Feb. 17—The Dude is, fittingly, waiting in the bar of the Pin &Cue bowling alley in Whitefish. Sitting against the back wall, dark sunglasses on despite the dim lighting, Joel Welle is eyeing a plate of nachos on the table in front of him. The clothes he wears for his workday job as a teller at Whitefish Credit Union are in a blue duffle bag at his feet. He has swapped them out on his lunch ...

It was just about six months ago that Welle, 56, turned his resemblance to Jeff Bridges’ character Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski in Joel and Ethan Coen’s “The Big Lebowski” into a business venture, working in his off time as The Flathead Dude for events and charitable endeavors around the valley. But his transformation into the role began during the pandemic. He had let his hair and beard grow out as Covid-19 upended the world and suddenly saw The Dude looking back at him in the mirror.

Welle thought it would make a perfect Halloween costume, but that meant doing some research. Though a fan of other films directed by the Coen brothers, like “Raising Arizona” and “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou,” he had yet to see “The Big Lebowski.”

“If I’m going to do this for Halloween, I should watch the movie,” he recalled thinking. “I watched it and was like, this is amazing, this is brilliant.”