CHAPTER SIX
LEBOWSKI FEST. IF YOU WILL IT, DUDE, IT IS NO DREAM
Lebowski Fest? What in God’s holy name are you blathering about?
In case your boss has ever asked you to explain what exactly a Lebowski Fest is, or if you’re a concerned parent worried that your child has joined a cult of bathrobe-wearing, White-Russian-swilling nihilists, here’s the gist.
Lebowski Fest is a festival that celebrates the Coen brothers’ 1998 cult comedy, The Big Lebowski. A typical Lebowski Fest spans two days. The first day centers around live music followed by a midnight screening of The Big Lebowski. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of fans, aka Achievers, watch the movie, drink White Russians, shout out lines of dialogue, dress in costume, and perhaps partake in a little what-have-you. The event’s second day takes place at a bowling alley, and Achievers often dress up as their favorite characters or even as lines of dialogue. We’ve seen everything from fans dressed as the queen in her damned undies to the pope shitting in the woods to a Vietnam soldier who died facedown in the muck. Once they’ve secured a lane, fans run amok in the bowling alley, spurred on by Creedence and other great tunes. They enjoy (much) more drinking of White Russians and participate in trivia, farthest-traveled, highest-bowler, and costume contests. The third day is never discussed, as it usually involves waking up with a severed toe in your pocket and a marmot curled up next to you. The shame can be unbearable.
You may think we’re joking, and perhaps you’re right. When we started Lebowski Fest in 2002, it was a joke of sorts. We just had no idea there would turn out to be so many other fans out there who would think it’s funny. With each year, it keeps getting bigger and weirder and more ridiculous. The Achievers keep showing up to sold-out events in Louisville, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Austin, Seattle, and the UK!
Please to enjoy this somewhat chronological catalogue, Adventures in Lebowski Fest.
First Annual Big Lebowski What-Have-You Fest
The First Lebowski Fest (or First Annual Big Lebowski What-Have-You Fest, if you’re not into the— well, you know…) was held in October 2002 at the Fellowship Lanes in Louisville, Kentucky. The Fellowship Lanes are located smack in the heart of Louisville’s 7th Street Road, which is easily the city’s seediest thoroughfare. (Anyone who asked a local for directions that night might have gotten a response like, “Turn left at the Foxy Lady, then go straight past the White Collar Stag Bar & Lounge … if you pass the Classie Lady, you’ve gone too far.”)
PLEASE READ SIGNS
Considering the surroundings, the NO LAP DANCES sign was conspicuously absent.
And yet strangely enough, the first thing to greet Achievers as they entered the bowling alley was a set of large signs full of prohibitions like NO CUSSING and NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES ALLOWED. Below these signs was another sign directing the reader to read the signs above it. The Fellowship Lanes’ high-minded temperance was soon explained by yet another sign: ALL DENOMINATIONS WELCOME FOR THE SPORT OF BOWLING AND CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. Were they serious? Yes, they were, and they didn’t care that the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint. Our plans to screen the movie during the evening went out the window when our host asked, “Is there cussin’ in that?” Lesson learned: Do your homework before you pick your venue!
That’s the look of some satisfied Baptists. By the end of the night they’d sold their entire stock of 120 hot dogs.
Despite all that—or maybe in part because of it—the Lanes lived up to their name and there was a feeling of true fellowship in the air. The costume contest was won by a fifteen-year-old Jesus Quintana from Indianapolis who sported a glued-on goatee and a set of purple scrubs that had been custom-embroidered by his mom. The Farthest Traveled award went to two fellas who flew in from Tucson. And—inspired by a group of high school kids from Buffalo, who skipped school the day before on the pretext of “visiting colleges,” drove into the middle of the night, slept in their car while parked in a dairy field, got towed while at breakfast, and still made it to the Fest on time—we created a Hardest Traveled prize on the spot and have continued to award it at every Lebowski Fest since.
Nick Peskoe, costume contest winner. It don’t matter to Jesus.
Although we’d been expecting only twenty or so of our friends to come out, more than 150 people showed up to bowl a few frames, have a few laughs, and drink a few—er, Diet Pepsis.
