We’re All Lebowski Now
In Today’s California, the Dude—Once the Quintessential Outsider—Has Become the Mainstream
Are we becoming a state of Lebowskis?
Jeffrey Lebowski, better known as the Dude, is arguably the most successful fictional Californian of the past two decades. Created by the Coen brothers in their 1998 film The Big Lebowski, and embodied by the actor Jeff Bridges, Lebowski became a cult favorite for being an outsider (in his own words, not a member “of the square community”). He was a stoner who drank White Russians, wore a bathrobe to the grocery store, bowled, tangled with pornographers and German nihilists, was indifferent to work, …
