Sometime around 1997/1998, I became very interested in the world of indie films, mainly through my discovery of the work of Quentin Tarantino. Luckily, the 1990s was a great decade for indie films in general, and from Tarantino I went on to explore the work of other directors such as David Lynch, Mary Harron, and, of course, the Coen Brothers. The first Coen Brothers film I ever saw was FARGO, sometime in the spring of 1998, around the same time that this book, THE BIG LEBOWSKI: THE MAKING OF A COEN BROTHERS FILM had been released. As there weren't many Coen Brothers books available at that time (aside from the screenplays, that is), I naturally purchased a copy, even though at that point I still hadn't even seen THE BIG LEBOWSKI, or a few of the other Coen Brothers films that predated it (such as BLOOD SIMPLE and HUDSUCKER PROXY)... though by the autumn of 1998, around the time I started freshmen year in college, I had eventually caught up with all of their older work and, of course, THE BIG LEBOWSKI itself, which I believe I rented in August 1998, after returning home from a vacation in Montreal.
This book was written by William Preston Robertson (and edited by Tricia Cooke, Ethan Coen's wife). Robertson, a friend of the Coens from their college days (and who also provided some voicework for their films: he did the voice of the radio evangelist in BLOOD SIMPLE, for example), decided to devote an entire book to detailing a typical Coen Brothers film production, and this was the result. After a fascinating introductory chapter providing some information on the origins and early life of the Coen Brothers, he then devotes the rest of the text to showing how THE BIG LEBOWSKI was made, starting from the concept, to how the script was written, to interviews with not only the Coen Brothers but also the cinematographer (Roger Deakins), the production designer (Rick Heinrichs) and the costume designer (Mary Zophres). It's a quick and breezy read (not even 200 pages long), and unlike some of the other books I've covered in these entries I can usually finish it off in a week of bathroom visits. There are also a lot of photographs, plus many examples of storyboard illustrations and sketches for the costumes.
The funny thing is, though, I'm not even a super-huge fan of THE BIG LEBOWSKI, and find the cult that has accumulated around it over the last two decades baffling. Don't get me wrong, it's still an enjoyable and well-made movie, very amusing at times and well-casted (and with a killer soundtrack to boot), but of the 10 or so Coen Brothers films I've seen I'm not even sure I would place it in their top 5. Perhaps the issue is that I find it a bit too self-consciously "zany" or "wacky" for my tastes (I have the same problem with RAISING ARIZONA incidentally) and I tend to gravitate more towards their darker or more somber works (BARTON FINK, MILLER'S CROSSING, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, and so on... though I am super-fond of THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, which I guess is also pretty "zany" and "wacky").
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