Character Analysis
Slick, white suit-wearing Jackie Treehorn is exactly the kind of guy you'd expect to find in the pornography business: wealthy, suave, old, and uncannily confident. Although he's a very minor character in The Big Lebowski, he's notable for being the employer of the toughs who set the ball rolling by peeing on The Dude's rug. Like many things in The Big Lebowski, he's also an amusing throwback to a different era: his living room is a sleek mixture of vinyl and concrete, and his naked "garden party" is evocative of the love-ins of the late 1960s. He claims to be an artist and producer, but The Dude calls him on it—he's a porn guy who The Dude says "treats objects like women." (Well, you get the point.)
Treehorn insists on the value of what he does for a living:
TREEHORN: People forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.
THE DUDE: On you, maybe.
Like the Big Lebowski, Treehorn is a powerful man who eats people like The Dude for breakfast and has the police in the palm of his hand. He sends his thugs out to beat up The Dude when he thinks he's Bunny's husband. But even when he finds out who The Dude really is, he drugs him and disposes of him when he's done with him.
Treehorn seems to represent everything sleazy about Hollywood: ill-gotten wealth, objectification of women, and a glam lifestyle that masks a lot of thuggery and exploitation.