Bone's a Rover

So it's out. Bloods a Rover drops into today's milqtoast literary scene like a turd in the picnic basket and gives us reason to believe again in the big publishing houses for just a minute. Anybody hear Ellroy on NPR this morning? That guy gives more golden soundbites than any politician. Also on this day, I spend more of my hard grifted money on postage to Cullen Gallagher who should be congratulated for just giving a shit enough to read my little blog and answer an easy question. Congratulations, then, Cullen. I'm sending him a copy of James Ellroy's Destination: Morgue! For the rest of you, here's the old post in which I propose that The Big Lebowski was a quasi-remake/sequel to the movie Cutter's Way, (mind you - not the book Cutter and Bone). I am outdoing myself for lazy blogging.


The Coen Brothers said in their acceptance speech at last year's Oscars that perhaps their success with adaptations was due to their pickiness in material saying they'd only adapted Cormac McCarthy and Homer. But that didn't ring true to me. They've made no bones about their fondness for James M. Cain and the direct influence his writing had on The Man Who Wasn't There and I think some pretty interesting parallels could be drawn between Miller's Crossing and Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit, but I'm thinking of The Big Lebowski. "Ah" you'll say, but Lebowski was mere homage to Raymond Chandler, and there may be something to that, but it's not Chandler I'm referring to. In 1976 Newton Thornburg published an atomic sour-ball of a thriller called Cutter and Bone. Set in its own time, it depicted a post-Vietnam America succumbing to rot from all directions. At the center of the story is Richard Bone, a former husband and father, now California beach bum, societal dropout scraping by as a handyman gigolo. His best friend is Alex Cutter, a bitter, damaged Vietnam veteran who has sacrificed various parts of his body and crucial parts of his humanity for his country. Bone has a love/hate relationship with Cutter, who gives him a place to live in between sugar-mommas, but drives him and everyone else away with his scathing diatribes on culture and depravity and gleefully points out hypocrisy and moral shortcomings everywhere he sees them, especially in himself and his friends. One night Bone witnesses the body of a young girl being dumped in a trashcan and after telling the police he could not identify the dumper, makes the mistake of musing to Cutter the possibility that it was a wealthy businessman he saw do the dumping. And they're off. Bone wants to forget he said anything the minute it leaves his mouth. He just wants to get back to the easy dope haze he calls home, but Cutter will not let go and drags him into a wild investigation of "the man" who stands for everything wrong with the world that can't be pointed to in their own example. The book is strong, hard stuff and was made into the movie Cutter's Way in 1981. The film is pretty good on its own terms, but just can't pack the same punch delivered by the book. But get this, Jeff Bridges plays Bone in the movie. Watch Cutter's Way and The Big Lebowski back to back and try not to see the connections. Is Lebowski a sequel? Or a remake? I think it goes way beyond homage. The Dude and Walter are far less tragic than Bone and Cutter, but they carry the faint echo into the 1990's of the original 1970's scream. I don't think the Coens will ever comment on it, but the glazed smirk of Jeff Bridges' Lebowski says it all. A wink's the same as a nod, Dude. Perhaps Lebowski deserves an entirely new category, (though if O Brother Where Art Thou counts as a straight adaptation...). Can't wait to see what The Yiddish Policeman's Union becomes through their lense.

(That project seems to have been shelved, now, but rumors swirl around a re-make of True Grit starring Jeff Bridges. Hmmm).