‘Lebowski Fest’: It’s cult culture

Louisville, Ky.

Like “Chinatown” or “Magnolia,” movies that reveal Los Angeles to itself, “The Big Lebowski” is required viewing for local scenesters. So where would you expect to find the second annual “Lebowski Fest,” a multiform celebration of the 1998 Coen brothers film? At the AMF Rose Bowl here in Louisville.

More than 800 people showed up Saturday night for unlimited bowling, $3 White Russians and rowdy but good-mannered fun. Nearly three-quarters of them came from out of town, many in cars with “Lebowski 7:19” painted on the windows, a reverential reference to the event’s date. A Brown University parking pass dangled from one rearview mirror. A large SUV with a “Sobchak Security” sign on its door disgorged a flat-topped Virginian. All testament to Walter Sobchak, the film’s angry center (played by John Goodman), who says, cryptically: “If you will it, it is no dream.”

Larry Brantley and his son, Walter, drove up from Atlanta. The balding elder Brantley was dressed as the film’s title character, a conniving millionaire, complete with blue blazer and motorized wheelchair. The chair was his mother-in-law’s, and Brantley, who later that night would win the costume contest, had practiced with it for more than a month. “We try not to hit anyone,” he said, maneuvering elegantly through the crowd to pose for pictures.

Also in training for months was a group of local youths who planned to win every contest. Jordan Fautz in fact won the “ringer toss,” in which a valise of dirty underwear is thrown from a pea-green Plymouth Fury, and they had their own ringer, Neil Thornberry, who studied the DVD “frame by frame” in preparation for the trivia contest. “I was kind of disappointed to see that it was multiple choice,” said Thornberry, who had a bowling score of 8 after three frames. Two hours later, Thornberry learned he hadn’t made the second round. “I know I got them all right,” he said. “I’m certain.”

By then, Rachel Salansky, a bicycle lamp blinking on her horned helmet, had long given up the goal. She was happy, she said dreamily, “as long as I’m here and I’m bowling.”

How did a scabrous film with lukewarm reviews become a beloved subcultural text? A recent top-50 list of “cult movies” put “The Big Lebowski” in 34th place, far below “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and “Un Chien Andalou.” References to pedophilia and nihilism and off-color barbs at the disabled, the Chinese and America’s military opponents in the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars; the F-word and its variants appear either 267 or 262 times, depending on whom you ask.

In the movie, mistaken identity leads to blackmail and extortion. As Jeff Bridges’ Dude explains: “I’m not Mr. Lebowski, you’re Mr. Lebowski. I’m the Dude. So that’s what you call me.” The Dude is a former member of the “Seattle Seven” who has traded New Left politics for a life of “strikes and gutters, ups and downs.” His bowling partner is Sobchak, a Vietnam veteran with a violent streak. The movie is set a few months before the 1991 Gulf War, and then-President George Bush’s caution that “this aggression will not stand” is one of many lines that loop through the dialogue, a running commentary on greed, loss and moral limits.

Will Russell, who organized the Lebowski Fest with friend Scott Shuffitt, didn’t see that at first. “I was indifferent to it; I didn’t get it,” he said. “I made the mistake of looking for a plot.” The third time, he got it.

Russell, a Web-page designer, and Shuffitt, who owned a local clothing store, played together in the band Blue Goat War, and after practice, Shuffitt said, “The Big Lebowski” was a running theme. Soon Shuffitt invited Russell to man the store’s booth at area festivals. A little “punch drunk” after a long day at a tattoo convention, they started shooting lines at other sellers, who shot them back. The Lebowski Fest was born.

Last year’s drew 150. It was held at the Baptist-owned Fellowship Lanes, where a sign explained the rules: no drinking, no cussing. “You could smoke the hell out of some cigarettes, though,” said Russell.

Even with drinking and cussing, the capacity crowd that overwhelmed the AMF Rose Bowl staff was well-behaved. At the end of the night, Carl Wiggins, the manager, was ecstatic. It was the “best single night in the bar ever. I never saw so many white Russians in my life,” he said, referring to the film’s signature drink, a blend of Kahlua, vodka and half-and-half (or Coffee-mate) that his staff had been making in pitchers. Bowling was included in the entry price, but even so, he was impressed: 1,098 games bowled, 30 per lane.