Looking back, it’s hard to imagine the Lebowski Fest having a more perfect beginning.
Our first celebrity:
Mike Walsh of BowlingRoadtrip.com, who was in the middle of fulfilling his ambition to bowl in all fifty states, scrapped plans to bowl with funeral directors in Philly to be on hand that night.
Second Annual Lebowski Fest
Floating for months on the high of the First Annual experience, we locked down the domain LebowskiFest.com, launched an official Web site (the word official meaning that it now contained more than one page), and started laying plans for a sequel. There would definitely be alcohol, a bigger bowling alley and better prizes, a screening of the film—and enough cursing to make the Stranger blush.
By chance an intern at Spin magazine found the Web site and, as a joke, submitted the Fest for inclusion in their list of “19 Events You Can’t Afford to Miss This Summer.” When the issue came out, there it was alongside Lollapalooza and Snoop Dogg: “Bowl with Jesus.”
Dios Mio! Jeff Dowd attends his first Lebowski Fest.
That little blurb put the Lebowski Fest on the map, and when the Fest kicked off that June, more than twelve hundred Achievers attended from thirty-five states and parts of Canada. The Second Annual marked a lot of firsts for Lebowski Fest: first appearance by Jeff “The Dude” Dowd, first screening of the film, first appearance by the Lebowskimobile, and the inaugural Ringer Toss. (Yes, we put several pair of dirty undies in a bag and tossed them out the window of the Lebowskimobile.)
This aggression will not stand, man.
Did I urinate on your rug?
All in all, another magical evening. What it lost in intimacy from the First Annual, it gained in its feeling of holy shitness. This was the first time so many Achievers had gathered in one place, the first experience of collective Lebowski devotion/delusion.
Just dropped in
And it was all capped at the end of the night by a perfect final moment. As the last guests were straggling away, the bowling alley’s manager, Rodney, came out to lock up. He looked down to notice the Oriental rug that had been placed at his front door. He chased after the Lebowskimobile as it pulled into the darkness, waving his hands and screaming, “Wait! Come back! You forgot your rug!”
Lebowski Fest West, Las Vegas
High demand and a great poster by Bill Green pulled the Fest out West to Vegas in February 2004. This Fest marked the first appearance by an actor from the film. Jim Hoosier, who played Liam, the Jesus’s bowling buddy, took the podium to introduce the film before the Friday-night screening. The reception he received was of rock-star proportions—the fuckin’ Eagles should be so lucky. When he stepped out, produced his ball shammy, and did his patented ball-polishing maneuver and slowmo belly jiggle, the crowd roared. No one was more surprised than Jim.
Liam and me:
Jeff Dowd poses with Jim Hoosier.
Third Annual Lebowski Fest
Seeing how the movie has a kick-ass soundtrack, it only seemed natural to add live music to the Fest. In summer 2004, we invited My Morning Jacket to headline the Third Annual Fest at Louisville’s Waterfront Amphitheater. When they took the stage the entire band was dressed as characters from the film, including Jim James in the Dude’s bathrobe. They opened with Dylan’s “The Man in Me,” and fireworks filled the sky.
We had to hold out until the Third Annual, but we finally got some Creedence. The Third Annual was every bit as stupefying as the first two, especially since the Coen brothers allowed us to borrow the original marmot prop from the movie. This Fest also included a garden party with carnival games like the Sherriff of Malibu Coffee Mug Toss and the Marmot Fling, and the costume contest was won by a giant walking Creedence tape. In all, more than four thousand people attended the weekend—the largest Fest to date.
This is what one thousand Achievers in a bowling alley looks like.
My Morning Jacket in costume: They’re the band for their time and place.
Jeff Dowd once again dropped in to see what condition the Achievers were in. The morning after he arrived, while with us on the way to a local TV appearance, he decided to do some research on the host and learned that she was a former Chicago Bulls cheerleader. Live on the air, he turned to her at one point and said, “Remember that night in Chicago? It was me, you, and Dennis Rodman? You’d had a few drinks so you might not remember… ” You can imagine where it went from there.
