Here is a photo book that I made and gave as a gift to the cast and crew
when we were making The Big Lebowski.
This is a photo book made with a Widelux camera,
which is kind of unique. It's a panning still camera,
and it gives you photographs kind of like this.
There's a lot of information on there, you know.
That's probably about the actual frame of the Widelux.
One of the things I like about it is that you see the beautiful actress,
dancer, Viking, Julianne Moore, here.
And at the same time, you're able to see her dancing partners.
Some are taking breaks. This is the dream sequence.
She's really beautiful there, I think, don't you?
I especially like her bowling balls.
Here's another shot of Julianne
and the Bowling Pin Chorines, we called them.
Here's a picture of Jack Kehler, the Dude's landlord.
This is also the... I used this photograph as the cover of my album
called Be Here Soon.
It's available on iTunes.
Here we are at... What the hell is the name of that restaurant?
It's in Santa Monica. It's a wonderful delicatessen. The Broadway Deli.
And this is my first meeting with Joel and Ethan,
and there I asked them, "Do you mind if I take your picture?"
(CHUCKLES) And you can see Joel's there. He looks a little concerned.
But if you look closely, you can see all the miniature Santa stockings,
it was Christmas time, that are in the background there.
And Jeff Dowd, who was a model that Joel and Ethan used for the Dude,
he's there, joining us.
Now, here is our first read-through,
and at this time, you can see a drawing here,
and what it says there is, "Who is The Big Lebowski?"
Maybe that's a sign that they'd left on there after they had cast David.
But there's David Huddleston there. It was great working with him.
We'd worked together in a movie called Bad Company, years before.
Here's a shot of Joel and Ethan
trying to figure out how I'm not going to break my teeth
when my head is shoved in the toilet bowl.
I really appreciated their concern.
There's Ethan in repose, lounging.
This is our first day of shooting.
And that was at the car lot,
and the most memorable line from that scene I remember is,
"Leads, leads!"
There are the two boys. There's Ethan over there, chewing on an apple.
Here are the bowlers.
You can see Jeff "the Dude" Dowd included in there.
Here's Joel and Ethan on a typical day in the bowling alley.
This is some of the... This is the team that was bowling against us.
This fellow here is Jimmie Dale Gilmore. He plays Smokey back here.
Wonderful country singer. We did a lot of picking on the movie,
and it was a lot of fun.
Here's the wonderful Sam Elliott, who played The Stranger.
That's a shot of us together there in the bowling alley.
It's always wonderful to work with Sam.
Now, this fellow, Barry Asher, he was hired to teach us how to bowl.
He's a wonderful bowler, and you never see the Dude bowling, actually.
Here's a shot of John taking some direction from a bowling ball.
Or maybe it's that fan that you dry your hands on. I'm not sure.
There's another shot of John Goodman.
Here's a shot of Steve Buscemi welcoming John Turturro.
This was John's first day on the set.
Moments after this shot was taken, he French-kissed the bowling ball,
much to all of our enjoyment.
"Jesus hurls."
Here's a shot of John showing his great form.
Here he is talking to Ethan, making a point about how he's going to play this scene.
Here's my stand-in, Loyd Catlett. We've done about 50 movies together,
and this is a shot of us hanging out in the trailer, picking with Jimmie Dale.
Smokey.
Here are some of the beautiful women that worked on our show.
We're sitting there. You can see the Ben Hur Auto Repair sign
behind that girl's head.
More guys. Here's a bowling ball.
This is, "Steve picks his ear while Peter holds his arm,"
in front of the bowling alley with those beautiful stars.
Here's a shot of Tara Reid, who's getting painted.
She's the lady who offers the Dude a blowjob for $1,000,
and he runs off to see if he can find a cash machine.
Flea, Torsten and Peter prepare to drop the marmot here with this shot here.
There's Ethan and Mark contemplating the bowling ball that's about to be dropped.
Obviously, he's never played golf.
Here's stuntmen, Vince Deadrick,
who has been my stunt guy in quite a few movies and Jery Hewitt there.
