For people who idolise a slacker, "achievers" can be an industrious lot. Last Friday, Edinburgh hosted the first ever UK edition of Lebowski Fest, the rolling celebration of the Coen brothers' 1998 movie The Big Lebowski and its ramshackle burn-out of a hero, the Dude. Thursday sees the follow-up in London, at the Tenpin bowling alley in Acton. And effort has been made, with some travelling in specially from as far as Indiana and San Francisco.
Inaugurated five years ago in Louisville, Kentucky, after two guys working at a tattoo expo, Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt, realised they weren't the only ones secretly devoted to the off-beat box office flop, the Fests regularly attract thousands of achievers - named in honour of the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers charity featured in the film - to lanes where, amid the strikes and gutters and before the bands, White Russians are guzzled, quizzes held and costumes worn.
Not just any costumes, mind. All the film's usual suspects are there, of course, starting with dozens of Dudes. (What's the collective noun for "Dude"? A roll of Dudes? A rug? A deadbeat?) There's also Walter, his explosive Vietnam vet buddy; Maude, the frosty painter-cum-valkyrie; porn star Karl Hungus; the addle-headed cowboy Stranger narrator. All were present in Edinburgh.
But achievers also think laterally: people have come as Mrs Jamtoss, a teacher whose name is only briefly glimpsed on a sheet of homework, or the Creedence Clearwater Revival tape stolen from the Dude's car. On Friday, third prize went to a guy who came as an Irish monk - a reference to the Dude's misunderstanding of the Chandleresque private-dick phrase "brother seamus".
Such diligence and inventiveness is also evident in the film's ever-expanding tangential online existence. There are automatic Lebowski haiku-generators that elegantly rearrange lines from the script, a Wii-created "Mii Lebowski" short, an Urban Achievers charity homepage. You can even be ordained as a minister of Dudeism, the religion set up in honour of His Dudeness.
Things on this side of the pond haven't quite reached that level of dedication yet, but it's about time the film's British connections were recognised. Remember giggling conceptual artist Knox Harrington, played with a Scouse whine by David Thewlis? The cricket bat the nihilists use on the Dude's furniture (and almost his johnson)? All those reference to the Queen "in her damned undies"?
"It's a smaller scale than we're used to," Russell says of the Fest's UK reception, "but everyone was great. They were very courteous in the costume contest, clapping for everyone equally." There will be no bands at Acton, but the music is in hand. "I made some good mixes. Some Creedence..."
