Julianne Moore: Selected Work is a retrospective in honor of the Academy Award-winning actress, who will be the special guest for Feature VII (April 24), a fundraiser benefiting Film Streams.
THE BIG LEBOWSKI is an iconic film and the characters in it are some of the most recognizable figures in pop culture history. Part of the film’s endurance is the Coen brothers’ knack for satire and parody.
In the film, Julianne Moore plays Maude, an avant-garde feminist artist. Moore’s performance is crucial to bringing Maude to life. When we meet her, Maude is naked and flying through her studio suspended from the rafters. She haphazardly splatters paint over a large canvas on the floor below, creating a Jackson Pollock-like painting. She speaks about sex with disarming frankness. Her severe haircut and affected manner of speech play on the stereotypes of elite artistes.
In an interview, Moore recalls the calculated efforts taken to craft the character of Maude: “Everything in the script has intention to the point that it’s rhythmic. I remember Ethan just coming up and giving a direction where he asked me to remove [a word]. Those are the kind of directions they would give because they have that much specificity.”
This specificity is what makes the Coens’ outlandish characters as funny as they are memorable, and what keeps moviegoers coming back to this film time and time again.
— Diana Martinez, Film Streams Education Director
