There are upwards of 100 films in Hollywood history with “The Big […]” in the title. A few notables are The Big Sleep, The Big Hurt, The Big Chill, etc. Almost all of them refer to a superlative event.

The farce that ensues in the mixup between the two Lebowskis takes the names of the titular characters (near perfect foils for each other), and makes it into an occurrence. I.e., The Big Lebowski happened when dude was mistaken for a millionaire and everyone’s lives became entangled and upended. Thus the stranger: “I guess that’s the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself.” It’s so profoundly absurd (the plot is preposterous) that the well of English adjectives runs dry trying to describe it. Therefore, what happened could only be described as “a Lebowski.”

Why would the Coens name the film for a secondary character? His role is clearly pivotal to the film, but he is far from the main character. It would be like naming Rocky “Mickey Goldmill” instead. On the other hand, Dude is the main character (I wanna say hero, but what’s a hero?), but because of his humility and nonchalance , he could hardly be referred to as “big.”

Discuss.