2. The Big Lebowski (1997) Is The Big Sleep (1946)
The clue was always in the title with this one, but
The Big Lebowski (the Coen Brothers' strikingly "original" stoner movie classic) might not be so original after all, given that its structure is nearly identical to that of Raymond Chandler's
The Big Sleep, the movie version of which starred Humphrey Bogart as sardonic detective Phillip Marlowe. This was actually a rather clever move on the part of the Coens, given that the title of their movie clearly acknowledges the influence, though
Lebowski feels so unlike anything else that it's easy to miss. Still, the comparison isn't merely a tenuous one. In an interview, the boys themselves said: "We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story - how it moves episodically, and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery. As well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant." So both movies feature a wheelchair-bound millionaire, a plot point about pornographers, a poisoned drink, ransom notes, and people "tailing" one another. Not to mention we get a femme fatale in both movies who tries to derail the protagonist's agenda (and to adjust for period purposes, Marlowe's cigarettes are nicely traded out for the Dude's pot).