“Careful, man, there’s a beverage here!” - An ode to cult classics and the White Russian
There is no accounting for taste. Specifically, there is no accounting for the general public’s taste when it comes to cinema, cocktails or anything in-between. If this were the case, I’d, no doubt, be spending my Sunday night watching M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, with my nose in a pornstar martini. Of course, given the right time and place, taste can change, paving the way for yet another commercial failure to reach cult success.
In 1998, the Coen brothers, of Fargo fame, unveiled their California-noir-meets-trippy-detective comedy; The Big Lebowski, loosely inspired by The Big Sleep (1946). In the place of the latter’s hard-boiled, hard-drinking detective, we find the beatific, pot-smoking, bowling-obsessed “laziest man in Los Angeles County”, Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski (Jeff Bridges). It’s safe to say that The Big Lebowski flew over the heads of not only the general public, but those of the Sundance film festival audience, with one critic/fortune-teller from The Guardian calling it “an unsatisfactory film” that would “win no prizes”. TBL did win one prize actually, but more on that later.
First, this might be a good time to clarify what gives a piece of work ‘cult’ status. Sure it must be loved, have potentially bombed on release or been dismissed by the fortune tellers at The Guardian, but is that enough? In his essay about Casablanca and “the merits of imperfect art”, Umberto Eco says a cult film must “provide a completely furnished world so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were aspects of the fan’s private sectarian world, a world about which one can make up quizzes and play trivia games so that the adepts of the sect recognize through each other a shared expertise”. It’s this elusive and addictive quality of cult cinema that fuels the pub nights at which my friends and I can speak entirely in quotes from Inbetweeners, Step Brothers or Superbad, and leave more connected than ever before. If the phrases “Nice marmot”, “I can get you a toe”, or “The dude abides” mean anything to you, then consider your “private sectarian world” invaded by The Big Lebowski.
In James Bond fashion, the Coen brothers decided to assign their bathrobe-clad protagonist a trademark beverage. Sure, its a mere garnish in the genre-cocktail that is The Big Lebowski, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a serious reason for being there. We see ‘The Dude’ signing a check for 69 cents, dated September 11, while George Bush Sr talks war on TV news. - I’m sure that has a purpose… (conspiracy fans). So when a character drinks no less than 9 of the same cocktail in a film, it’s an invitation to look for a deeper meaning. As a result, here I am de-mystifying the ‘White Russian’, or as ‘The Dude’ often calls it; ‘The Caucasian’.
In 1949, a Belgian barman by the name of Gustave Tops invented the ‘Black Russian’ to honour Perle Mesta, then U.S. ambassador to Luxemburg. At its simplest, this was a 1:2 mixture of Kahlua and vodka stirred over ice. At the time, pre-cold war, the only vodka imported to the US was from Russia, hence the ominous name. The ‘Black Russian’ was likely the inspiration behind the birth of the ‘Espresso Martini’ in 1983, when an unnamed model asked London bartender, Dick Brasdell to ‘wake her up’ and ‘fuck her up’. With the only additions being a fresh shot of espresso, a splash of sugar syrup and a pair of high elbows, it’s a mystery that it took 30 years to come up with. It’s especially confusing considering that somewhere in the 1950’s, when ‘adult milkshakes’ were in full swing, somebody decided to add cream instead, completing the ‘White Russian’.
Generally, there’s two ways to construct the classic White Russian cocktail, one with rules, and one without:
The ‘Floater’ Method:
Combine 60ml Russian vodka and 30ml Kahlua (Or preferably Mr Black) in a short glass over ice.
Pour 30ml heavy cream over the back of a spoon into the drink.
Pro tip: If you want that ‘Guinness effect’, in a separate glass, use a milk frother to thicken the heavy cream (You can also do this by shaking it in a squeezy bottle with the spring from a hawthorn strainer)
The ‘Homogeniser’, or ‘The Dude’ Method:
Eyeball Vodka, Kahlua and ‘half & half’ at an approximate 2:1:1 ratio and stir over ice.
Pro tip: If heavy cream is unavailable, use milk, or the powdered equivalent.
Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski fits the Jewish folk tradition of the ‘Schlemiel’, a foolish, clumsy character to whom unfortunate things happen. It’s undeniably a trope that the Coen brothers rely on in most of their films, and it’s probably utilised to maximum extent in the majority of your other favourite late night, stoner comedies: Pineapple Express, Harold and Kumar, Dude Where’s My Car etc. Much like the classic fool, the schlemiel’s “antirational bias”, as Ruth R. Wisse (Harvard Professor of Yiddish Literature) says, “inverts the rational model underlying so much of English humor, substituting for it a messianic or idealist model instead”. Our man, ‘The Dude’s’ bias is undoubtedly directed against effort. I guess the point I’m making, is that what better drink for a man literarily confined to torpidity, than one that can be assembled at almost any bar with minimal labour (when done the ‘homogeniser’ way). Sure, there’s easier drinks to make, but you can have a lot more fun with a ‘White Russian’ than you can with say, a vodka soda. With the coffee liqueur and cream masking the alcohol in tiramisu-like fashion, I’d argue it’s closer to a dessert than a digestif. Particularly as a meal is too exhausting for a man of such perpetual ease (We don’t see The Dude eat once, bar a handful of mints at the mortuary), why not skip the main course and opt for something that covers all bases? In a post-Lebowski world, the ‘White Russian’ is a drink potentially enjoyed more for its associations than its taste. But “that’s just, like, [my] opinion, man”.
Finally, against all odds, post a pack of Sundance audience walk-outs, The Big Lebowski did, in fact, win one prize: The 1998 Golden Aries for Best Foreign Film, awarded fortuitously by the Russian Guild of Film Critics. Far out!
