Profs & Pints Baltimore: The Big Lebowski Lecture

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Big Lebowski Lecture,” an exploration of the classic Coen Brothers’ film and its relation to Westerns, detective fiction, and the gritty history of Los Angeles, with Anthony Dyer Hoefer, associate professor of English at George Mason University and scholar of literature and culture.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-lebowski .]

Profs and Pints is bringing fans of The Big Lebowski something better than a White Russian: A deep look at the beloved 1998 movie in the broader context of film and literature.

Professor Anthony Hoefer, who has written extensively about the big-screen tale of the Dude, will tackle enduring questions asked by film scholars and historians, cinephiles, and league bowlers. He might even offer insights on what Sam Elliott was doing portraying The Stranger in the film.

To get the bowling ball rolling, we’ll discuss how The Big Lebowski represents a wholly original reading of Raymond Chandler’s most famous novel, The Big Sleep. Then we’ll look at how this has implications for any consideration of the connections between two of twentieth century American literature and film’s most enduring popular genres, the Western and the hardboiled detective story.

On our investigative journey we’ll cross paths with famous shamuses such as the dogged Jack Gittes memorably portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and Easy Rawlins from Walter Mosley’s neo-noir novels and the film Devil in a Blue Dress. Roger Rabbit will pop up as well.

Looming large will be the setting of such tales, Los Angeles. We’ll try to solve the mysteries related to how the City of Angels was built – in terms of infrastructure and in the imagination – on top of a Wild West frontier dream.

It will be more fun than a night rolling on the lanes. The Dude abides, and Profs and Pints provides. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. The talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: Jeff Bridges at Lebowski Fest 2011. Photo by Joe Polletta / Creative Commons.