Despite its cult status, “The Big Lebowski” is a fairly straightforward variation on classic L.A. film noir. Bridges’ stumbly-mumbly Dude is a dissipated version of Elliott Gould’s cat-friendly bachelor in “The Long Goodbye,” Robert Altman’s 1973 version of the Raymond Chandler novel, and of Humphrey Bogart’s wisecracking Philip Marlowe of the 1940s.

“It’s such a typical SoCal detective dick story,” said Rob Walker, who teaches high school English in Affton, Mo. “But you put an unemployed vagrant and bum as the protagonist and it makes it great.” Walker admitted there’s “no social message,” but, he added, “there is some kind of center, some solidity.” The pot-smoking Dude plays the fool, but he’s “morally and intellectually sound,” Walker said.

Walker, whose nametag read “vagrant,” had come alone to the Lebowski Fest after his divorced buddy bailed to spend the weekend with his kids. But before Friday’s midnight screening, he was adopted by a family from Batavia, Ill. Over dinner, the four siblings and a cousin shouted lines of dialogue to each other and passersby while their grown children ate pizza at the next table. The family travels together annually -- most recently to the Dominican Republic -- and presents as slightly unhinged. “We’re freaks,” said Leslie Baltzar, the eldest. “The only reason Mom didn’t come was she doesn’t like swears.” Privately, Tracy Peterson, the youngest of the four, admitted to an unhealthy fondness for “The Bridges of Madison County,” though “this is good too,” she said.

Baltzar called her brother, Mark Neely, the genius behind this adventure. She remembered when he saw the film for the first time. “I saw him a month later, and he had seen it 17 times,” she said. Neely may have been the prime mover, but it was Baltzar who got off the best lines. “There are a few movies that we see in our lifetime that make a connection,” Neely said. Baltzar leaned over. “They go ‘click,’ ” she said quietly, a nifty paraphrase of one of the film’s most memorable scenes.

Jeff “The Real Dude” Dowd, a longtime independent-film promoter on whom the Coens based Bridges’ character, was on hand to lend the Fest some star power. Before the screening, he delivered a rambling, muffled introduction that drew shouted denunciations quoted accurately from the well-studied script. Finally, someone yelled, “Were you listening to the Dude’s story?” It’s funny if you get it, and this crowd did.

One model for this style of audience participation is “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” but compared to the adenoidal theatricality of “Rocky Horror” fans, the Lebowski Fest is a chaotic celebration of the human spirit. Dowd called the event a “phenomenon sociologique.” He added, “It’s some sense of bizarre companionship.”

At the AMF Rose Bowl, the obligatory “longest-traveled” contest revealed a college student from Singapore. Mahesh Primalani was here with a friend he met while studying at the University of Virginia, Chris O’Shea, and another student, Jeff Spear. The three drove 500 miles from Virginia without tickets to the sold-out event. (They managed to find a scalper at the door.)

Primalani has shown the film to the folks back home. “Ninety-five percent of my friends like it,” he said, while O’Shea performed a liberal reading of the state’s drinking laws.

Others had long journeys of a different kind. Miguel Davila and Oscar Talleda, who work at the Sears in Torrance, credited their “good management team” for giving them the time off to make the drive. “Representin South Central Los Angeles,” Davila wrote on the contest sign-in poster.

“I would have traveled to come to this,” said Louisville local Andy Sturdevant. His friend Katie Beach added, “I feel like I did.”

“The Big Lebowski” is about bowling and blackmail, but it’s also about L.A. Earlier this year, when the city seized and destroyed Hollywood Star Lanes, the film’s musty main set, it gained the ground for a needed elementary school but lost its rights to the “Lebowski” legacy. Russell and Shuffitt said they might bring the Lebowski Fest to L.A. as early as this year. “Of course, there will always be a Louisville Lebowski Fest,” Shuffitt said.

For now, it’s good to know Russell and Shuffitt are out there, as the film’s laconic cowboy narrator says, “taking her easy for all us sinners.”