When Pete Exline told them about the homework in a baggie incident, the Coens thought that that was very Raymond Chandler-esque and decided to integrate elements of the author's fiction into their script.

Problems occurred when the Coens and cinematographer Roger Deakins decided that these shots would be more effective with a wide-angle lens.

The character of Jesus Quintana was inspired, in part, by a performance the Coens had seen John Turturro give in 1988 at the Public Theater in a play called Mi Puta Vida in which he played a pederast-type character, " so we thought, let's make Turturro a pederast.

Exline became friends with the Coens and, in 1989, told them all kinds of stories from his own life, including ones about his actor-writer friend Lewis Abernathy ( one of the inspirations for Walter ), a fellow Vietnam vet who later became a private investigator and helped him track down and confront a high school kid who stole his car.

Exline also belonged to an amateur softball league but the Coens changed it to bowling in the movie because " it's a very social sport where you can sit around and drink and smoke while engaging in inane conversation ," Ethan said in an interview.

The Coens met filmmaker John Milius when they were in Los Angeles making Barton Fink and incorporated his love of guns and the military into the character of Walter.

When they started writing the script, the Coens wrote only 40 pages and then let it sit for a while before finishing it.

In the original script, the Dude's car was a Chrysler LeBaron, as Dowd once owned, but that car was not big enough to fit John Goodman so the Coens changed it to a Ford Torino.

For the film's look, the Coens wanted to avoid the usual retro 1960s clichés like lava lamps, Day-Glo posters, and Grateful Dead music and for it to be " consistent with the whole bowling thing, we wanted to keep the movie pretty bright and poppy ", Joel said in an interview.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins discussed the look of the film with the Coens during pre-production.

While the Coens were writing the screenplay they had Kenny Rogers ' " Just Dropped In ( to See What Condition My Condition Was in )", the Gipsy Kings ' cover of " Hotel California ", and several Creedence Clearwater Revival songs in mind.

For example, " Tumbling Tumbleweeds " by Bob Nolan was chosen for the Stranger at the time the Coens wrote the screenplay, as was " Lujon " by Henry Mancini for Jackie Treehorn.

" USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and felt that the Dude was " too passive a hero to sustain interest ", but that there was " enough startling brilliance here to suggest that, just like the Dude, those smarty-pants Coens will abide.

In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe praised the Coens and " their inspired, absurdist taste for weird, peculiar Americana – but a sort of neo-Americana that is entirely invented – the Coens have defined and mastered their own bizarre subgenre.

" In a five star review for Empire Magazine, Ian Nathan wrote, " For those who delight in the Coens ' divinely abstract take on reality, this is pure nirvana " and " In a perfect world all movies would be made by the Coen brothers.

But insofar as it represents a moral position – and the Coens ' relative styling of their figures invariably does – it's an elitist one, elevating salt-of-the-earth types like Bridges and Goodman ... over everyone else in the movie.

If the project got off the ground, the Coens would not direct it, but may have a part in writing it.

Because of the intricate, dense plot, the Coens suffered from writer's block while working on the script.

The budget was reported by film industry magazines as $ 14 million, but the Coens claimed in interviews that it was only $ 10 million.

The Coens cast family and friends in minor roles.

Sam Raimi, director and friend of the Coens, appears as the snickering gunman at the siege of the Sons of Erin social club, while Frances McDormand, Joel Coen's wife, appears as the Mayor's secretary.

borrows the title and has many plot similarities to Sullivan's Travels ; on the special-edition DVD the Coens say the film is almost what Sullivan would have ended up making after Sullivan's Travels ends.

It was important to the Coens to find a neighborhood of original-looking suburban rambler homes as they would have appeared in St. Louis Park in the mid-1960s, and after careful scouting they opted to film scenes in a neighborhood of nearby Bloomington.

