system. The big band music that plays as The Dude leaves his house fades and is heard playing on Da Fino's car radio as they talk. Additionally, at the beginning of the film, the opening song, "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds", fades into a muzak version of itself as the Dude shops for his creamer in the grocery store; when it cuts to the Dude outside the store, the song has faded back into its original version.
  
  
• Nearly all of the visible symbols in The Dude's second dream sequence are taken from earlier scenes: - the black and white tile is seen earlier in the Big Lebowski's entry way when The Dude walks with Brandt and again at the end - the tool belt and workman outfit The Dude is seen wearing is identical to the one worn by Karl Hungus in Logjammin' - Saddam is mentioned briefly by Walter in the car outside the bowling alley; in the opening credits, we see a man looking a bit similar to Saddam spraying the bowling shoes at the alley - Maude's gold bowling ball bra cups are taken from bowling balls seen on the rack behind Walter in an earlier scene at the bowling alley - the scissors wielded by the red-clad Nihilists are seen in a painting with a red background on Maude's wall - the red-on-black bowling ball is the same as the one in the earlier dream sequence and is also visible on the rack behind Walter and The Dude at the bowling alley. - The initial scene of The Dude's exaggerated walking in while casting a big shadow is similar to his landlord's shadow dance to "Pictures at an Exhibition."
  
  
• The blue Volkswagen driven by the private eye is a reference to the Coen brothers' first film, Blood Simple. (1984), in which a private investigator drives the same car.
  
  
• The Dude was based on independent film promoter Jeff Dowd (aka Jeff "The Dude" Dowd), who helped the Coen brothers secure distribution for their first feature, Blood Simple. (1984). Like his fictional counterpart, Dowd was a member of the Seattle Seven and takes a casual approach to grooming and dress.
  
  
• The fictional German techno-pop band in the movie, "Autobahn", is a parody of (or homage to) the band Kraftwerk. The "Autobahn" album cover is stylistically similar to the cover of the Kraftwerk album "Man-Machine," and the group name "Autobahn" is the name of a Kraftwerk song. The title of their album, "Nagelbett," is German for "nail bed." Translated from Swedish, Peter Stormare's native tongue, it means "nail bite".
  
  
• The fast food restaurant "In & Out Burger" is referred to during the movie. John Goodman once did a commercial for the "In & Out" fast food chain.
  
  
• The Dude's shirt with Chinese characters and an Asian holding a baseball bat, worn during the scene in which the Big Lebowski describes Bunny's kidnapping, is the same shirt worn by Jeff Bridges in part of The Fisher King (1991).
  
  
• Asia Carrera, the girl appearing opposite Bunny Lebowski and the nihilist in the porno movie that Maude shows The Dude is an actual porn star.
  
  
• The private detective that's following Lebowski says that Bunny's family is from a farm "outside Moorhead, Minnesota". Moorhead is the home town of Jeff Bridges' wife and is located directly across the state line from Fargo. (Fargo (1996) was the title of the Coen brothers' previous film).
  
  
• The reason Steve Buscemi's character, Donny, is constantly being told to "Shut the fuck up!" by Walter (John Goodman), is because Buscemi's character in Fargo (1996) would not shut up.
  
  
• The word "dude" is used around 161 times in the movie. 160 spoken and once in text in the credits for "Gutterballs" the second dream sequence.
  
  
• The F-word or a variation of the F-word is used 292 times.
  
  
• The Dude says "man" 147 times in the movie, nearly 1.5 times a minute.
  
  
• The Dude has a habit of repeating phrases he hears. The George Bush speech "This aggression will not stand" is repeated by the Dude. Maude Lebowski uses the phrase "Parlance of our times" Dude repeats this one in the limo. The Big Lebowski says he "Will not abide another toe!" at the end of the movie "The Dude abides"
  
  
• Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.
  
  
• Bunny Lebowski's high school cheer-leading photo shows her wearing orange and black, which are actually the school colors for Moorhead, Minnesota, where the private eye reveals that she came from.
  
  
• The only time Donny doesn't get a strike is before they fight the Nihilists at the end of the movie.
  
  
• Norwegian posters and video cassettes carried the text "anbefales av norsk bowling forbund" (recommended by the Norwegian Bowling Association).
  
  
• The Dude drinks nine White Russians during the course of the movie. (He drops one of them at Jackie Treehorn's mansion.)
  
  
• A high percentage of the Dude's vocabulary and dialogue is taken from other characters in other scenes.
  
  
• In the opening credits, a big black guy throws a seven-ten split (his ball changing color from the throw to the strike, as noted in "goofs"). The first frame showing the ball striking the leftmost pin reveals that the pin isn't on the dot marking its official position. It's a little ahead of and to the left of the dot, hanging over the gutter, and the ball strikes it from the gutter: the shot is rigged.
  
