Just For Laughs is a comedy festival Montreal puts on every year, presumably just for sh*ts and giggles. And this year the fest will play host to a live read of The Big Lebowski, directed by Jason Reitman, and starring Michael Fassbender (Michael F. Assbender, to FilmDrunk readers). Fassbender will play The Dude, a role that initially was supposed to go to Seth Rogen. Granted, I haven’t seen Seth Rogen’s penis, but I’m going to call this an upgrade.
From Entertainment Weekly:
“I heard from Simon Kinberg, who’s in Montreal now producing X-Men: Apocalypse, that not only is Fassbender an enormous fan of The Big Lebowski, but he apparently quotes it daily,” Reitman tells EW. Joining the cast at the July 24 event will be Patton Oswalt, a veteran of Reitman’s L.A. Live-Reads, in the role of Walter Sobchak, originated by John Goodman.
This is the second time the Up in the Air and Juno director has produced a live performance of the script, having done it in Los Angeles in 2012 with Seth Rogen as The Dude and Rainn Wilson as Walter.
I want to rip on the idea of famous people reading movies we know onstage as entertainment, but God help me, Fassbender and Patton reading The Big Lebowski sounds great. That’s a celebrity lip-synch competition I can get behind. And Montreal’s a cool city; you think they mind if I do a J?
By the way, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: How the hell did John Goodman not get an Academy Award nomination for that role?