Jack walked off alone out the road in the searing midday sun, past Robert Allen's three-room, tarpapered house, toward the field where the other boys were playing ball, thinking of what he would do in order to make Miss Langford have him stay in after school -- because this was the day he had decided when he thought he saw the look in her eyes.

Some time ago, however, Mr. Khrushchev decided that when bigger bombs were made, the Soviet Union would make them.

Having hedged its bets in this way, PHS apparently decided it would be possible to make some sort of determination after all: `` At present radiation levels, and even at somewhat higher levels, the additional risk is slight and very few people will be affected ''.

Therefore, he decided he was unfair to the young man and should make an effort to understand and sympathize with his point of view.

If it is decided to make a small shift which may be required from military aid or special assistance funds, in order to carry out the purposes of the Mutual Security Act through this new peaceful program, this will be a hopeful sign to the world.

Chandler had been commissioned in the Medical Service Corps and was serving as a personnel officer for the Kansas City Medical Depot when he decided that if he was going to make the Army his career, he wanted to be in the fighting part of it.

His new firm was initially called Horch Automobil-Werke GmbH, but following a legal dispute over the Horch name, he decided to make another automobile company.

Martin raced specials at Aston Hill near Aston Clinton, and the pair decided to make their own vehicles.

A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, " he would make your head look like the blade of a knife.

' Originally, it was used to cure illness and the ' thing ' was the illness, but I decided to make it the ' thing ' as in the person standing in front of me.

After the death of Ahmad Shah in about 1772, his son Timur Shah became the next ruler of the Durrani dynasty who decided to make Kabul the new capital of the empire, and used Peshawar as the winter capital.

Evil Dead II, according to Bruce Campbell, " was originally designed to go back into the past to 1300, but we couldn't muster it at the time, so we decided to make an interim version, not knowing if the 1300 story would ever get made ".

The designers of the language decided to make the compiler available free of charge so that the language would become widespread.

The city decided that the experiment was successful and decided to make the change permanent in February 2010.

The crewmen reported that they tried eating bird's eggs, but found them to be rancid, and they decided after trying to cook a " little black bird " that it did not have enough meat to make the effort worthwhile.

Then Crapsey decided to make the criterion a stanza of five lines of accentual-syllabic verse, in which the lines comprise, in order, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1 stresses and 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables.

It was decided that he was now strong enough to make the journey to England to be reunited with his family and, on 13 July 1604, Charles left Dunfermline for England where he was to spend most of the rest of his life.

They decided to make him a totally different character ; instead of the wacky, comic relief character he had been, they turned Daffy into a vain, egomaniacal prima donna wanting to steal the spotlight from Bugs Bunny.

He slipped to 12th in the standings halfway through the season, and Richard Childress decided to make a crew chief change, taking Mike Skinner's crew chief Kevin Hamlin and putting him with Earnhardt while giving Skinner Larry McReynolds.

Instead of refuelling and waiting for the wash of this run to completely subside, Campbell decided to make the return run immediately, to beat it before it had been reflected back onto the course.

" Boztepe also began training in Latosa Escrima, which Kernspecht's German Wing Tsun Organization had decided to make part of the family in 1982.

Returning to Kyoto in 1357, Emperor Sukō's son Imperial Prince Yoshihito began to work with the Bakufu to be named Crown Prince, but the Bakufu instead decided to make Emperor Go-Kōgon's son ( the future Emperor Go-En ' yū ) Crown Prince instead.

When English explorer John Davis, commander of the Desire, one of the ships belonging to Thomas Cavendish's second expedition to the New World, separated from Cavendish off the coast of what is now southern Argentina, he decided to make for the Strait of Magellan in order to find Cavendish.

After 1. 5 years of work, it was decided that it didn't really work as a whole, so production on the TV special was stopped ( with the exception of some very short clips, no material from it has ever been seen by the public ), But about one year after the rejection, Ivo Caprino's son, Remo Caprino, got the idea to make the sketches into a full-length film.