Preview: Jeff Bridges Almost Told the Coens No

Jeff Bridges almost turned the Coens down for The Big Lebowski, he says in the new American Masters doc on PBS. Check out this preview.

In the Jan. 12 PBS doc Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides, which contains True Grit excerpts and constitutes part of his late-breaking Oscar campaign, Bridges says he got no contact high when the Coens showed him the script they wrote for him. “I said, what is this? This is like nothing that I’ve ever done before. This is like — did you watch one of my high school parties?” His nephew Jordan Bridges says, “They just dailed into something very intrinsic to his personality.”

“I had that kind of resistance,” Jeff Bridges says, “drag-me-to-the-party kind of thing. But I’m sure glad I went to that party, man.” Also present for the PBS Bridges doc party: Terry Gilliam, Taylor Hackford, Peter Bogdanovich, Robin Williams, John Goodman and Bridges’ potential best actor rival Robert Duvall.