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, including his Jellies sandals.
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 Hussein 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." - Maude Lebowski's trident is from a statue at The Big Lebowski's home.
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.. Like his fictional counterpart, Dowd was a member of the Seattle Seven and takes a casual approach to grooming and dress. 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, being not quite 13 years old, as he was born on November 20, 1949.
The fictional German techno-pop band in the movie, Autobahn, is a parody of (or homage to) the legendary electronic band Kraftwerk. The Autobahn album cover is stylistically similar to the cover of the Kraftwerk album "The Man-Machine," and the group name Autobahn is the name of a Kraftwerk song. The title of Autobahn's album "Nagelbett" is German for nail bed. In Swedish, Peter Stormare's native tongue, it means nail bite.
The fast-food restaurant In & Out Burger is referred to during the movie, for which John Goodman once did a commercial.
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 was the title of the Coen brothers' previous film). Bunny's high school cheer-leading photo shows her wearing orange and black, the real school colors of Moorhead.
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 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 from other characters. 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.
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.)
Unusual for an American movie, a bad guy wields a cricket bat rather than a baseball bat.
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!
Charlize Theron was considered for the role of Bunny Lebowski.
The name on the Dude's last shirt is "Art".
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 and an enthusiasm for guns. His girth, beard, hair style, and shades are also all reflected in Walter's physical appearance. The Coens had tried to cast Milius in the film Barton Fink 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 the filming of The X-Files: Salvage.
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 Kahl?a) and 1 part cream. Served with ice in a low ball glass.
The Dude is in every scene of the movie. Even in the scene where the Nihilists are ordering pancakes you can see the van in which the Dude and Walter are driving. 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 man shown bowling in the picture on The Dude's wall is President Richard Nixon. Nixon was an avid bowler; the picture in the movie is a well-publicized shot of Nixon in the bowling alley underneath the White House.
When the John Turturro's character Jesus 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.
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.
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", French translation of rabbit (bunny).
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 Coen's idea to drop this and never say.
Flea from 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 William Kunstler and Ron Kuby, radical lawyers noted for defending numerous controversial defendants including suspected terrorist leaders and the daughter of Malcolm X.
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, and 'Mark Pellegrino', who plays Blond Treehorn Thug, plays Dick Hickock (one of the murderers of that farm's inhabitants) in Capote.
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.
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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."
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 "Ever thus 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 Gaio Giulio Cesare and Abraham Lincoln during the assassinations.
The Dude calls The Big Lebowski a "human paraquat." Paraquat is an herbicide. During the late 1970s, a controversial program sponsored by the US government sprayed paraquat on marijuana fields in Mexico.
The Dude's gait in the opening shot to the "Gutterballs" sequence resembles the gait used by the characters in Robert Crumb's famous "Keep on Truckin'" cartoon.
The initials for Walter Sobchak's security company (Sobchak Security) are "SS". The Jewish Walter's company shares the same initials as the Schutzstaffel, or SS. The Schutzstaffel were arguably the most demonic force of Nazi Germany. The Nuremberg Trials attributed most of the Holocaust atrocities to this group.
The $0.69 check the Dude writes at Ralph's for half and half is dated September 11, 1991, exactly ten years before the 9/11 attacks. While he is writing the check, George Bush can be heard on the television railing against Saddam Hussein.
DaFino refers to himself as a "brother Shamus", which was a common slang term for a private investigator during the interwar years, incidentally when the Raymond Chandler story the Coen Brothers were inspired by to make this film, was written. The Dude, of course, has no idea what it means.
According to the plaque on the dog carrier, the Pomeranian's name is Thurston.
In a version that was edited for television broadcasts, the famous line "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" was changed to "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!", which is regularly cited as one of the most "creative" edits made for a film to be aired on TV.
The checque that The Dude writes in the beginning of the movie, for only $0.69, is post-dated. He clearly writes the date as 9/11/91 and when he speaks to his landlord later in the movie the landlord reminds him that "Tomorrow is the tenth."
The plot and characters of The Big Lebowski basically (if creatively) follow the 1939 Raymond Chandler detective novel and 1945 Howard Hawks film noir The Big Sleep. The equivalent characters are: private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart)/unwilling investigator Jeffrey "the Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges); General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), the wealthy wheelchair-bound man who summons Marlowe / Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), the wealthy wheelchair-bound man who summons the dude; Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), the wealthy man's unconventional older daughter who becomes romantically involved with Marlowe/Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), the the wealthy man's unconventional daughter who becomes romantically involved with the dude; Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), the wealthy man's younger daughter who comes on to Marlowe and is involved with pornography/Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), the wealthy man's younger wife who comes on to the dude and is involved with pornography ; Arthur Geiger (Theodore von Eltz), a pornographer who has filmed Carmen Sternwood in compromising positions /Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), a pornographer who has filmed Bunny Lebowski in compromising positions.
While being member of the Bowling team, the Dude is the only one never seen bowling throughout the movie.
When The Dude and Walter are bowling after the botched ransom drop off, Walter says "Aitz chaiim he, Dude, as the ex used to say." This is the first half of a Hebrew verse, which means "It is a tree of life" (the second half of the verse is "lamachazikim ba", which means "to those who take hold of it") and it refers to the Old Testament.
The Dude's line, "The Dude abides," is a reference to Ecclesiastes 1:4, "One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but the earth abides forever." It is a reference to how the Dude, much like the Earth, can weather change and chaos around him, but still remain the same.
Cameo
Charlie Kaufman: in the audience during the interpretive dance scene. Kaufman's own script, Being John Malkovich, also contains an interpretive dance sequence.
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.
Aimee Mann: The musician is the nine-toed Nihilist woman who we see briefly at the diner.
Spoilers
The trivia items below may give away important plot points.
Steve Buscemi dies in three of the five Coen Brothers films in which he appears (with the notable exceptions of The Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink,). 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, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy and Fargo.)
The only time Donny doesn't get a strike is before they fight the Nihilists at the end of the movie.
The Coen Brothers were inspired by several sources and stories. Possibly the leading source was their friend Peter Exline, who coined the phrase "It really tied the room together" to describe 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!"
Everything Walter says to do with Bunny's kidnapping comes true. The fake kidnapping, the fake severed toe and the lack of ransom money.
