Jeff Bridges Caught Everyone Off Guard With a Perfect Video Game Joke

Jeff Bridges is a funny guy! It’s why movies like The Big Lebowski have fans so obsessed with his work. But prior to bringing the Dude to life, Bridges had a wide-ranging career, from serious dramas and thrillers to one of the first movies about video games. As someone who considers him my pseudo-dad (because as a child I thought that my dad was Jeff Bridges because of how much they looked alike), I love that people are now all praising Bridges and his career in the way they always should have been.

While The Big Lebowski is, arguably, his most famous role, it wasn’t until his Oscar win for the movie Crazy Heart that people started praising him for the talent he’s always been. Coming from a family of actors, Bridges made a name for himself outside of his father Lloyd Bridges and his brother Beau Bridges through his choice in characters, which includes the 1982 film Tron.

Recently, at The Hollywood Reporter roundtable for actors that included Bridges, Pedro Pascal, Damon Idris, Kieran Culkin, Michael Imperioli, and Evan Peters, they started talking about video games, primarily because Pascal stars in HBO’s series adaptation of The Last of Us as Joel Miller. They were talking about playing video games and getting addicted to them, and Bridges asked what they were talking about. Pascal told him, and then he said, “Because I got sucked into a video game,” and when Pascal asked “Which one?” Bridges responded with “Tron.”

Yes, he worked the plot of Tron into their conversation as a joke, with perfectly dry delivery, so no one saw it coming. The first movie adaptation of video game was the 1993 movie Super Mario Bros., but Tron really did show audiences what we could do with the world of video games, and it was an introduction to Bridges for many of us.

And his character did literally get sucked into the game.

My favorite part about this is that you know these actors are just eating themselves alive knowing that they were caught off guard by Bridges’ beautiful joke. The plot of Tron has Kevin Flynn (Bridges) getting taken into a video game by a program he was trying to hack into.

The thing about Tron is that this movie is so incredibly good and there’s a reason we all still love it. For a quick story, in college I went to a dance club thing for students, and while I was there, it was ’80s themed and they made the mistake of having Tron play on big screens next to the DJ. I was a) furious that they muted the movie for this man’s bad remixes and b) didn’t dance at all. All I did was stand there and watch Tron. Because it’s just THAT good.

So here’s to you, Jeff Bridges. This was brilliant, and by god do I love you, pseudo-dad.

(featured image: Walt Disney Studios)