  
• The animal referred to in the film as a marmot (and by Walter Sobchak as an 'amphibious rodent') is actually a ferret. It is illegal to keep ferrets as pets in California, a fact alluded to by Walter a short time later.
  
  
• Possibly uniquely for an American movie, a bad guy wields a cricket bat rather than a baseball bat.
  
  
• Cameo: [Aimee Mann] The musician is the nine-toed Nihilist woman who we see briefly at the diner.
  
  
• The trident that Maude Lebowski has during the Dude's dream sequence is seen in a statue at The Big Lebowski's home.
  
  
• In the Dude's first dream sequence, the person who throws the giant bowling ball, seen out of focus and upside down as the ball rolls down the lane, is Maude.
  
  
• The second time we see Treehorn's thugs, they've swapped clothing!
  
  
• The nihilists are seen in a diner ordering pancakes. Peter Stormare, who plays the lead nihilist also appears in another Coen brothers movie (Fargo (1996)) where his character of Gaear Grimsrud loves pancakes (noted by the line to Steve Buscemi's character, "Where is the pancakes house?" during the drive from Fargo to Brainerd).
  
  
• Charlize Theron was considered for the role of Bunny Lebowski.
  
  
• The name on the Dude's last shirt is "Art".
  
  
• The Coens were inspired by Robert Altman's movie, The Long Goodbye (1973), which also features a down-on-his-luck protagonist. Both films are radical tweakings of Raymond Chandler. Both films parody and pay homage to Los Angeles culture. Altman's film even features a gangster who is a devout Jew much like John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski (1998). Interesting to note also is a bowling pin on the shelf of Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould)'s apartment.
  
  
• One of the inspirations for the character of Walter is the Coen Brothers' friend, writer-director John Milius, an infamously bombastic right-winger with an obsession with all things militaristic. The Coens had tried to cast Milius in the film Barton Fink (1991) in the part eventually played by Michael Lerner.
  
  
• The Dude's car is a 4-door 1973 Ford Torino. Two vehicles were used in filming: one was destroyed during the filming, the other was destroyed in Season 8 of "The X-Files" in an episode called "Salvage".
  
  
• The title is a reference to the novel "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler. The wheelchair-bound Big Lebowski is largely based on the character General Sternwood in "The Big Sleep".
  
  
• Of all the different personalized bowling shirts Donny wears throughout the film, none of them bears his name.
  
  
• Recipe for making a White Russian: 2 parts vodka, 1 part coffee liqueur (such as Kahlúa) and 1 part cream. Served with ice in a low ball glass.
  
  
• The Dude is in every scene of the movie, with the exception of the scene where the Nihilists are ordering pancakes. This is in keeping with the traditional film-noir, in which the protagonist is the narrator and acts as the audience's guide throughout the film.
  
  
• The "Dude" is based on a real-life friend of the Coen Brothers' named Jeff "The Dude" Dowd. The Port Huron Statement that The Dude refers to himself as being one of the original authors of, is a real document/statement written by The Students for a Democratic Society at a national convention meeting in, Michigan, June 11-15, 1962. Jeff Dowd was not one of those students. Jeff Dowd was 13 years old in 1962. Born November 20, 1949. He was a member of the Seattle 7 but did not help write any Port Huron Statement.
  
  
• The man shown bowling in the picture on The Dude's wall is President Richard Nixon. Nixon was an avid bowler.
  
  
• When the Jesus, John Turturro, has to go door to door, sharing that he is a convicted sex offender, he has a large bulge in his tight pants. The bulge was formed by a bag of birdseed.
  
  
• The Coen brothers were inspired by several sources and stories. Possibly the leading source was their friend Pete Exeline, who coined the phrase "It really tied the room together" describing one of his own rugs. Pete and a friend of his "Big" Lew Abernathy (a private detective who the Coens don't know) are considered to be the partial basis for the character Walter. Pete, a Vietnam veteran and college professor, once jokingly tried to scare his students by exclaiming "First Vietnam, now this?!" while hitting a chair, similar to the way Walter (non-jokingly) inappropriately compares everything to Vietnam. Pete also told the Coens about a story where his car was stolen and Abernathy helped him investigate. They found the homework of a 14-year-old and, instead of telling the police, they put the homework in a plastic bag and drove out to the kid's home to confront him (though unlike the movie, the kid did not actually steal the car and Abernathy did not end the confrontation by bashing a car outside the kid's house). Another story related by Pete was the time that Abernathy was arraigned by a Santa Monica sheriff who, as in the movie, insulted him and told him to "stay out of my beach community!"
  
  
• Before filming a scene, Jeff Bridges would frequently ask the Coen Brothers "Did the Dude burn one on the way over?" If they said he had, he would rub his knuckles in his eyes before doing a take.
  
