SLIDE 4: THE OFFICIOUS EXTRA (THE BIG LEBOWSKI)

Just as Hoffman could be slovenly and unkempt, so too could he play prissily neat. In the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Hoffman plays a minor, but in no way forgettable, role, as the Big Lebowski’s unctuous aide Brandt, who dismisses the Dude with such persnickety German precision it makes you cringe. But Hoffman’s real genius is not to stand apart, but to fill out the Coen comic caravan. In Variety, Todd McCarthy marked how they all worked together: “As the blustery Walter, Goodman is vastly entertaining, Moore is bracingly assertive in a nice change of pace role, and Philip Seymour Hoffman milks surplus laughs out of his part as Lebowski’s officious assistant.”