The awards season was swinging along too and Fargo was receiving a lot of attention. Schoolcraft and I spent much of our time with the publicity people at Grammercy, who were beginning to really push the movie. We also answered plenty of interview requests and public speaking requests with the customary corporate line, “They’d love to but they’re smack dab in the middle of pre-production for their next picture.” Around the production office there was a buzz about what might happen when Oscar time came round, a gleam in the eye of all those easily seduced by the glamour and glitz. But the boys couldn’t have cared less. Joel was much more interested in whether Frances was winning awards, and Ethan, the consummate man-behind the-curtain, wanted everything to be over as quickly and painlessly as possible.

For me, everything was still clicking. In late January, ten days before production began, I got a package from home. It was mid-morning in California, sunny and 70. It was a box from Espositos, my favourite local pork sausage store on Court Street, in Brooklyn. Compliments of my brother. And what sorely missed treats they were! My appetite started to soar: prosciutto, smoked mozzarella, a block of Parmigiano-Reggiano, sopprasata, calamata olives, roasted peppers. I could barely conceal my glee-all that authentic, savoury goodness in one package. I started jumping around with visions of that night's meal when I got a call from my homeboy Ray. He was going to be in town for the weekend. Everything was looking just wunnerful.

I was so amped that I skipped out early for lunch and joined a group of the guys from construction to shoot some hoops. They had started pick up games a few weeks earlier and I was grateful for the outlet. This Mexican kid, Phil, had a lollipop three-point shot that was fairly accurate; the rest of the dudes were just bodies, out there giving it beaucoup hustle, blowing off midday steam. Then there was the nemesis. He was a bit older than me, dirty blond hair, and work boots. A real dipshit Los Angelino cracker with a pretty good game and an avid dislike for anything that had to do with New York. Since I was a walking advertisement for my hometown, always rocking my Yankee cap, often wearing a John Starks or a Pat Ewing jersey, he didn't like me even a little bit. I got nothing but dirty looks from this guy for weeks and that only peppered up my game.

Not to say that I was any kind of Basketball Jones, but I played an East Coast style of ball, aggressive, challenging, vocal. If you aren't that good, at least have some chutzpah. This guy didn't like me before we started playing, so my game really got under his skin, especially when I wound up taking advantage of the lesser players and ended up on the winning side. On this particular day, I was on fire. My team won the first two games and every horseshit shot I tossed up found its way through the net. (They even had nets in California!) My nemesis was livid. We decided to play on last game. He was itching to beat me just once, and his squad built up a quick 9- 3 lead in a game to 11. It was just before noon and we were getting winded under that sun, but I found a last bit of energy and started hogging the shots and soon it was 9 -7.

The game was getting very physical and the dipshit and I were banging bodies. The last thing he wanted was to blow this lead and have to live with my NYC cockiness another day. The two of us were under the basket when someone missed a shot. We both went up for the ball. Our faces were right next to each other. Then we came down. I heard a pop and felt my right side give. I had turned my right foot on one of his workboots. And that was that.

The game ended. The guys stood around me with that helpless sense of not-knowing what to do, waiting for the injured party to indicate how serious this all may be. I knew I couldn't walk on it, so I threw my arms around two of the guys and we made our way back.

As we approached the studio, Sree and his brother and sister came running and hollering about when was I going to visit them for lunch. Then screaming, what happened, what happened? I told them to make way and that I would see them later. "He ain't comin' to play today," someone chimed in. I was set down just outside the first soundstage on the back of a truck in the hot sun. My comrades left and someone was supposedly rounding up some help.

Turns out that the bastard was broken; fractured in two places. The only thing the medics wanted from me was to know what movie I was working on. They brought a specialist in who put my leg in a soft cast and told me to keep it elevated before they gave it a proper cast on Monday morning. I would be on crutches for six to eight weeks. Maybe this was a test to keep my mind distracted from not smoking. I was desperate for a rationalization.

