"Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's the Dude." The voiceover drawled in the opening sequence of The Big Lebowski couldn't have been more prescient about the cult of fandom that has flowered around both the movie and the man who inspired the iconic character, gatherings in a growing number of cities, and hangs with fans at speaking tour stops at colleges and film festivals around the country. On Friday, he will be stopping in town to appear at a Baseball and its galaxy of stats, yarns, and debates was but one topic of a sprawling interview-cum-discussion between Dowd and The Daily Page. In addition tossing thoughts around the diamond about everything from the pitching prowess of legendary Boston Red Sox southpaws Babe Ruth and Bill "Spaceman" Lee to the design of minor league ballparks, the consummate raconteur also talked about University of Wisconsin alums in the film biz, his activist work against the war in Vietnam and Madison's reputation after the Sterling Hall bombing, the success of Sundance Cinemas, and of course, The Big Lebowski and The Dude persona. An excerpt of the interview follows. The Daily Page: What are you working on right now? Have you been to Madison before? Film culture burgeoned at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through the '60s and early '70s, with alumni from that era including Errol Morris, Michael Mann, and Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers. What kind of influence do you think this group has had on the film business? Let's talk about the Zucker Brothers first. Kentucky Fried Movie was a breakout example of independent film. Based on that, they went on to do Airplane!. That was a good example of what I would describe as the emergence of new comic voices, so to speak. It was kind of like what Judd Apatow is doing now, following that tradition more or less. Errol Morris, it goes with out speaking, is the premiere documentarian in the U.S. at this point, whether it be his older stuff, or his more recent politicized pieces like Fog of War. I was reflecting on this last week with McNamara's death, as he was the architect of the Vietnam War, a war he had grave regrets about, and ended up resigning from Lyndon Johnson's cabinet because of it. One can't help but reflect on the architects of the Iraqi War, the neocons like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and those guys. The similarities between both are that they were thought they were fighting a war, when they really knew it was an occupation. Throughout history, there have been close to no successful occupations. Some have lasted a few centuries through times of colonialism and imperialism, but eventually the local people get rid of the occupiers. Holding an occupation is not going to work with "Shock and Awe," nor was going to Vietnam, basically on the wrong side, going to work either. So, Errol has been a very important force. My father taught at Cornell. We lived in a university town where in the '60s in which people were able to change a lot of ideas. That was one of the key things coming out of the '60s. People think it was about demonstrations, and hippies, and getting drugged out, but what really also happened in the '60s was a kind of phenomenal communication. There were new ideas coming out every day. They came out in the form of teach-ins, and books, and new FM radio stations, and alternative papers like the Isthmus and LA Weekly. Madison was a breeding ground in this growth of ideas, as Ithaca was too. Madison is a bigger town than Ithaca, but they are similar, the era left a very historic mark both within those towns and on the people that were nurtured and came out of those environments. I'm speaking today in Seattle, where there is another UW, the University of Washington Huskies, where I went to school for awhile, and a very similar thing happened here. It was one of the reasons we moved from Cornell and Ithaca to Seattle, because it was also a wonderful place for communication. I have a great affinity for places that allow people to communicate. Out of that came artistry in various forms. As a member of the Seattle Seven, what's your take on Madison's political reputation during the counterculture era? Madison got a reputation at one point for being a town where there was a very serious bombing, which was something we opposed very much in our anti-war activities. We were more about organizing. I'd rather be talking to guys in the Army, or Republicans and Democrats supporting the war and bringing new information to them, which inevitably changed their opinion about the war. I could give literally hundreds, thousands of anecdotal examples of people who were pro-war, and then by the time we worked with them and talked to them, they changed their perspective. I came from a situation where I was about to join the U.S. Marines at age 17. About 150 guys out of my senior class did that. I went to the recruiters, and the guy said come back when you graduate. But among my friends who went to Vietnam, from the minute they got there, they started having regrets. These were people who signed up and volunteered like John Kerry and Oliver Stone, and they even had some consciousness about the war, but it was kind of a guy thing, let's go together and all that. We were all about organizing. That bombing at Wisconsin obviously went of the deep end, and was a regrettable