The Big Lebowski - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[nora]

In the bathroom scene the Treehorn thug tells the Dude that his wife, Bunny, owes money to Jackie Treehorn. The Dude says "My wife? Bunny? Do you see a wedding ring on my finger?". He actually holds up his right hand which wouldn't have a wedding band.

[sandra]

The man shown bowling in the picture on The Dude's wall is President Richard Nixon. Nixon was an avid bowler; the picture in the movie is a well-publicized shot of Nixon in the bowling alley underneath the White House.

[gerald]

The sixty-nine cent check The Dude writes at Ralph's for half and half is dated September 11, 1991, exactly ten years before the 9/11 attacks. While he is writing the check, President George H.W. Bush can be heard on the television railing against Saddam Hussein. The film was released in 1998, three years before September 2001.

[richard]

The white shoes The Dude wore are commonly mistaken for Adidas because of the three parallel black stripes. These lines are actually connected at the base, a recognizeable design feature of the athletic/martial-arts sneakers made by Otomix. The Dude wears an early version of their M100 model.

[jessie]

In The Dude's first dream sequence, the person who throws the giant bowling ball, seen out of focus and upside down as the ball rolls down the lane, is Maude.

[lynn]

Of all of the different personalized bowling shirts Donny wears throughout the film, none of them bears his name.

[terry]

The notorious Lebowski rug was such a central part of the film, the Coen Brothers even participated in an interview with Floor Covering Weekly while promoting the movie. In a DVD extra, Ethan Coen notes that producer Joel Silver thought the film should end with The Dude getting his rug back, but the Coens never followed through.

[michele]

Both Lebowskis, Jeff Bridges and David Huddleston, appeared in Bad Company (1972).

[marc]

Two coincidence connections of having the Clutter House from Truman Capote's true life novel "In Cold Blood" as the photo of Bunny Lebowski's farm is that Mark Pellegrino played one of the killers, while Philip Seymour Hoffman played the title role in Capote (2005).

[ava]

The Dude's car is a 4-door 1973 Ford Torino. Two vehicles were used in filming. One was destroyed during the filming, the other was destroyed in the filming of The X-Files (1993) season eight, episode nine, "Salvage".

[edgar]

Roger Deakins described the look of the fantasy scenes as being very crisp, monochromatic, and highly lit in order to afford greater depth of focus. However, with The Dude's apartment, Deakins said, "it's kind of seedy and the light's pretty nasty" with a grittier look. The visual bridge between these two different looks was how he photographed the night scenes. Instead of adopting the usual blue moonlight or blue street lamp look, he used an orange sodium-light effect.