When I finally get back to the studio, the place was bare (the entire crew having been holed up in a production meeting for hours). As it started to get dark and people began trickling out of the meeting, bleary-eyed I waited for Joel and Ethan. All anyone was interested in was what kind of painkillers I was prescribed. When I said Viccadin, they all had a mouth-watering look in their eyes. It was a small consolation.

I saw Joel first and he put his arm around me and started laughing with sympathy when I told him the diagnosis. A few minutes later, Ethan came around. He approached slowly and whatever he wanted to say was held back. He winced and scrunched his face and then slowly he said, "Did it...Did it smart?"

The next week saw the crew almost double. Activity, which had been steady for so long, suddenly exploded. It was hard to take, cooped up in our little office with nothing to do but think, and think some more. I couldn’t get the boys a fucking cup of coffee because of my leg and I felt like a helpless putz. It rained all week, which made getting around even more tenuous; not only did I have to worry about slipping and breaking my ass, but I had to wrap plastic bags around my foot in order to protect the cast. The rain wasn’t a good sign of things to come for the shoot either. I saw Schooly D. take over efficiently and enthusiastically. I brooded silently, envious as hell. But by week’s end I had enough to keep me busy getting the cutting room organized and, though things weren’t ideal, I was adjusting.

The day after the Super Bowl, shooting of The Big Lebowski began on location. I spent the day setting up my sunny new digs. The rain had stopped. In fact it wouldn’t rain again for the rest of my stay in LA. My disposition was improving and I was getting the hang of scooting around on crutches.

My pal Sree was fascinated with the cast and the crunches, and had me repeat my war story of how I broke my foot, endlessly. After lunch, I popped into the office of Gilly Rubin, Cameron's second-in-command, and asked how things were going. "Badly," she said pointedly and asked me to sit. Out of nowhere, the hammer fell.

She told me how the IA was screwing me out of synching the dailies after all. I was sober and calm--the sinking feeling of dread came later. When Cameron returned from a remarkably short day (first shot at 9.30 a.m., wrap at 3.42 p.m.--short and sweet, the way Joel and Ethan like it, Gilly told me), he elaborated. "The IA claims we did business in bad faith; they had agreed to make an exception with you because you had been working for the guys. We didn't specify how long you had been with them and furthermore we weren't asked. But since it has only been since September, it won't cut it." On top of this, you have to have worked for thirty days on a local picture in order to qualify for the rotary, or lottery, which then allows you to be simply considered by the local union.

Cameron was even-handed, mulling over a cigar. "We're still looking into the cost effectiveness of our options." I must have looked like a deer in headlights, the panic spread broadly over my kisser. Cameron, in his best straight-man delivery, then gives me the news that truly sets me on edge. "The boys want you to go down to the set tomorrow, mid-morning, and talk to them."

Cue cliffhanger organ music. It must be bad. Otherwise I would have already spoken with the guys. I could see my worst fears realized: being sent back to New York on crutches in the middle of winter, a total failure. That evening I continued to cave in on myself and brace myself for the heave-ho. My roommate Greg G. breathed some lightness to the situation.

"Jesus, AI, these guys obviously like you enough by now, don't you think? They brought you out here, you go over and hang out with them socially, they even hooked you up with medical for your foot-they know that was a complete accident. Believe me, they aren't going to kiss you off."

He was smiling almost wistfully. "Look at you, AI. No one is going to fire you hobbling around like Tiny Tim, man. Tiny Tim doesn't get fired, AI."

I took a Viccadin, and spent the rest of the evening fighting off all the temptations to turn on myself and play victim. I was going to put some trust in these guys--they had shown me no reason to doubt anything, but now it was something of a test to believe in myself. I mentioned earlier that what I really liked about the boys was that they always treated me like an adult, and expected nothing less in return. Perhaps this whole bind I found myself in was a blessing in disguise; a golden opportunity to conduct myself with some integrity and not ask to be taken care of like a kid.

