Coen brothers Joel and Ethan stated that their 1998 cult hit The Big Lebowski was intended to be “a [Raymond] Chandler kind of story” (Stone), somewhat like The Big Sleep. The finished product was, to the eyes of this writer, more of a [Thomas] Pynchon kind of story, somewhat like The Crying of Lot 49. Sure, there is connection between Lebowski and the works of Chandler, like how they involve “the characters trying to unravel a mystery, as well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant” (Stone), but this idea is also afloat in Crying, where the mystery (spoiler) is revealed to be just a hoax
