An Ode to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Performance in The Big Lebowski

One would be forgiven for not thinking of Philip Seymour Hoffman when considering the memorable performances in the Coen Brothers’ 1998 classic The Big Lebowski. Jeff Bridges’ laid-back, ever-bewildered performance as The Dude is iconic, as is John Goodman’s bottomless rage as Walter. Even among the film’s minor characters, there are performances like John Turturro’s as bowling afficionado and registered sex offender Jesus Quintana that gather more attention that Hoffman’s. For those struggling to remember, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Brandt, the polite and well-dressed lackey of the Big Lebowski. His character is largely a straight man within the film’s comedic scheme and lacks the immediate eccentricity of most of its other characters. But Hoffman’s embodiment of him is proof of the maxim that there are no small parts, only small actors. It is one of the few performances I have seen where an actor truly maximizes every single moment their character is on screen.

Those moments for Brandt are quite few. He is by all measures a minor character, whose primary function is to deliver exposition. He appears in six scenes, plus one scene where his voice is heard over the phone, all but one of which occur in the film’s first half. He has 6 minutes and 29 seconds of total screen time. He gets 41 lines, which add up to 568 total words spoken. (Fun fact: that’s still almost 200 words more than Keanu Reeves spoke in the nearly three hours of John Wick: Chapter 4.) But every single one of them is gold.

Before diving into analysis of the performance and character, let me briefly enumerate some of my favorite Brandt moments. There is his highly uncomfortable forced laugh in the early scene where Bunny offers The Dude oral sex for a thousand dollars. There is the grandiosity with which he opens the doors to the Big Lebowski’s study and the solemn lachrymosity with which he hangs his head as the Big Lebowski proclaims, “Strong men also cry.” The magnum opus of nonverbal performance comes in the limo scene in the middle of the film, with his squirmy expression and posture while The Dude and the Big Lebowski verbally spar. And then there are his many great lines, unimpressive on the page but with sparkling comedic delivery. They include: “Well, Dude, we just don’t know,” “Her life is in your hands, Dude,” “This is our concern, Dude,” and “We had not considered that, Dude.”