I was a victim of circumstance--none of it was a reflection of my performance--so why feel rejected, or judged? All that was in my head. The painkillers mellowed me out, and I truly believed the way in which I handled myself the next day was more important than anything I had done on my way to becoming a man. Dare I hop on to that set believing in myself, head up, with some backbone? "You're going to be fine there, Al." Greg G. told me before he went to bed. I was beginning to think, job or no job, that he was right. The next morning I made it to the set. They were shooting the exteriors for the Lebowski house at a mansion in Beverly Hills. When the first set-up was done, the guys pulled me aside. "Step into our office, Hoppy," Ethan said.

Joel broke it down gingerly. Basically, I was the victim of circumstance that I thought I was, and there wasn't much they could do about it. The deal with the IA had gone sour and they felt badly about it. My injury was a real act of fate that further put me in the sap suit. Shit, everyone wears the threads at some point or another, and, for whatever reasons, this was my time to be tested like so.

Joel put his arm around me in a rare moment of physical affection and then slowly started to laugh reflexively. "We feel really horrible." "I'm fucking fucked, right?" Ethan, peaking up, started to laugh too. Grief support in its purest form.

The next day I drove to another location in Beverly Hills, this time where they were shooting the interiors of the Lebowski mansion. I sat in the courtyard of this joint with Joel next to me on the ground, Cameron seated a few feet away on the floor as well. Ethan stood. Joel had his hand on my shoulder. He was saying, "And you know you could be sitting up the cutting room back in New York a few weeks earlier perhaps, before we finish shooting out here, like the beginning of April."

"Yeah definitely, definitely," I said like a metronome.

Then Joel gave me the opportunity to tell them to fuck off. "That is, ya know, if you still want to. .."

I didn't let the last note trail off too long before I jumped in with real enthusiasm. I thought it was cool of him to offer me the dignified out. "Of course, of course, definitely, definitely."

There was a pause. It was terribly awkward-the kind of moments that Joel and Ethan like to situate their characters in. We were all squirming a bit. I picked the moment to do my thing. "Look," I said, "I know you guys are not responsible, but I want to ask if I could get any kind of severance pay, just 'cause I need to keep eating and. .."

"No, man, we feel horrible. We do feel responsible. We're the ones who dragged you out here."

No one really knew what to do. I was in the company of men all right. We were still and quiet the way men can be with each other. I went on auto-pilot, turned on the tough-upper-lip bit, and chimed some jokes around. The tension of the meeting was over, the business was done. I had to struggle to keep my composure; shit, how pathetic would it be to be stuck on crutches bawling my eyes out?

They agreed to get back to me on some sort of severance and I would finish the week out. I picked myself up on the sticks and steadily made my way off after saying good bye with a smile. I moved past the craft service area where there were crew people I hardly knew; they were all wearing shades and looking the part to the nines and I realized where the fuck I was: far from home, limping on crutches, canned. I felt completely alone.

Perhaps I had misjudged these guys and this all had something to do with the way I asked for a little more money upfront. Or maybe it was the way I wore my pants, hanging off my ass.

When I got to my car I saw Frances and her son Pedro. I hadn't seen her since she'd arrived to stay with Joel until the end of the shoot. I suppose I wanted a shoulder to play the sap on. But in her ubiquitous manner, Frances kept it moving along, kept it short and sweet; letting me know, in effect, that this is business, and she's not going to get involved in the middle of it. She liked me too, but I had to go through this alone and that's that.

This all rushed into my head as I sat in the car, my right leg hoisted onto the passenger's seat, as she and Pedro walked off, down the hill towards the mansion. I was resentful and hurt. It was another beautiful day. But because of what she wouldn't provide, she was giving me a lot. It was, in retrospect, a sobering but classy move.

Jeez, no matter where you are, February always turns out to be the worst. The struggle was in fighting the bitterness. I was up and down, up and down. I started painting each day, and when I wasn’t working I drove around Santa Monica and enjoyed the local scene (and there is something to be said about chilling in a neighborhood during the day, when you’d normally be at the office). I found a studio that held cheap figure drawing classes twice a week, and to top it off I met a lovely young creature on Main Street. More than anything, she helped me keep occupied.

