September 11, 1991

[digbys kid]

Now, I don't want to go so far as to call this an anachronism, but when The Dude is at Ralph's buying his half-and-half, and he looks up at the TV screen and sees Daddy George Bush saying, "This aggession will not stand against Kuwait.", then he writes 9-11-1991 on the check for $0.69.

BUT BY THAT DATE, THE GULF WAR WAS ALREADY LONG OVER!

Some possibilities...

1.  The Dude "burned one" on the way to Ralph's and had no what year it was
2.  The Dude was post-dating his check, not foreseeing having 69 cents in his account until a year later
3.  The Coen's are fucking with us, the film's audience  (my money's on this one)
4.  Jeff Bridges has a very fuzzy recall of recents events
5.  The Coen's, Jeff Bridges, and about a dozen other people involved in the making of the film fucked up and ultimately didn't care about such a miniscule detail.


What do you think?  I'm going to go mix a Caucasian while you mull it over...

[SmokeytheBuddha]

Complicating things even more: Bush said his remark on August 6, 1990.

I think either the Coens got it wrong and didn't really care to correct it, or, more likely to me: this shows how out of touch the Dude truly is with time/world events/what have you.

Or it shows just how broke he is by post-dating his check for .69 over a year in advance.

Or, on an even larger scale, I think it was intentional just like the pomerainian (sp?) isn't really a pomerainian and the marmot isn't really a marmot. And Bunny is really Fawn, and the Big Lebowski really isn't the rich, powerful guy he claims to be, etc., etc. I think the movie intentionally plays with our need to make sense of things and throws curveballs like this to make the puzzle that much more difficult to solve. Which is really how life is, ultimately.

That's just my opinion, man.

[Laughing Dude]

Thats fucking interesting.

I think he has to go with the general theme of "Man does not what the fuck he is talking about" throughout the movie. The animals are mislabeled, the use of many words is wrong(human paraquat, brother shamus) and now the date being wrong.

"The only thing I know is that I know nothing."

[DigitalBuddha]

A flashback, man. The dude was hallucinating. Or, it was one of those fucking Frontline PBS late night Documentaries narrated by Bill Lyman.

[Dude1967]

A flashback, man. The dude was hallucinating. Or, it was one of those fucking Frontline PBS late night Documentaries narrated by Bill Lyman.

Personally, I say, Fuck it.  Does it really matter?  Whether in the context of the movie, or even in spite of it, I can't be worrying about that shit.

[headgames]

Option five, cause they probably stayed true and just said fuck it, if they spotted it all.

[DigitalBuddha]

Dubya, that creep can roll, man.

[BikerDude]

Dubya, that creep can roll, man.

8 year olds Dude.

[his_dudeness]

I bet Dubya rolls rocks.

[digbys kid]

I bet Dubya rolls rocks.

He does now...what else does he have to do?

[cckeiser]

Did a web search. Sept. 11, 1991 was the date of Papa G. H Bush's New World Order speach.
It looks as if the Dude wrote the check on the 8th or 9th.
"Tomorrow is already the 10th Dude. Just slip the rent under my door."

As the check and the date are right in your face, you know it was no accident.

[BikerDude]

I'm thinking that the date was semi arbitrary. They guestimated on the spot when they shot the scene.
The only thing they were tryna show was the .69 check.
That's the punch line.
The Coens just didn't care to be correct.

The mind fuck is that it was exactly 10 years before the fateful Sept. 11.
And the scene was shot long before same fateful Sept. 11.
So what a coincidence that they would choose that date before it became
infamous.

 

[meekon5]

All is chaos and coincidence, man needs to find reason and pattern in the abstract to understand himself and where he fits in, so applies a meaningless system to the chaos to try to rationalise it.

So what a coincidence that they would choose that date before it became
infamous.

I agree, We apply the symbolism because it's significant now, it wasn't when they were filming the scene.

[Elbowski]

I am sure that you good dudes all remember that TBL was based in part on The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart (1946). It's available on YouTube and well worth the watch. It's not the only Bogey flick ripped off by TBL. The scene where Jackie Treehorn slips the Dude a mickey was lifted from The Maltese Falcon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkmv1C9YBtc&feature=related
It is cut into 11 parts, enjoy!
The check appears at 6:50 in segment 1/11.

Early in TBS a check is used to help establish the plot. It is featured full frame, just like the check in TBL. The date is Sept. 11 1945. In an interesting link, groundbreaking for the Pentagon was Sept. 11, 1941.

It is erroneous to assume that the date of Sept. 11 had no significance before Sept. 11, 2001. The date was chosen because of it's connections, one of them being the ubiquitous emergency telephone code, 911.

[not_exactly_a_lightweight]

I agree with digitalbuddha, he has a limber mind, man.
The movie requires that line to be reused later in the plot. The line being "This aggression will not stand"
So they dig up a clip of Bush41, who cares if it's old, (or too new even); Artistic license man. El Dudarino's not exactly a voter.