To add to the Dude’s antics that morning, on the way home, in order to remember part of a story, he had to call MC Hammer on his cell phone. He had Hammer on speed dial.
Lebowski Fest West, Los Angeles
They call Los Angeles the “city of angels,” but we didn’t find it to be that exactly. We did have a hell of a time, however, seeing as eight of the actors from the film came out to sign autographs, including David Huddleston (the Big Lebowski), Robin Jones (Ralphs Checkout Girl), Jack Kehler (Marty the Landlord), Peter Stormare (Uli the Nihilist), Jerry Haleva (Saddam), and Lu Elrod (the waitress from the diner where Walter enjoys his coffee).
Topping it all, though, was the moment when we got to raise the curtain and say, “Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Bridges!”
The Dude himself came out with his band to play a set of music from his new album and some covers from the film’s soundtrack. Jeff Bridges is just as cool and Dudelike as you would hope him to be. He drinks a Russian (vodka on the rocks) instead of a White Russian, and he wore the same jelly sandals that he’d worn in the movie.
When one of us asked about his jellies, he responded, “What size do you wear?” As fate would have it, one of us was roughly a match. Jeff Bridges tossed one across the room and said, “Try it on, man. They’re really comfortable.” The lucky recipient slipped off his shoe, but Bridges stopped him just as he began to replace it with the sandal. “No, man, you gotta take your sock off,” he said. “I want you to get the full experience.”
Ah, Dude, it’s already the tenth: Jeff Bridges and Jack Kehler
Other highlights from that weekend were Peter Stormare and his band, Blonde from Fargo, and the first appearance of Autobahn live in concert. A couple traveled all the way from Ecuador to L.A. and got engaged in the bowling alley. There were also some unexpected celebrity guests who attended, including John Flansburgh from They Might Be Giants and actor Jeff Cohen, who played none other than Chunk in The Goonies! Even though he did not have a ticket to the sold-out event, we let him in without asking him to do the Truffle Shuffle.
Things you only see at Lebowski Fest: The Stranger chasing a life-size sarsparilla.
Jeff “The Dude” Dowd and the mayor of Louisville, Jerry Abramson, just after presenting the Dude with the key to the city for his various civic, ah…
Later that year, the Fourth Annual Lebowski Fest featured They Might Be Giants as the musical headliner with Corn Mo—an unholy combination of Jack Black and Meat Loaf—as support. The Lebowski Lunch Radio Hour included some great covers from the soundtrack including “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good),” sung by Louisville’s own Will Oldham. The mayor of Louisville presented Jeff Dowd with a key to the city. Ironically, the Dude would find himself without a ride back to the hotel that very night. The garden party was taken to the next level with a Lebowski-themed bur-lesque show. The costume contest was won by the Camel Fuckers.
Liam (Jim Hoosier) and costume-contest winners the Camel Fuckers.
Achievers on line for The Price Is Right. During the preshow warmup, a stupefied Bob Barker looked at us and asked, “Well, what have you achieved?”
Next we landed in Austin, Texas, where we met “Big” Lew Abernathy, who was the private-detective friend of Peter Exline, who thought it was a good idea to put the homework in a baggie and go brace the kid. (See his interview page 106.)
The Fifth Annual Lebowski Fest in Louisville included our first double-feature screening of Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski. It was the first time we held a Lebowski-themed art show as well as an academic symposium examining the “Cult of Lebowski.” The musical guests were Jon Spencer’s Heavy Trash and the Sadies. The Seattle Fest featured an amazing performance by Har Mar Superstar.
Among our special guests in L.A. were Jim Hoosier (Liam), Luis Colina (Corvette Owner), Peter Exline (one of the inspirations for the story), Jeff Dowd, and Edie McClurg of Ferris Buehler’s Day Off! What does Edie have to do with The Big Lebowski? Who cares, it’s Mrs. Poole! Edie performed in a zydeco band playing the frattoir (washboard, for the non-cajun), and knocked our socks off. These are just a few highlights from our adventures in Lebowski. The following pages are a collection of event posters designed by the lovable Bill Green.
The Fests continue. Look for us in a bowling alley near you. Check out www.LebowskiFest.com for the latest.