My friends at the Indian joint in West Hollywood were touchingly generous. They offered to feed me as long as I needed, free of charge. They even went out and bought me a dress shirt in Chinatown. As for Greg G., my sole source of support on that difficult night a few weeks earlier, he too was fresh out of work. Together, we adhered to a pretty strict drug regimen to keep our minds limber.

I wrangled some dollars from workers’ compensation, and signed up for unemployment. I decided to keep the car, even if it set me back financially. All of a sudden, whenever I was driving around the neighborhood, I’d slip in the Chet Baker. With nothing much to do but suck on an Orange Crush soda, I was making the down-and-out-scene. As long as I could, I would hang on to that car.

Damn, maybe I was becoming one of them. Life was imitating art, and I realized that I had adopted the lifestyle and disposition of the Dude: mellow, unfazed and consistently ready to roll with the punches.

If anything was a real struggle, it was keeping up appearances on the set. I knew it was important to stay in earshot of Lebowski, even if it was hard to swallow. Every couple of days, I called into Schoolcraft at the office, and followed that by trips to the set, where I had to strain every muscle in my face in order to keep the protocol grin intact. I pushed myself through thisexercise out of faith in Joel and Ethan's word: I knew I would be with them back in New York, when all these hot-shit LApeople, who I was pitifully spiteful about, were a distant memory. I knew if I did these simple acts to stay in touch, they would respect me more.

I made it through the first week with my pride intact. On the ninth day ofexile I drove to the Hollywood Hills, where the casting director, John Lyons, was hosting a small cocktail party. John was pan of the New York contingency, so it was always refreshing to be around him. The house he was renting had been Marion Davis's greenhouse at some point. I parked just outside and sat in the car for ten minutes, virtually paralyzed. Thenotion of socializing seemed perfectly nauseating. And after only a half an hour of sitting in the corner like the party cripple, I thanked my host and headed home. Shit, at least I made the effort, but boy was I ever over the whole thing? When I got back to Santa Monica there was a message from Gilly Rubin to call her in the morning.

Nestled underneath my newfound toughness, some optimism and excitement fanned alive. I went to bed without breathing a word of it to anyone (a first for the loquacious Heb from NYC). Sure enough when we spoke the next morning, Gilly informed me that I was needed back at work. I returned with a whatever-whatever nonchalance, and was kept occupied by a series of high security office duties. As fate would have it, the local assistant who had been hired, Lisa Mozden, turned out to be a great gal, who made me more than somewhat welcome in the cutting room to check out the dailies. I continued to concentrate on healing my foot and found myself back in the fold at the same time. Everything was working itself out. I was welcomed back with open arms by the production staff.

Towards the end of February, three weeks of night shooting began. It wasn'tparticularly easy for anyone working on set, especially since LA is inherently a day place. The Santa Ana winds were in town and were erotic and lovely. The moon was full when I popped by the night location, a bowling alley on Santa Monica Boulevard. I had been to the doctor earlier in the day and was pleased to hear that the cast was only going to remain for two more weeks, instead of the anticipated four. By this time I was doing tricks with the crutches and getting around with no problems. I saw Ethan wearing a hooded sweatshirt, holding a cup of coffee.

“God, I haven't seen you for almost a week.” He was warm and personable. Asinconsequential as it may seem, that brief greeting let me know that all was well and indeed back to normal. It was a wonderful relief for me. (Aweek and a half later, when they were shooting about sixty miles north of LA, and were unable to screen the rushes, Ethan called me at home from theset asking how the dailies looked. He just wanted to know that nothing horrendous had happened, but it further demonstrated his trust in me.) It was funny to me that such a thing should be settled in such an unspoken manner. But though the boys were definitely Jewish, and most certainly New Yorkers, they weren't Jewish New Yorkers. There was no mistaking the Minnesota in them. They expressed emotions in non-verbal terms. The silences were as significant as any words they could use.

