Editing The Big Lebowski (section)

=== Screenplay ===
The Coen Brothers wrote ''The Big Lebowski'' around the same time as ''[[Barton Fink]]''. When the Coen brothers wanted to make it, John Goodman was filming episodes for ''[[Roseanne (TV series)|Roseanne]]'' and Jeff Bridges was making the [[Walter Hill (filmmaker)|Walter Hill]] film ''[[Wild Bill (1995 film)|Wild Bill]]''. The Coens decided to make ''[[Fargo (1996 film)|Fargo]]'' in the meantime.<ref name="Bergan, Ronald" />{{rp|189}} According to Ethan, "the movie was conceived as pivoting around that relationship between the Dude and Walter", which sprang from the scenes between Barton Fink and Charlie Meadows in ''Barton Fink''.<ref name="Ciment, Michel" />{{rp|169}} They also came up with the idea of setting the film in contemporary L.A., because the people who inspired the story lived in the area.<ref name="Robertson, William" />{{rp|41}} When Pete Exline told them about the homework in a baggie incident, the Coens thought that that was very Raymond Chandler and decided to integrate elements of the author's fiction into their script. Joel Coen cites [[Robert Altman]]'s ''[[The Long Goodbye (film)|The Long Goodbye]]'' as a primary influence on their film, in the sense that ''The Big Lebowski'' "is just kind of informed by Chandler around the edges".<ref name="Robertson, William" />{{rp|43}} When they started writing the script, the Coens wrote only 40 pages and then let it sit for a while before finishing it. This is a normal writing process for them, because they often "encounter a problem at a certain stage, we pass to another project, then we come back to the first script. That way we've already accumulated pieces for several future movies."<ref name="Ciment, Michel" />{{rp|171}} In order to liven up a scene that they thought was too heavy on [[exposition (narrative)|exposition]], they added an "effete art-world hanger-on", known as Knox Harrington, late in the screenwriting process.<ref name="McCarthy, Phillip" /> In the original script, the Dude's car was a [[Chrysler LeBaron]], as Dowd had once owned, but that car was not big enough to fit John Goodman so the Coens changed it to a [[Ford Torino]].<ref name="Green, Bill" />{{rp|93}}