Professor edits book on the ‘dudely’ life

Slackers and scholars gathered over cardboard pizza at a bowling alley to discuss essays about the major themes in the Coen brothers’ film, “The Big Lebowski,”  during Louisville’s Lebowski Fest three years ago.

Ed Comentale, an associate professor in the IU Department of English, took the discussions and turned them into a book about the film.

Comentale discussed the book, set to come out at the end of this month, along with the film in Collins Coffeehouse at Collins LLC on Wednesday.

Comentale said he hated “The Big Lebowski” when it first hit theaters. The film was the Coen brothers’ first release after “Fargo,” and in relation, he said, a lot of the comedy seemed cheap.

“The Big Lebowski,” which chronicles slacker Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski’s journey to discover who soiled his rug, is a “grower,” Comentale said. The film grows on people in interest and affection with subsequent viewings, he said.

Since the film’s release, it has gathered a cult following of people calling themselves “the achievers” and celebrating the “dudely life,” Comentale said.

Two friends in a freelance T-shirt retail business came up with the idea to arrange a festival dedicated to “The Big Lebowski,” Comentale said. The festival has since expanded to a number of other major cities across the country, as well as in London.

“It’s the laziest carnival you’ll ever be at,” he said. “But the fans do seem to work like academics. A lot of the fans at the festival were recently graduated English majors looking for something to do with their degrees.”

The organizers of the festival were looking to add an academic dimension to the event, Comentale said, and invited him and fellow scholar Aaron Jaffe, an associate English professor at the University of Louisville, to give a talk about the film.

“We decided to put on a conference,” he said. “We received about 200 paper ideas from people across the country and narrowed them down to about 30. We rented out a bowling alley for only 100 bucks and exchanged papers and talked about the film. It was great to deliver papers to the background of pins crashing.”

After the festival, Cometale and Jaffe realized they had a lot of interesting material, Comentale said. They decided to coauthor a book presenting the material gathered at the festival to a larger audience, he said.

“A Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies” includes 21 essays written by both fans and scholars, Comentale said.

The book is structured around a quote from the movie, “A lot of ins, a lot of outs,” he said.

The first part of the book includes essays concerning influences that went into the making of the film, he said, while the second half, the “outs,” revolves around events that surround the film.

“The book is a connection between academic culture and fan culture,” Comentale said. “We want it to be fun, but not condescending. It’s difficult with fans. They think you’re destroying the pleasure of it. But academics are trained to talk it more.”

Sophomore Natasha Cowan said she has only seen the film once and thought it was “OK.” She said she does not know the academic side to the film, but only the quirkiness of it.

“There’s so much to the movie,” she said. “I didn’t like the ending. It was probably the worst part for me. It just ended. I need closure.”

Graduate student Andrew Barrett said he would not classify himself as a big fan of the film. The first time he saw it, he said he thought it was complex and silly. However, it was interesting to see how Comentale and other scholars analyzed the film, he said.

“The Big Lebowski” is a generative text for which conversation seems endless, Comentale said. The Coen brothers began with images for the film – a severed toe, homework in a baggie, a suitcase full of whites – and then think of ways to link them together, he said.

“If you begin with a singing cowboy and a bowling alley, how do you connect that process?” Comentale said. “Someone e-mailed me saying they had an idea for an essay comparing ‘The Dude’ to Rip Van Winkle. I thought it was impossible, but he did it.”