Here's a shot of Joel and Ethan lining up a shot with Roger Deakins,
who did such a brilliant job.
This is the scene, I think, where the Dude meets The Big Lebowski, David Huddleston.
I think probably they're lining up the shot, here it looks like,
where the Dude is going to look and see his reflection in that mirror,
Time magazine thing, where he looks up there and sees he's Man of the Year.
Here is Autobahn,
the shooting of the cover for the groundbreaking album, Nagelbett.
And here's Ethan lining up the boys.
A lot goes into making a movie, you know.
Shooting the album cover for the album that I'm going to find in Maude's place,
you know, that's some detailed stuff, man.
Here's The Big Lebowski. Here's David Huddleston, here,
getting something out of his pocket, it looks like.
Here's the beautiful Julianne Moore being made up by Jean Black,
makeup artist.
Our first AD, Jeff Rafner, looks on.
Now, see this painting? This was in Maude's house.
The brothers gave me that painting as a gift,
so I have that hanging in my workout room at home, actually.
Beautiful thing.
Here's another shot of Loyd Catlett.
My stand-in, he's hanging-in for me here.
This was our 32nd movie at that time.
This is the scene where I'm flying through the air in the dream sequence.
I got the bowling ball there.
This is a picture... It's very... It's a weird picture.
It's not very good, but I wanted to include it
'cause it would remind me of the moment.
"Peter Chesney supervises the fitting of my body cast."
And it was very small. You can see me in the mirror here, holding the camera.
They made a whole cast of my body
to support me while I'm flying through the air.
You know, that's how they did that, so that's me getting this cast made.
Here's Joel in the set where Arthur Digby Sellers
is in his iron lung.
There he is. Beautiful set design through the whole movie.
You can see him arranging...
I don't know who this person is, but they're getting it
so you can see Arthur Digby Sellers in his iron lung with his mirror there.
I don't know if that's ever in the movie, if you ever see his face
in the movie or not, but that was one thought at one point.
Here's Daniel Curet painting Ben Gazzara, who played Jackie Treehorn.
Wonderful job. I loved working with Ben, always admired his work.
Here's makeup guys, Daniel and Eddie Henriques here.
They've done a lot of movies together.
Here John spits Peter's ear into the sky.
This is when Walter bites off this guy's ear and spits it into the sky.
Here, this shot is, "Joel and Ethan enjoy
"Peter's ear being reloaded into John's mouth."
They had to do this scene several times.
Ben Hur Auto Repair sign is well-lit in the back.
Very detailed. The Coen Brothers, one of the things
that makes their movies so entertaining, I think, for me, is their attention to detail.
They're really into all those little deals.
Here's a shot of Jon Polito, who played Da Fino, the private dick.
It says here, "Da Fino is searching for Bunny. She's been kidnapped."
He's holding up photographs of her parents' farm in Moorhead, Minnesota,
not far away from Fargo, North Dakota, where my wife, Sue, was raised.
It's not unusual to have a Coen Brothers film involve kidnapping.
If you notice, a lot of their films involve kidnapping.
Here's a shot of Jeff "the Dude" Dowd and me, Jeff "the Dude" Bridges.
"Mr. Dowd was a role model for my character, Jeff 'the Dude' Lebowski.
"Here he is, captured on film, visiting the set, giving us his blessing."
Here's a shot of The Big Lebowski being hurled to the floor.
Here, on the next page, Ethan directed as well.
Sometimes people don't think that Ethan gets in there to direct,
but here he is seen attempting to experience what Bugsy, Walter's dog,
might be feeling in the scene.
(LAUGHING)
That looks like a set-up thing, but no, he actually did that.
There's no tongue in any of the cheeks in this shot.
They're all serious men at work. Look how serious all of the guys are there.
Roger Deakins looks very serious, slightly impatient,
but he's putting up with the director's needs.
Here's something I like to do with this camera.
This is a good example of it.
I have quite a few actors photographed like this,
in the classic Greek tragedia/comedia masks.
Here's Philip Seymour Hoffman, and that's all on one negative.