  
• John Goodman has sold 'peace of mind' three times while working with the Coens. In Barton Fink (1991), he verbally tells John Turturro's character, and as a bible salesman in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) he explains that he is really selling "peace of mind". In The Big Lebowski (1998), we see 'Peace of Mind' written on the Sobchak Security sign just before the Dude and Walter head to the money-drop.
  
  
• When the Dude picks Walter up, just before the money drop, we learn that Walter works at his own company: Sobchak Security.
  
  
• The Dude tells Maude he was a roadie for Metallica on their (fictional) “Speed of Sound” tour and refers to the band members as a "bunch of assholes." Metallica themselves were flattered to be referred to in a Coen Brothers movie, with guitarist Kirk Hammett once noting in an interview that they'd tried to think of a way to incorporate that scene into their live shows.
  
  
• When The Dude is thumbing through Maude's albums and pulls out the fictional "Autobahn" album, the album directly behind it is Herb Alpert's "Whipped Cream & Other Delights", an actual album.
  
  
• The license plate of Bunny's red convertible spells "LAPIN", this means rabbit in french
  
  
• When Comedy Central was attempting to edit the scene where Walter is destroying the car which he thinks belongs to Larry Sellars they didn't know how to cut Walter saying "do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" without having to do severe editing which would ruin any flow in the scene. To solve this they decided just to re-dub it, and the phrase they chose? "Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?".
  
  
• During the opening scene, in which the camera moves back to show several bowlers release at the foul line, several bowlers are seen to drop their bowling balls well before the foul line, which is frowned upon in league bowling.
  
  
• In an early draft of the script, The Dude's source of income was revealed. He was an heir to the inventor of the Rubik's cube. It was Joel's idea to drop this and never say.
  
  
• Flea from 'The Red Hot Chili Peppers' plays a character in a band called Autobahn, which is a jab at the German band Kraftwerk (Kraftwerk had a single called "Autobahn"). The two bands have played venues together in the 80's.
  
  
• The lawyers that the dude mentions, are both real attorneys. Kuntsler, who died in 1995, was a self proclaimed radical lawyer. In 1983, he took on Ron Kuby, another radical lawyer, as a junior partner. Their claim to fame mainly came from defending numerous controversial defendants including suspected terrorist leaders and the daughter of Malcolm X.
  
  
• Walter mentions to "The Dude" that Arthur Digby Sellers was a writer of 156 episodes of the old TV western show called Branded. "Branded" (1965) was only on for 2 seasons and the episodes numbered 48 in total.
  
  
• Song titles on the "Autobahn" LP "Nagelbett" are: Saturation, Faking It, Hit and Run, No Way Out, Violate U-Blue, Beg me, Take It In, Edelweiss (Club mix).
  
  
• The Photo that the Private Eye shows the Dude of Bunny Lebowski's farm is that from Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood". Oddly enough, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Brandt, plays Truman Capote in 2005's Capote (2005), and 'Mark Pellegrino', who plays Blond Treehorn Thug, plays Dick Hickock (one of the murders of that farm's inhabitants) in Capote (2005).
  
  
• John Goodman's favorite film of his own.
  
  
• In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, John Goodman stated that The Dude referring to The Big Lebowski as a "human paraquat" was one of the only improvised lines to make it into the final film. Virtually every other line, including every 'man' and 'dude,' was scripted.
  
  
• When we're introduced to the Dude's (bowling) arch-nemesis Jesus, a flamenco version of the Eagles song "Hotel California" plays (and is portrayed as playing on the bowling alley's PA system). Later, we learn in the taxicab scene that the Dude "...hate(s) the fuckin' Eagles, man."
  
  
• Walter asks Dude if he knows the show "Branded" (1965). The brother of Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges guested on an episode of the show in 1966.
  
  
• The Dude meets a lot of new people throughout the story, outside his "tribe". But only three, Brandt, Jackie Treehorn and The Cowboy show enough "respect" for him to call him "Dude".
  
  
• The gun that Walter pulls in the bowling alley is a Colt model 1911 .45 caliber semi automatic handgun.
  
  
• While urinating on the Dude's rug, the Threehorn thug says "Thus always to deadbeats, Lebowski!" This is a play on the Latin phrase "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Thus always to tyrants!), which was allegedly spoken by the murderers of Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln directly after their assassinations.
  
  

• SPOILER: Steve Buscemi dies in three of the five Coen Brothers films in which he appears (with the notable exceptions of The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) and Barton Fink (1991),). Additionally, with each successive role his remains are smaller: in this film, his ashes blow all over The Dude when Walter scatters them at the ocean. (See also Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) and Fargo (1996).)
  
  

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