Daily Dialogue — January 3, 2012
Blonde Treehorn Thug [holding bowling ball]: What the fuck is this?
The Dude: Obviously you’re not a golfer.
— Blonde Treehorn Thug (Mark Pellegrino), The Dude aka Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), The Big Lebowski (1998), written by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is snappy answers to dumb questions, suggested by Richard, who also suggested The Big Lebowski.
Trivia: 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” 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!”
Dialogue On Dialogue: If we look at the entirety of the Dude’s dialogue in this scene, he makes a number of snappy remarks (“Where’s the fucking money, shithead?” / “It’s down there somewhere, let me take another look”). As opposed to the parlance of action films where the heroes are supposed to respond to threats with snarky lines, it feels like where these responses come from in terms of the Dude’s character is his sense of disbelief and outrage that these assholes don’t know who he is. In his world, everybody knows The Dude. The fact the Thugs don’t, means in Lebowski’s vew, they are stupider than stupid.