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A tale of debauchery and bowling in Louisville, Kentucky

By Aaron Kirschenfeld

Watching an intoxicated young lady looking out at the neon-lit spectacle through her camera’s digital viewfinder was a fine way to start things at the Sixth Annual Lebowski Fest two weeks ago in Louisville, Kentucky. I had just met a group of three buddies from Fort Mill, S.C. in the tattooed yet hygienic crowd that gathered that Friday night on a stretch of grass beside a no-frills bowling alley, the Executive Bowl. Beside us was the starkly empty Kentucky Fairgrounds and Exhibition Center and behind us the low rumble of roller coasters from Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, where earlier this summer a young girl and her feet parted ways. Overhead, the occasional deafening drone of airplanes taking off from the nearby airport drowned out the live music being played to a largely silent and distinctly strange group of “Achievers,” originally a self-applied tag for hardcore Lebowski devotees that now refers to anyone who attends Lebowski Fest. Later that evening, as a night chill had moved in, there was a film screening. As if it were a kind of initiation rite, the crowd began to realize itself with each line read aloud in unison, with every round of relief-filled laughter that followed. Here I am; I am among friends.

In the case that you are not an Achiever, the Big Lebowski is a 1998 Coen Brothers film that follows a Raymond Chandler-esque storyline of liquor and grass-inspired confusion, betrayal and general mayhem as they befall “The Dude,” an unemployed middle-aged stoner (Jeff Bridges), and his two unlikely bowling partners and best friends: emotionally unstable Vietnam Vet Walter (John Goodman), and silent, slow-witted Donnie (Steve Buscemi). It was a box-office flop, but in the years since the film has acquired something of a cult status and is popular on college campuses and in other tragically sick bohemian hideouts that Rotarian demagogues hate. And so I set out to find what exactly constitutes the inner workings of these Achievers with the hopes of uncovering at least a glimpse into the soul of these fanatics, those whose revolution has been so resoundingly declared to be over.

My new friends from Fort Mill took me around their hotel, the Executive Inn, which was also the official event hotel on Saturday afternoon. A place that might have been chic about thirty years ago, the “Ex” is an aging architectural and interior-design novelty, which pleased Ben Ward, an architect who now works in Myrtle Beach. With him was Josh Meyers, a park ranger for Mecklenburg County, and Daniel Mast, who works for a cable company in Charlotte. They had finally decided to make the trek to Louisville this year and planned to participate in the costume contest at that night’s bowling party. All gainfully employed, they denied the notion that their employment lessened their appreciation of the movie and its celebration of The Dude’s lazy lifestyle.

He was by far the most popular character at Lebowski Fest. There were fat Dudes and thin ones, tall and short, men and women. Like a bizarre gathering of shopping mall Santas, the Dudes admired each other’s style, and generally carried themselves with the requisite self-assured air of moral superiority. Two Dudes in particular stand out from the evening: the first, from Lexington, Kentucky, got into the gig when random people would order him White Russians at bars, at least according to his special lady. This Dude was in publishing when not attending Lebowski Fest, and in place of a rusty green 1973 Ford Torino drove a brand-new Volvo XC 90. The Dude in a Volvo? What was happening here?

The other Dude I got to know came with a group of middle-aged men from Charleston. Since he remained in character for much of the night, much of what I learned about him came from his entourage, a rather convincing Walter who came packing a legitimate handgun, an eerily affable Jackie Treehorn (the film’s Porn magnate, played by Ben Gazzara), and a sloppily drunk Brandt (the Big Lebowski’s secretary, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman). This Brandt, who was throwing down yet another White Russian, admired the party, spouting the occasional axiom of his own brand of crude hedonism: be young, get drunk, fuck a lot of women.

Ah, yes, about those women. Surprisingly, there were more than a few of them there. I had always viewed the Big Lebowski as a guy movie, but as one charming redhead named Theresa Rogers explained to me: “Girls have buddies too.” Still, she was a bit of an outlier overall. A microbiology Ph.D. student at Ohio State, she came to Lebowski Fest with a Jackie Treehorn named Clint Page, who did his undergrad at USC and is now also in microbiology grad school at Georgia. They met when she was an undergrad at Georgia, but unlike most of the male-female traveling partners at Lebowski Fest, they were not a couple. Most women, it seemed, were there to keep an eye on their boyfriends. At least one hadn’t seen the movie until the day before.

A trivia challenge was held along with the costume contest, and as the night wore on, Miller High Life after Miller High Life, the Walter from Charleston became very concerned about his odds of winning. I told him it didn’t look good, and when his Dude was defeated by the Dude from Lexington, Walter did not take the loss very well.

“[My friend] just got rolled by a fat bitch from Kentucky,” he remarked curtly. I began to worry about the pistol. The next thing I knew, I saw the Charleston Jackie Treehorn supporting the stumbling Charleston Dude on his way out of the bowling alley.

In what was quickly becoming a disturbing version of a massive bowling birthday party gone wrong, with darkness washing over the Dudes in us all, I managed to find some explanation in the dazed faces of the two young microbiologists. They told me what I’d been looking for all along in this strange cinematic spectacle, that true imitation of the film’s characters was not what these Achievers were after. No one in our moment, in our generation, it seems, is really out to seriously live life like the Dude does. That is not something they want. Instead, they’re comfortable just knowing that he’s out there, takin’ her easy for all us sinners.

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