thing, both for harm done and because strategically we differed on the tactics to use to oppose the war. But that's not Madison in general, that was just one incident. Sundance Cinemas opened its first theater in Madison a couple of years back, an upscale joint with assigned seats, food and drinks, a mix of big studio and indie programming, and an open door to community film events. Did you think Sundance would turn into such a large brand and force in the film business back when it launched? One thing Roger said that day was that we needed to make independent film as fashionable as foreign films were when we were all going to college. I think within 10-15 years, by the time sex lies and videotape is happening, and the Sundance Film Festival is becoming a big thing, we and many others succeeded in that mission. All you have to do is look at the Oscars, and look at specialized divisions like Fox Searchlight, Sony Classics, and Miramax, none of which existed at the time of the conference. We did think this was possible. In my case, I came out of theaters in Seattle where we could see that there was an audience out there for these independent films and independent thinking. So it really wasn't that much of a surprise, to tell the truth. People ask me, "Were you surprised about the success of The Big Lebowski?" The answer would be yes to that. But this wasn't that big of a surprise. One of the people at that conference, Bert Manzari, who was at Landmark theaters for many years, was instrumental in the Sundance theaters too. What they're doing in Madison with Sundance is what we were already doing in Seattle and numerous other places in 1980. Why do you think it is that The Big Lebowski has achieved its preeminent cult status? One, it is a very uplifting funny film, and it's a guarantee that you're gonna feel better after you've watched all or part of it than when you started, ok? That guarantee is a pretty good thing. As for all the repeat viewing and all of that, it's because it's a film you can watch with your friends. It's an enjoyable collective experience. There is a very wide demographic spread among people who watch the movie. It cuts across party lines, Democrats and Republicans, it cuts across class lines, sex lines, and age lines. You'll find 14-year-olds into it, and you'll find 70-year-olds into it. I can't tell you how many Republican families I've met who watch this at Thanksgiving or Christmastime. When I ask why you do it, they say, "Well, you have these big affairs with generations of extended family and all kinds of potential problems underneath, people have been drinking a little bit, so we throw on The Big Lebowski and we go have fun together." Interestingly enough, you don't have to watch the whole movie to like it. So it becomes kind of the default movie of choice for rock 'n' roll bands on the tour bus, sports teams in buses or hotels, and people in Iraq. From the number of emails I get and number of Iraq vets I talk to, it's a huge movie over there. And also obviously among students and stoners, and so on. It's a movie you can just pop it. An old LP back in the day might have two god hits in it. Well this one has like 15, different scenes and sequences that all work unto themselves. You can pick the movie up and watch 20 minutes of it and get a nice hit just that way, and I think that's a great part of the appeal too. How do people interact with you in the guise of The Dude? People come up to me all the time and say, "You saved my life, I love that character so much." That surprised me at first because The Dude is portrayed there as kind of a slacker. The way Joel and Ethan chose to do it was to pick a period of my life between the time when I was a very committed activist, and when we went back to work. There was a year in the '70s during which we were hanging out pretty heavily, drinking and smoking you know, working just to get by, hanging heavy. But what people like about that character is that he tells it like it is, and in a world where people have to put on their masks at work everyday, they've got this suit on or whatever, can't say what they want, that doesn't mean they still don't like a lot of the BS around in the bureaucracy. They like the fact that The Dude tells it like it is. In fact, I asked a friend of mine, Phil Cousineau, a leading person in the world of mythology right now, while we were doing a seminar together, "What is the mythological nature of The Dude?" And he said that's very simple. The Dude is the holy fool full of heart, in the tradition of the king's jester or comedic guys like Charlie Chaplin, or Chris Rock, Lewis Black, Jon Stewart, or Stephen Colbert. Basically, somebody who tells it like it is, but wraps it up in a silly and satirical way. That's the kind of deep chord that The Dude character appears to be hitting in people, that holy fool chord. Joel and Ethan use their satire and use The Dude to comment on society that's very subtle, very satirical, and very ironic and times, but that''s greatly appealing to people. I like to think of myself as a political activist who also is connected culturally to both independent and some mainstream Hollywood films, and that impact surfaces in various bizarre ways. For me, being The Dude character means that I can go into any kind of social situation, a place where people are on guard these days, and people treat me