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somebody peed on his rug, the rug that ties the room together. Till now he was just rowing his boat merrily down the stream, taking his baths, drinking his White Russians, listening to whales, and bowling. But now something happened, so he makes an adjustment, goes out to meet the wealthy Mr. Lebowski, and the movie goes on from there. At exactly the point when the rug doesn’t bother him anymore, something else comes up. And when he’s no longer upset about that, there’s something else. Things keep happening and the suffering gets deeper. Why? Because the Dude expects that nothing else is going to go wrong. He’s like everyone else, thinking that around the corner is some perfect place where everything will be okay; all he has to do is round that corner. Then something else comes up, and something else.
    But the Dude abides, so it doesn’t take him too long to be at ease with the new situation. Not so his bowling buddy Walter. Walter plays the Dude’s great foil:
This won’t stand, man.
He’s like all the rest of us. Someone just found out that he has cancer, or that his wife left him for someone else, or that he lost his job. Unexpected things keep happening, which is what the Buddha referred to when he talked of suffering. And what do we say?
This won’t stand, man
. But that’s what life is, constant change, ups and downs. And like the Dude, we have to abide. Walter, on the other hand, can’t accept that life is this way, so he keeps on suffering.
    J EFF : I love the scene when the Dude is freaking out at Walter: “Will you just take it easy?”
    And Walter says, “Calmer than you.”
    “Walter, take—will you take it—”
    “Calmer than you.”
    People think the Dude is so unflappable and calm, but in that scene he’s really uptight. In fact, the whole movie is about this loose, relaxed guy who gets all upset by life. But he’s not embarrassed about it, he’s not trying to live up to some persona, he’s always the Dude.
    I relate to that because I really dig comfort. And part of being comfortable is living up to others’ expectations of you. For instance, many people think I have this persona, that I’m the Dude. But that’s not who I am. I got some Dude in me, but I’m more and other than that. I can get tight and nervous, and unlike the Dude, I’m not always comfortable showing people those cracks in my persona.
    I’ll give you an example. Thomas Nellen has done my hair and makeup for several movies. He’s a wonderful Swiss guy, very meticulous, a great artist, and we like to talk and share ideas when I’m getting made up. One of his jobs is to provide continuity and consistency in how I look for the movie. For example, my hair always has to look right for each scene, so if it’s cut a certain way for my character and the character ages, the hair also has to age. If the character doesn’t age in the movie, the hair has to look the same even if the filming takes months. And don’t forget, you’re shooting out of sequence all the time, so the hair has to be right for whatever scene you’re filming that day. It’s Thomas’s job to pay attention to all these little details. Making movies is all about the tiny details. It’s like doing a magic trick. When you create an illusion, the audience doesn’t want to see how it’s done. If a guy has a fake nose, you don’t want to see the lines between the real thing and the fake, you want it all to look real, and for that there has to be consistency. If it’s a little off, the audience loses the spell and gets out of the story.
    So at the end of an especially stressful day Thomas wants to cut my hair a little. That’s his job, right? And he’s very respectful. “When do you want to have your hair cut, Jeff? It’s getting longer and longer.”
    But I have this thing going on with my hair that dates back to the time when I was a kid, when having my hair cut and getting the clippings in my shirt drove me crazy. I could never get the hair