A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

O PITEOUS KNAVE!—MY ONLY HOPE REMAINS THAT IN HIS ANGER, THE LEBOWSKI BIG KILLS ME ERE THESE GERMANS CUT MY LANCE: Adam Bertocci, who wrote Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, talks to BSCreview about his craft:

For the most part, the script proved pretty easily adaptable no matter where we were in the plot or on the recognizability scale, with one exception: profanity. For a film with this liberal a helping of the f-word, that’s just an issue a guy’s gotta deal with. Sometimes overcoming these challenges was a real blast; the early scene between the Dude and Bunny allowed me to work with one of Shakespeare’s favorite tropes, the sly sexual reference.

But sometimes this was difficult. The hardest thing by far was Walter’s “do you see what happens, Larry?” speech–I was fine with most of the lines after one or two passes, but I must have rewritten that outburst at least ten times, and I’m still not happy with it. In the end, I’ve just realized that “This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass” is so perfect a line that Shakespeare himself could not improve upon it....

Anything involving a phone was kind of a pain. On the language side, well, there aren’t many promising rhymes for “Johnson.” Things I like: as sad as this will sound, the more famous a line is, the more pleasure I got from sneaking it in. I nearly giggled myself to death when I realized I could shoehorn in “exit, pursued by a bear.”

I will take this opportunity to point out possibly my favorite little hidden gag, which I’ve never seen anyone comment on: Walter’s remark “not eight but l’ouef” is meant to hide a pun, “not hate but love.” Which doesn’t mean a damn thing, really, but….

The play makes its NYC theatrical premiere (for real) on March 18.