JEFF BRIDGES SURFS THE MUSICAL WAVE

Jeff Bridges voices a surfing dude with musical talents in animated film Surf’s Up.

The Big Lebowski star Jeff Bridges is taking on another kind of dude, hanging 10 as the surfing penguin geek Big Z in the animated film Surf’s Up. There are no singing or dancing penguins in this film, but surfing penguins taking us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Penguin World Surfing Championship.

Because Bridges is so musical there are ukulele playing penguins. The actor who put out his own original music on the CD Be Here Soon with his grade school buddy suggested Z get a tune.

“I came up with this thought. I said, ‘well maybe the geek plays a musical instrument when he’s around a camp fire.’ And I said I’ve got a buddy who’s a great songwriter John Goodwin, he’s my oldest friend; we go back to the fourth grade. And he writes, he can write like this. And I threw this idea to see what he comes up with and the director said sure, ‘we could give it a shot,’ and he came up with this little ukulele song and he wrote it in about a half an hour or something. And boom it’s in the movie so that put a smile on my face and John Goodwin’s smiling too.”

Jeff is now completely bald to compliment his long gray beard getting ready to shoot Obadiah Stane in Iron Man. Surf’s Up also features the voices of Shia Labeouf, Jon Heder, and James Woods.