With the winds blowing, and everyone dressed for a chilly night, I was privately overjoyed. I asked if he was looking forward to the Oscars, knowing full well he was dreading it like an eight-year-old hates being forced into a suit and dragged to another bar mitzvah. He told me, “No, it's gunna be fun,” but I saw right through it like the standard line it was to a question he'd been asked ad nauseam.

His eyes lit up “I'm ‘A-List’ though,” he boasted.

“So, what the hell is that?”

“It means that if we ever went out to eat, we could get a good table.”

“Shit, I told you this place wasn't half bad after all, man.”

One of the ADs beckoned him over and he drifted. I continued over to a row of director's chairs, where Tricia, Joel and Cameron sat. I'm grinning and Cameron smiles back.

“Good to see ya, Chester,” he shot at me.

It was always great to see Tricia, who was all snug in her pea coat, and I slid into the seat next to her and hung out for a spell.Fran showed up for a visit after a spell and she was a live wire of energy. She was carrying aportfolio of possible outfits from Calvin Klein.

“Are you going to wear any of them,” I asked.

“No,” she said with a wink, “but I could use the fabric!”

Frances, whether she liked it or not, was the centre of attention wherever she turned. It was impossible to escape in this town, and I could see that it was grinding her down. There was a charge about her and it looked like she needed the energy just to fight off the people at Grammercy, who were pushing her to promote her chances for the Oscar. Nothing about the townwas private ornormal any more, and she longed to be home in New York. I didn't envy her.

Each night I went home and hung out with people who had nothing to do withthe movie business, but for Franny the town was nothing but showbiz glare (Joel and Ethan kept themselves shielded as best they could. I'm sure it's easier if you are not an actor).

“You know, they want me to do Letterman,” she was saying.

Tricia leaned forward and prodded, “Are you gunna do it?”

Fran was incredulous. “No! I think it's so embarrassing. Even when people are good on those shows, it's embarrassing. Thinking, I'm sooo important. No, no, God I hate it.”

“Yeah, that's Eth's thing. You get nominated and if you don't play along with the whole game, they think you’re an ungrateful asshole.”

“It's a catch-22.”

More than anything I think the guys were irritated by the hoopla because it distracted them from Lebowski. They were not ones to bitch and moan on the job. Things went along so smoothly that it would have been a surprise to learn that they even knew about the circus, much less that they were one of its focal points. But we were still making a movie. Deakins's photography was saturated with warm yellows and oranges, especially in the night scenes. It was hard to have a sense of what the overall “look” would be, but the colors reflected what I had been exploring in my painting, so I felt in sync with what they were going after.

Watching Bridges was a textbook lesson in screen acting. He was incredibly focused and eager about the whole filmmaking process. The Dude gets his ass booted around throughout the picture, but apparently Bridges never complained about anything he had to go through. I watched John Turturro playing his scene in the bowling alley one afternoon; his character is angrily confronting Bridges, Goodman and Buscemi, who were off-screen in the shot. But the three hung around, instead of their stand-ins, and sat next to Roger Deakins, who was operating the camera, and they ran the scene. As Turturro did his best impression of a Mexican, I saw that Bridges was nodding his head, following the flow of what Turturro was saying and I realized he wasn't Jeff the actor, he was the Dude. It was uncanny.

Not long after my cast was removed, I enjoyed taking my first unadulterated shower in six weeks. I remained on the sticks for a few days, and then graduated to a spiffy-looking geriatrics cane, and began physical therapy. The cast never did get wet, and the damn thing never caused me any problems. About a week after it was cut off, Ethan had minor surgery on an old knee problem. The fellas from the prop department supplied him with a cane. I looked forward to heading over to the set after work, they were shooting the interiors at the bowling alley and laughing at his ass. Gimpy La Deuce.

