" No, he’s a sex offender. With a record. He served 6 months in Chino for exposing himself to an eight year old. "
Ok.
I think I recall Walter referring to Quintana as a “pederast”. Again, tho, just his allegation.
I am willing to give this a look, but I honestly don’t see how this can meet expectations. It’s more likely that the plane will hit the mountain.
This being a text medium, not sure if that’s a facetious “ok” or not but there’s plenty of real life and movie precedent for people being put on the sex offender list for less than reasonable reasons. In “Bad Bosses” one of the characters was registered as a sex offender for peeing within 500 ft of a school.
Bottom line though, I find it rather hard to believe anyone in Hollywood is making a movie that plays up the child molestor stuff, unless they are shooting for a deadly serious Oscar contender drama.
In Better Call Saul, the title character (but in his younger days known as “Slippin’ Jimmy”) was arrested for performing a “Chicago Sunroof”, which is apparently what it’s called when you take a shit into someone’s car via an open sunroof. Turns out the intended victim’s children were in the vehicle at the time. He was on the hook for some pretty serious sex offender charges, but his hotshot lawyer brother got him out of it.
Anyway, my point is, neither Saul Goodman nor Jesus Quintana are intended to be the “good guys”. But as protagonists, they will not be actual pedophiles/child molesters/rapists/etc. It will definitely end up being a funny misunderstanding, albeit with significant consequences for the main character.
As a side character, the writers of The Big Lebowski can leave us hanging on whether The Jesus is an actual child molester. Once he becomes the main character in his own movie, they can play with our expectations by dragging it out a little, but they cannot let the movie end without making it pretty clear the protagonist is not, in fact, a child molester.
I meant “OK” as in the actual quote more or less agreed with what you said. Not someone I’d invite to be my kids babysitter, but not what I’d call a “child molester” either.
Exactly. Thinking this movie would be about the whacky hijinks of a child molester is pretty out there.
Well said. It’s a safe bet that you’ve identified the way the spinoff will handle the issue.
In that seconds-long scene Turturro earned his salary (and enhanced his reputation). The look on his face evoked the character’s entire biography.
Will he be an antagonist or a protagonist?
The character and the two scenes he was in were just intended to be kind of a throw-away reference to the randomness surrounding the life of Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, just like his neighor doing his performance dance art show, or the bowling alley employee who looked like Saddam Hussein. The entire film is an intentional riff on The Big Sleep, which itself was described by the famous Bodley Crowder as
…one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused. And, to make it more aggravating, the brilliant detective in the case is continuously making shrewd deductions which he stubbornly keeps to himself. What with two interlocking mysteries and a great many characters involved, the complex of blackmail and murder soon becomes a web of utter bafflement. Unfortunately, the cunning script-writers have done little to clear it at the end.
The plot is deliberately convoluted and the denouement is nonsensical as homage to the source material, and to Chandler who authored the source novel and didn’t really care about plot. Chandler, was no Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain, writing intricately plotted hidden literary masterpieces; he was a true pulp author of hard boiled fiction with no greater aim than to shock and horrify the reader, and was clearly the source of inspiration for the Coens’ early work.
Anyway, if any Coen Brother’s character deserves a spin-off or sequel, it should be Ulysses Everett McGill. “Damn! We’re in a tight spot!”
Stranger
*Over the line!
*
My hair!
I kinda think Ulysses Everett McGill already had his vehicle, it was called O Brother Where Art Thou? But I could be wrong. Just seems OBWAT was already about him.
As for The Jesus, I think this could go really well or really bad. I don’t think they should try to make him a hero, or even terribly sympathetic, but there’s a guy who probably has one helluva backstory.
I’d watch it. Maybe just for the weird bowling.
If the Coen Brothers approve, I approve.
He was vaguely an antagonist in The Big Lebowski, but not the antagonist. In this spin off we’re discussing, the movie is supposedly about Jesus Quintana. A movie’s main character is the protagonist by definition, whether he’s the good guy or not.
The cast includes Bobby Canavale, Susan Sarandon and Sonia Braga. All three can pull off the sexual misfit roles and could even be more morally repugnant than The Jesus.
I never really took that scene in TBL as meaning that The Jesus really was a child molester, just that he was weird and kind of unlikable, and that The Dude, Donny and Walter didn’t know him well, and were willing to lend credence to any weird and wild rumors about him. Kind of like the absurd stuff you’d hear on the playground as a kid about any number of things- where the satan-worshippers congregated, what kid ate a turd, etc… none of which were actually true.
Mark it zero.
No way. Mark it eight, Dude.
You mark this film an eight and you’re entering a world of pain.
The film had a brief flashback clip of Jesus going door-to-door to notify his neighbors. Nothing to indicate that this was a Walter fantasy scene.
Also, Dude, “child molester” is not the preferred nomenclature. “Pederast”, please.
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And please let’s stop picking on Smokey: He’s fragile, very fragile.
There are lots of scenes in the movie that don’t necessarily reflect reality. There’s nothing to indicate that that scene was literally true.
Even so, as has been said, Jesus could have been listed as a sex offender and required to notify his neighbors for exposing himself inadvertently, and not actually be a child molester.