The Coen Brothers called me in for The Big Lebowski. That is a true story. They needed somebody to show Jeff Bridges how to get stoned on camera. Jeff could act anything in the world but he could not act stoned because he had never been stoned. So they called the one guy in New York City who had been stoned on camera more times than anybody in the history of the motion picture.

I was Jeff Bridges' stunt double for getting stoned. That was my job. I would get baked before the take and show him the movements. The way you hold the joint. The way your eyes go half shut. The way you lean back into the couch like the couch is the only thing in the world that understands you. Jeff would watch me do it and then he would do it better than I ever did because that is what a great actor does. He takes the real thing and makes it look like acting and then makes the acting look real again.

Nobody knows this story. It is not in the credits. It is not in the DVD extras. It is not on the internet. I was the uncredited marijuana consultant on the most famous stoner movie ever made and I did not get a dime for it. I got stoned for free on a movie set in Los Angeles and that was the payment.

The Dude abides. That is what they say about the character. But the real dude was me. The real dude was a guy from the Lower East Side who had been abiding since 1966. Abiding on street corners. Abiding in parks. Abiding in the back of police cars. The Dude was not a character. The Dude was a Tuesday.

See also: The Hallway — where you stop being the performer. The Venue — the best venue has no walls. CBGB Is a Clothing Store — the room that became a t-shirt.