RETURN OF THE DUDE HOW A CULT FILM BECAME A SLACKERS FESTIVAL.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

He's been Starman and a Fabulous Baker Boy, Wild Bill Hickok and the President of the United States. But the role Jeff Bridges is now most remembered for - and he's as surprised at the evolution of this as anybody - is The Dude, the White Russian-drinking, Creedence-loving, bowling stoner from the Coen Brothers' 1998 movie ``The Big Lebowski.''

``I would never have imagined it,'' Bridges says. ``When the movie came out, not that many people saw it. Now I've got people buying me White Russians wherever I go. It has acquired this huge, underground following because it's one of those movies, the more you see it, the more you see in it.''

And there are a lot of people - Achievers, they call themselves - who watch ``Lebowski'' enough to see a lot in it. Enough to create a rolling series of Lebowski Fests, two-day events featuring bowling, costume contests, a fair amount of alcohol consumption and, in the parlance of The Dude (and, with The Dude, parlance is paramount), ``what-have-you.''

Lebowski Fest began as a one-off at a Louisville, Ky., bowling alley in October 2002. A couple of hundred people showed up. Once word got out about the event, Achievers (the preferred nomenclature, taken from the movie's ``Little Lebowski Urban Achievers'') numbering thousands have attended subsequent Fests in Louisville, Las Vegas and New York.

Now, inevitably, Lebowski Fest is heading west, to The Dude's stomping grounds. (Sam Elliott's Stranger notes in the opening narration that The Dude was ``quite possibly the laziest man in all of Los Angeles County. Which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide.'')

On Friday at Hollywood's Knitting Factory, there will be a party featuring cherished, fringe cast members, bands (Peter Stormare - Uli the Nihilist in the film - will lead his group, Blonde From Fargo!) and a midnight screening of the movie. The action will move to Lakewood's Cal Bowl Saturday night for bowling, costume and trivia contests and more appearances from cast members as well as from Jeff Dowd, the man who was the Coens' inspiration for The Dude.

``People have likened it to a 'Star Trek' or science-fiction convention, but we have women and nobody speaks Klingon,'' says Scott Shuffitt, who founded and organizes the Lebowski Fests with Louisville friend Will Russell.

If all this hullabaloo seems a little odd for a movie that was widely seen as a critical and commercial disappointment, particularly following Joel and Ethan Coen's Oscar-winning ``Fargo,'' then you probably haven't seen ``The Big Lebowski.''

Or maybe you've seen it only once.

``The first time I saw it, I was indifferent,'' Russell says. ``A year later, I saw it again and then a third time. Then the 87th time I saw it ...''

You get the idea. ``The Big Lebowski'' is one of those movies that not only stands up after repeated viewings, it gets better. It helps that the plot is incidental. A millionaire, who, like The Dude, is named Jeff Lebowski (a name The Dude hates: ``I am not 'Mr. Lebowski.' I'm The Dude. You know, that or His Dudeness or Duder or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.'') hires The Dude to find his kidnapped daughter.

Who abducted her? Who cares? ``The Big Lebowski'' is the Coens taking Raymond Chandler, filtering it through their weird sensibilities and coming up with an acid-trip whodunit that features a Freudian Busby Berkeley dream sequence with Julianne Moore in Valkyrie get-up (complete with golden, bowling-ball breastplates), an attack marmot and a pederast named Jesus.

The Coens followed Robert Altman's lead from ``The Long Goodbye'' and then took it a step further, turning Chandler's hero, detective Philip Marlowe, into an unemployed, hippie doofus who becomes involved in a web of intrigue all because somebody peed on his rug, and, man, ``that rug really tied the room together.''

Befitting the Chandler connection, ``The Big Lebowski'' stands as one of the all-time great L.A. movies, hitting on the wonders and weirdness of the city in a myriad of ways. It's all there - the palm trees, the porn industry, the Malibu beaches, the endlessly sprawling blanket of nighttime lights, the flakes, the go-getters, the opportunists and, yes, the Achievers.

``People from all over the world tell me that this is their favorite movie about California,'' says Swedish actor Stormare, who also worked with the Coens on ``Fargo.'' (He famously fed Steve Buscemi's leg into a wood chipper.)

``It's how people see Los Angeles,'' Stormare says. ``I think of that scene where The Dude and Walter (John Goodman) empty the ashes of their friend over the ocean and the wind comes and blows them back in their faces. For me, that says it all. The positives and the negatives of the best city in the world, right there in the sunshine and the ashes.''

For Achievers, though, the movie's appeal seems to lie in the friendships between the characters and the regular-guy charm of its laid-back hero.

``The Dude is a genuine person,'' Lebowski Fest's Russell says. ``He remains the same person no matter if he's in front of a millionaire or an avant-garde artist or Walter. He lives in the moment and takes things as they come. He doesn't have a cape or dodge bullets. He's just The Dude and that's enough.''

Russell, 29, and Shuffitt, 33, have achieved something themselves through the Lebowski Fests - a taste of financial success. Shuffitt still has a job - he drives trucks - but Russell pretty much devotes himself to organizing the fests (there will be two others this year - Louisville and New York), running the Web site (lebowskifest.com) and selling ``Lebowski'' goodies, including bumper stickers, T-shirts and Nixon bobble-head dolls.

Bridges has contributed to the commerce as well, designing a T-shirt for Lebowski Fest West with proceeds to go to the End Hunger Network. The shirt sports a Bridges drawing of The Dude on the front with a sketch of the soiled rug on the back.

``If you've ever wanted to buy The Dude a White Russian, go with the T-shirt,'' says Bridges, whose drink of choice is actually just a pure Russian (straight Vodka, no Kahlua, no half-and-half). ``It's a good cause.''

And the Real Dude, Jeff Dowd, a movie producer (his slacker Dude days are long gone) and one-time member of the radical group The Seattle Seven, believes that, in its own weird way, ``The Big Lebowski'' is about the one cause that everyone can appreciate - laughter in the face of insanity.

``The beauty of 'The Big Lebowski' is that in a world where we all have good reason to put a bullet in our brains at least once a year, to freak out, to give up, the tonic is comedy,'' says Dowd, who will be at the Fest Saturday night. ``It's like in 'Sullivan's Travels.' We need laughter. If, as the movie says, 'The Dude abides' - and The Dude does abide - it's only through laughter that he gets there.''

``Well,'' he says after a moment of consideration. ``A special lady friend helps, too.''

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

LEBOWSKI FEST WEST

What: A celebration of all things Dude-ish.

Where and when: 9 p.m. Friday at the Knitting Factory, 7021 Hollywood Blvd.; 8 p.m. Saturday at the Cal Bowl, 2500 E. Carson St., Lakewood.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) no caption (scene from ``The Big Lebowski'')

(2 -- color) Bowling figures prominently in ``The Big Lebowski'' - and it's also on the agenda at this weekend's Lebowski Fest West.

(3 -- color) LEBOWSKI FEST WEST

copyright 2005 Bill Green Studios