as an old friend. I've been in their living rooms a lot, and they've had a lot of laughs with me. They know the Dude character is loyal to his friends, even an asshole like Walter. We all have Walters in our world, our asshole friends we still love and get us in trouble. Who hasn't had that friend? This will happen at the Mallards game, it happens wherever I go. People feel comfortable enough, and they may want to buy me a White Russian, but that White Russian is really an invitation to a discussion. They know I'm not going to take the White Russian and say "Hey, thanks, goodbye," and that means were going to end up talking for 10-15 minutes. I meet a lot of new friends, colleagues, and just have great experiences. That's a wonderful thing from my point of view, this whole icon status of The Dude. But it's not like a star status, it's kind of like an iconic friend. Are you an avid bowler, or is that more an element of The Dude character? You can set a movie in so many places, in bars, in homes, but by setting one in a bowling alley, you have the illusion of action going on. You'll notice in The Big Lebowski that The Dude never actually bowls, Jeff Bridges never bowls in the whole thing, though there is a quick shot of me bowling in the background. You never find out what happens in the tournament, it's simply a MacGuffin in film terms. A bowling alley is a great place to set a movie. But The Big Lebowski is not really about bowling, any more than On the Waterfront is abut longshoremen or Rocky is about boxing. It's really about these friends, and how they find themselves in a Raymond Chandler backdrop on nitrous oxide and acid. What do you plan on doing at the Mallards game? I think I'm going to do a lot of hangin' with the fans, picture-taking, and autographs. I imagine I'll come up with some kind of weird sexual act with the mascot and other kinds of frivolity, probably throw out a pitch before the game. But they might need to call me in to throw a few Ks too. Jeff "The Dude" Dowd hopes to return to town and bring his college speaking tour to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but the best chance to catch El Duderino in person will be on Friday, July 24. Dowd will be appearing at the Madison Mallards game at the Duck Pond in Warner Park. The game starts at 7:05 p.m., but there will certainly be plenty of action before the first pitch. Tickets run from $7-$35; box seats are dwindling, but tix for the Duck Blind and bleachers remain available. After the game, Dowd will be heading over to The Kites complete with Lebowski soundtrack covers, and of course, toasts with White Russians. Aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough.
Dowd: I work in various capacities in the film business. I work in production, post-production, distribution deals, and also marketing for films that already out. I'm all over the place. Right now, I'm working on a number of movies. I'm working on a big blockbuster Hollywood movie. I'm working on several documentaries. And I'm working on finishing the editing of my book, The Dude Abides: Classic Tales and Rebel Rants. I hope to have it finished by this fall, and it will be out early next spring.
No, but I've wanted to my whole life. I've got a lot of close friends who went to school there, some who lived there, and I certainly know a fair bit about Madison's political and cultural history over the last 40 years or so.
You can start with two different perspectives.
A lot of the universities were very much in touch with each other through student organizations like the SDS, which I was a member of for awhile in Ithaca. We would share information at conventions, and pass articles around, things like that. It was inspirational in the sense that we knew we were not alone. There were a lot of people fundamentally committed to changing America back in those times, which initially was the Civil Rights Movement, and then the Black Power Movement, the Anti-war Movement, and then later things like the Women's Movement and Environmental music. It was great to know that other people were doing the same thing.
The answer is yes. Back at the first year of Sundance, we're talking the institute here, not the festival, which was then called the United States Film Festival, we had a conference I put together. It was invite-only for about 50 people, including both independent filmmakers and bigger filmmakers like Sydney Pollack, may he rest in peace, as well as distributors, exhibitors, people who went on to start specialized divisions at the studios, and journalists, including Roger Ebert. This conference was titled "The Future of Independent Film," and we all talked for three days about how we could all support independent film.
That's something I've been thinking about for the last ten years or so. Here are a few ideas.
How do you deal with The Dude persona?
That's based on a party I threw for the L.A. opening of Blood Simple. I threw it for about 1,000 people at a bowling alley, and it was a lot of fun. That's where Joel and Ethan picked up on that.
I plan on streaking every inning. The question is going to be where I pop up, and how quickly you can catch me. There's a big pool going on about which inning I'll have the longest streak, and how many innings I'll last before they lock me up.
Jeff 'The Dude' Dowd talks movies, Madison, and the Mallards
An interview with His Dudeness