walter sobchak was john goodman's character in the big lebowski.
walter sobchak was john goodman's character in the big lebowski.
john goodman's character in the big lebowski?
walter sobchak
the big lebowski () is a 1998 crime comedy stoner film written, produced, and directed by joel and ethan coen. it stars jeff bridges as jeffrey "the dude" lebowski, a los angeles slacker and avid bowler. he is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, after which the dude learns that a millionaire (also named jeffrey lebowski) was the intended victim. the millionaire lebowski's trophy wife is kidnapped, and he commissions the dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release; but the plan goes awry when the dude's friend walter sobchak (john goodman) schemes to keep the ransom money. julianne moore, steve buscemi, david huddleston, and john turturro also appear, in supporting roles.
the big lebowski
the coen brothers wrote "the big lebowski" around the same time as "barton fink". when the coen brothers wanted to make it, john goodman was filming episodes for the "roseanne" television program and jeff bridges was making the walter hill film "wild bill". the coens decided to make "fargo" in the meantime. according to ethan, "the movie was conceived as pivoting around that relationship between the dude and walter", which sprang from the scenes between barton fink and charlie meadows in "barton fink". they also came up with the idea of setting the film in contemporary l.a., because the people who inspired the story lived in the area. when pete exline told them about the homework in a baggie incident, the coens thought that that was very raymond chandler and decided to integrate elements of the author's fiction into their script. joel coen cites robert altman's "the long goodbye" as a primary influence on their film, in the sense that "the big lebowski" "is just kind of informed by chandler around the edges". when they started writing the script, the coens wrote only 40 pages and then let it sit for a while before finishing it. this is a normal writing process for them, because they often "encounter a problem at a certain stage, we pass to another project, then we come back to the first script. that way we've already accumulated pieces for several future movies." in order to liven up a scene that they thought was too heavy on exposition, they added an "effete art-world hanger-on", known as knox harrington, late in the screenwriting process. in the original script, the dude's car was a chrysler lebaron, as dowd had once owned, but that car was not big enough to fit john goodman so the coens changed it to a ford torino.
the big lebowski