A bit of a news item, a bit of a review for your amusement this lazy Sunday morning. Screenwriter Adam Bertocci has answered what I had never realized was a burning question but have come to understand most definitely was: What If William Shakespeare Had Written The Big Lebowski? Yes, you read that right. He has written a Shakespearean-style play based on the Coen brothers’ movie. And it is funny as hell.
This free web-published project was a must-read ASAP for me, because The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies of all time ever, and one that I quote often. As an English major, I have also studied about a third of Shakespeare’s plays and performed in one (Kate in The Taming of the Shrew if you were curious, and no cracks from my contributors about that being typecasting!), which lends an entirely different perspective on Shakespeare’s work than just reading and pondering it. Basically, I would call myself an expert in Lebowski and familiar enough with Shakespeare to know that this guy got it mostly right, and created something transcendently hilarious.
Bertocci basically does a scene-by-scene rewrite of the movie, with judicious conflation of scenes (for example the Sheriff of Malibu is reduced to a history told by ”the Knave” rather than playing out in real time) that leaves most of the story intact and provides all-new quotes. “This is what happens when you firk’st a stranger ‘twixt the buttocks!” Glorious. Bertocci pulls lines from actual Shakespeare, which I had mixed feelings about, mostly because, while they were guaranteed to get the meter and verse right, they also pulled me out of the moment and into other stories. But this wasn’t a strong detraction, and if you know less Shakespeare than I do then you might miss the references entirely. A couple of the movie’s lines exist perhaps too closely to the original to really feel Shakespearean, but the point here was, I think, more to amuse and less to write verse equal to the Bard’s own. Certainly he did a much better job than certain other mash-up authors I could name in recreating the sense and feel of the writer he was mimicking.
He employed a mix of prose and verse, without much distinction to whether characters use one or the other at all times. For the sticklers out there this might grate, but from the point of view of an audience member…when the actors are speaking their lines correctly, it’s not always apparent when they’re using verse. So this didn’t bother me. In fact, it created a piece of meta-humor that I loved, because when Sir Walter begins to deliver any of Walter’s big speeches about Vietnam, or rules, or being Jewish, he begins to use verse, which makes it both more formal and more theatrical and therefore even more absurd–and therefore more amusing.
Anyway, if you are a fan of The Big Lebowski, go read this. Now. It is well worth your time. The whole “most excellent comedie and tragical romance” in 5 acts is available here. Enjoy! And remember–the Knave abideth.
