The 1998 Coen Brothers comedy The Big Lebowski contains so many unforgettable scenes it would be difficult to enumerate them all. One of them, sure
The 1998 Coen Brothers comedy The Big Lebowski contains so many unforgettable scenes it would be difficult to enumerate them all. One of them, surely, is when Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) drive to the San Fernando Valley to retrieve a briefcase full of money they are convinced has been purloined by Little Larry Sellers (Jesse Flanagan), a middle schooler.
Walter and the Dude confront Little Larry with a piece of schoolwork left in the Dude’s vehicle – evidence they believe confirms Little Larry’s culpability in the disappearance of the briefcase.
What if the roles of the Dude, Walter, Little Larry – not to mention Brandt, Donny, Jesus Quintana, and The Stranger – had been played by female actors instead of male? That’s the possibility explored at Geena & Friends, an event last weekend at the 11th annual Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas, chaired by Oscar winner Geena Davis. Davis and fellow distaff stars Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brenda Song, Toks Olagundoye, and Alysia Reiner got together to perform scenes where the script was flipped: parts that, seemingly by default, have gone to men were instead interpreted by women.
Bentonville Film Festival
“Is this your homework, Lara? Is this your homework, Lara?” Olagundoye thundered at Song (playing schoolboy Larry reimagined as schoolgirl Lara). Taking on lines originally delivered by Goodman, Olagundoye’s character became exasperated, warning Lara, “You’re entering a world of pain, girl.”
The Geena & Friends event is meant as good fun for the actresses (and a couple of actors lending a hand, Thomas Sadoski and Macaulay Culkin), and as entertainment for the audience. But it also highlights the disproportionate number of roles in film and TV that go to men, subtly questioning whether that imbalance could be addressed by a gender-blind approach to casting — in cases where the role hasn’t been created with a particular gender in mind.
(L-R) Brenda Song and Geena Davis hug in a reimagined scene from ‘The Producers’ at the Geena & Friends event.
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
“I’m a big proponent of having more women, female characters, and more diversity in general in films and TV,” Davis said as she and the cast took part in a Q&A after the performance. “And this is basically to show that a lot of times it doesn’t matter whether it’s male or female – that parts could be played by a variety of types of people without you realizing.”
She added, “Our minds go to unconscious bias – ‘Oh, the plumber’s a man.’ And it doesn’t have to be. So that’s why we do it. And also because it’s silly and ridiculous.”
(L-R) Toks Olagundoye, Brenda Song, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Alysia Reiner perform a reimagined scene from ‘Stranger Things’ at the Geena & Friends event.
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
In addition to The Big Lebowski, Davis and friends performed scenes from Stranger Things, The Producers, Marvel’s Avengers (re-imagined as Avenge-Hers), and Talladega Nights.
“Roles that have been originally played by men, we actresses, women, are able to portray those roles,” Aghdashloo told Deadline just before the performance began. “According to the statistics, I believe only 33 percent of roles in movies are [played by] females; 77 percent of roles are men, male. So maybe this will help. And besides just getting together, reading the story together makes us all feel happy and useful because we’re all storytellers. We love to tell the stories no matter what.”
Reiner co-starred on Orange Is the New Black and Ms. Marvel. She has also appeared in The Diplomat, Shining Vale, and Law & Order. She’s a return participant in Geena & Friends.
“I love coming back because it is so important that we flip the script on how we tell stories,” Reiner told us. “And when we do that — when we flip people’s paradigms, when we flip people’s biases — we can see things in a new way. And sometimes storytelling has amazing impact at doing exactly that.”
(L-R) Shohreh Aghdashloo and Toks Olagundoye perform in a reimagined version of ‘Stranger Things’ at the Geena & Friends event.
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
“I have loved Geena Davis for many, many, many, many, many years. So that would be number one,” Olagundoye shared, explaining why she wanted to appear with Geena & Friends. “But also… I am currently working on my own project that’s trying to uplift voices. And I think that it’s really important for that to happen. So, when I heard that there was a huge festival being spearheaded by someone who I very much respect, I said, yeah, I’d love to be part of it.”
Olagundoye’s credits include the most recent iteration of Frasier, the TV adaptation of Fatal Attraction, Veep, and a great deal of voice actor work.
“A lot of the roles that I have booked as a Black actress were written for white people — for white women,” she comments. “I think it kind of goes to show you that it doesn’t really matter what you look like on the outside, it’s about the talent and the directing and the way that things are presented. It can really shift the way people perceive things. So, it’s important. Geena’s done a lot of really good work to make sure that more women are being seen in film and television, and I think this just adds to it.”
Two decades ago, Davis founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, a nonprofit that conducts “extensive research on the portrayal of diverse populations. This research serves as a cornerstone for informing and guiding content creators and decision-makers toward more inclusive storytelling practices.”
Davis writes on the Institute website, “There’s a lot of inequity in the world, but we have the power to fix representation in media overnight.”
Macaulay Culkin gives a push to Brenda Song in a reimagined scene from ‘Stranger Things’ at the Geena & Friends event.
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
The actresses, and their male counterparts Sadoski and Culkin, rehearsed a couple of times before performing for a packed audience.
“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Song joked. “All they said was ‘Geena Davis & Friends.’ And I was like, yes. What an icon. I am so incredibly honored to be sharing a stage with her… Hopefully moving forward, I feel like roles should be a little bit more genderless, especially when it comes to comedy. Because comedy is so much fun. It’s about having a good time. It’s about making people laugh. It’s about entertainment. And we shouldn’t be held back by our gender led roles.”
She added, “Funny is funny. And the funniest idea should always win, whether that be from a woman, a man, or if you’re yellow or green or purple. Funny is funny.”
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