The Big Lebowski ala Shakespeare (and the Coen Brothers do True Grit)

During the first Dubya term I wrote a Shakespearean play called King George II : A Drownéd Man, A Fool, and a Madman and billed it A Shakespearean Tramedy. It was written for a creative writing class, for an assignment called the Subversive Project, and I had a blast. While mostly fiction, all the lines of the King are actual Dubya quotes (I mean, really, he provided the stuff jokers are made of). It remains obscurely online at http://www.juniorleeklegseth.com/king_george_ii/.

I was watching The Big Lebowski tonight (again) and went to IMDB to read about it (again). While following links I found that the Coen Brothers are remaking True Grit with Jeff Bridges as Cogburn and Matt Damon as La Boeuf (more at IMDB). I'm trying to imagine True Grit run through the CB mindset...

Anyway, I also found a link to an article that told of screenwriter Adam Bertocci's rewriting of The Big Lebowski as a Shakespearean play called Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. Read it here.

The opening goes like this:

CHORUS
In wayfarer’s worlds out west was once a man,
A man I come not to bury, but to praise.
His name was Geoffrey Lebowski called, yet
Not called, excepting by his kin.
That which we call a knave by any other name
Might bowl just as sweet. Lebowski, then,
Did call himself ‘the Knave’, a name that I,
Your humble chorus, would not self-apply
In homelands mine; but, then, this Knave was one
From whom sense was a burden to extract,
And of the arid vale in which he dwelt,
Also dislike in sensibility;
Mayhap the very search for sense reveals
The reason that it striketh me as most
Int’resting, yea, inspiring me to odes.