Everyone's seen The Big Lebowski, right? Right? If you haven't seen The Big Lebowski you need to watch it. And if anyone tells you it's overrated you need to slap that person in the face.
A lot of the time I find it hard to get started with work and writing. All I do is think about how bad it's going to be. That I'm a fraud. That I can't do it. It's the thinking that kills it all. So, in the front of my notebook is a quote from a Jeff Bridges' interview about bowling lessons he took while preparing for The Big Lebowski. I have a million little quotes stuck in a million different places but this one always rises to the top. It reminds me to get on with it, to stop thinking and "...throw the fucking ball."
The Big Lebowski: the film that never stops giving.
“They got you a bowling instructor on set, correct?
Barry Asher. I can remember John [Turturro] and I and Buscemi, we took bowling lessons from this guy. He was a champion, one of the best bowlers in the world. We bowled a few frames and then I asked this guy, ‘I’m wondering what the Dude’s preparation would be?’ So Barry tells this story about his own preparation when he bowls. And how there’s kind of a Zen thing to bowling: the pins are down before you even bring your ball back. So Barry would get up there to bowl and he would prep, he’s gotta shake it off, waiting for that moment to cock it back, and it would go on for five, 10 minutes. And his bowling partners on the team would say, ‘Throw the fucking ball!’ He actually had to go into therapy about it. So I said, ‘So how do you do it now?’ He says, ‘I just get up and throw the fucking ball. I don’t think.’”