And because of the nature of the shutter on my camera,
which actually pans, I can include a double image like this on one negative.
Here's a shot over here of David Huddleston doing the same tragedy and comedy.
(CHUCKLES) Here's a shot of T-Bone Burnett looking into his own mouth.
(LAUGHING)
T-Bone's an old friend. I met him on Heaven's Gate,
and we've been friends ever since,
and it was very exciting for me to learn
that he was going to be the music supervisor on Lebowski.
And it's a wonderful album, as those of you who have it know.
Got some great songs in The Big Lebowski.
Here's another comedy/tragedy of David Thewlis, the laughing man.
Very good face.
Here's a picture of Jack Kehler. This is one of my favorite scenes,
is his wonderful dance performance.
We go to his dance recital, and here he is discussing
with Bill and Jacqui Landrum his very emotional performance, it says.
Here's Jack. This is his very emotional performance.
And here we have me, the Dude,
and the girls of my dream.
I somehow worked my way into their dressing room here and got a picture of that,
putting on their bowling pin hats.
I scored one of those. I have a bowling pin hat actually.
My girls enjoy wearing that on Halloween.
There they are now. This is my wife, Sue, and my daughters, Iz, Hay and Jess.
They visit the set and don bowling pin hats.
And Mary Zophres here and Pam, her assistant,
are dressing the Bowling Pin Chorines, putting their helmets on.
Here's Bill and Jacqui, our choreographers. They're choreographing the dance.
A Busby Berkeley-type bowling pin flower is executed here.
"Bowling Pin Chorines, take five."
Those hats were kind of a pain in the ass, I think.
Now, there they are, just chilling out.
Here's me and my girls.
God, I look at that picture...
That's the thing about kids, they really let you know how fast everything goes by.
They're all in their mid-20s now.
Look at them, they're just like little girls. My God.
"Andy pulls focus on Maude and the Chorines."
This shot here, you can see this guy, he's very dimly lit,
but that's one of the most critical jobs making movies, is the focus puller.
You could be doing all kinds of great work,
and the film comes back, and it's out of focus, it's no good.
So these guys don't get heralded too much.
Here's a shot that's very much like the cover.
"Maude as Bowling Valkyrie Goddess."
And the thing I like about this photograph,
I don't know if you can see it here on this side,
both of the sides, you can see these girls lying down.
Can you see that?
And then you pan on the other side and you can see them lying down on the other side.
They're taking five while Julianne's working out her moves.
Julianne Moore, she's such a beauty.
Here's an interesting shot.
(LAUGHING)
And what happened here... I'll just read the copy of the thing, it says,
"As part of the dream sequence, the Dude was required to glide between
"the legs of the Bowling Pin Chorines, and look up their skirts.
"To ease the tension, I asked if I could take a picture of this event.
"A Chorine winked and said, 'By all means, Dude.'
"Here is the picture right here.
"As I looked up, I found each pubic patch more ornate than the next.
"They had stuffed huge clumps of crepe hair in their leotards.
"We all had a good laugh."
(LAUGHING) This is me walking to the place.
Here's a shot of Julianne without her horns on.
Here's Joel demonstrating the proper way to hold a trident.
Here is my manager and dear friend Neil Koenigsberg, visiting the set.
And in the background, you can see these disembodied legs here.
This was used for one of the shots.
This is kind of a bizarre image.
Here we have another shot of the Bowling Pin Chorines,
resting between shots.
Here, the shot of the brothers.
This was the day where we cast Denny's ashes to the wind.
Here's another shot of that spot.
And this is a shot of the bowling alley, with a little tweaking on each edge.
You know, as the camera pans like this...
It's a very forgiving camera. You can hold it, you can take a shot at 15th of a second,
which is kind of tough with normal still cameras.
And with this particular camera, a 15th of a second is about this long.
So you have that much time to jack with the image, you know.
So, now, on this image, you can see I'd moved the camera a little here,
stayed still for this one, and then moved it a little bit on that side,
and that's how you get that effect.
And that is my photographic book from The Big Lebowski.