Around mid-morning a rumor started spreading around the office: Goodman had injured his foot. Some said he broke it- the same injury as mine. Speculation started running like wild fire. They still had to shoot his bowling scenes; was this going to fuck everything up? By the time I got to the set, I was tickled pink ‘cause I was the gimp on the mend, and there’s Gimpy La Deuce, wearing overalls, moving around with the cane, but hardly using it. Goodman has his boot in a cast and had crutches, though he was hardly using them either. That man must’ve been on some serious horse pills. No way he has the same injury as me, I thought, otherwise he’s superman. (As it turns out he just tore some ligaments, and they only had to reschedule one day of shooting.)

I was disappointed to find that the set was as calm as normal. Cameron and Gilly were the exception, working the cell phones, looking a little panicky. The guys were milling around like usual.

Joel, with a cup of tea in his hand, came up to me and says, “You heard what happened to Goodman?”

“Yeah, how are you feeling?”

“Good. How are you feeling?”

That was it. So much for hysteria. He shrugged and said, “You know, what are you gunna do? We gotta wait and see how bad it is, but what can you do?”

A few days before the Academy Awards, the co-star of their picture having just potentially seriously injured himself, made this moment ripe for theatrics at the very least, but for Joel and Ethan, it was all in a day’s work.

My boy Joey La P was in town visiting on Oscar night, and he made his grandpa’s famous pasta fagioli as we suffered through the usual hamminess offered up. It was nice to see the guys win [Best Original Screenplay], if only to see them squirm before the masses; the real delight, though, was when Franny, as expected, took the Best Actress award. Her speech was sweet, but really turned me on was the strut to the podium. That was strictly New York, baby.

I also liked catching Joel and Ethan in the interview room after the show.They were stuffed all fancy-like in their best bar mitzvah threads, sheepishly answering questions. Joel did the talking.

At one point there was a question concerning their artistic passion. Ethanstepped forward and started chuckling to himself, his shoulders bouncing. Joel looked on, clearly uncomfortable, waiting for his brother to share what was so funny with everyone else. Ethan kept on chortling and then managed to say, “Well, you know, you come in to work each day...some days are good, some days are bad.” That was all he could articulate, so he continued laughing. Joel, perhaps looking to cut any confusion this answer may have generated, leaned in and said, “Eth's the passionate one.” Franny then came on stage and saved the day before it got any more painful.

But what Ethan said essentially hits their creative process on the head. It's the work, and the working-stiff approach they carry towards the work, that has made them successful. I suppose he laughed so much because it is such a simple answer to a question that inspires the most pretentious explanations. Strikes and gutters. Ups and downs. 'Nuff said. There were still a few weeks of shooting left when I packed up and made my way back to New York. I had done well with the rehabilitation on my foot and was ready for the ultimate test: the pavements of NYC. {1 had tested it out OK playing volleyball on the beach, and not only did it feel much improved, but I was all sandlot honorable mention out there.) I had completed roughly a hundred small paintings and felt it had been the most liberating work I had ever done; there was a playfulness in exploring the rich color fields of the region that became infectious, and it was as happy a time as I've ever had painting.

The only rub to saying goodbye was breaking the news to Sree. I had startedto brace him weeks earlier. I knew he was wise beyond his years, but he was still a child. The day I left, we were hanging out on the comer, and I was taking some last picturesof him. He kept pulling on the camera, and coercing me to pose for just one more shot. We both knew what washappening, and I think he understood the sadness that we may never see each other again. Even if we did, it would be altogether different. But there were no tears. I told him, “Hey, cockarovich, you take care of your family now. Your brother and sister too, even if they are a pair of knuckleheads. And hey, Sree, listen to me, hey, look at me: don't you take no shit off nobody, OK? OK, then.”

He looked up at me obediently, and then ran off fast, dirt kicking up behind him.

With that I said goodbye to Sree Batchu Harry Laxmie Naraniea. Both Joel and Eth were jealous that I got to go home firstand although I was sad to say to goodbye to some folks in LA, boy, was I ever ready to return home to the fold.