INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, the new Coens joint set in the early '60s Village folk scene, starring Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan

The alleged Dave Van Ronk basis seems unofficial at best.

http://nymag.com/movies/features/joel-ethan-coen-2012-3/

lol will watch the shit out of this

lol will watch the shit out of this

― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Someone made a coen bros just for ME

awesome

Even if this is bad I will like it

huh, cool

i have a feeling my mother will hate everything about this

you say that about everything

Someone made a coen bros just for ME

― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:09 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can tell it's 1961, bcz we don't have snow on Christopher Street anymore.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/first-look-oscar-isaac-carey-mulligan-justin-timberlake-on-set-of-the-coens-inside-llewyn-davis

god i hate ledes like this

Last year was bittersweet for fans of the Coen Brothers. While it was the first time in four years the prolific duo didn't have a film released, it was announced that they'd be returning to the music world in 2012 for their next feature "Inside Llewyn Davis" which would focus on the '60's Greenwich Village scene that included names like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Joni Mitchell among others.

"yes... 2011 was a bittersweet year for me... no new coen bros movie... but they announced a new one... what a year!"

learn to skip such ledes

you should have warned us

why bittersweet? there wasn't a coen brothers movie at all! surely the REAL fans would just be bitter, full stop

"goddamn these coen brothers"

ya but they announced a NEW one, adding just a tinge of sweetness to an otherwise bitter, bitter year

that's just soft

ashamed of beard?

http://www.indiewire.com/static/dims4/INDIEWIRE/1e4fa38/4102462740/thumbnail/680x478/http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/0b/3a8da05eaf11e19987123138165f92/file/timberlake-llewyn-davis.JPG

I did not know who Oscar Isaac was til I looked up the resume

as excited as i am to learn about this, i am slightly concerned about the timberlake. is he the lead role? the beard & hairdo are pretty great! but idk... timberlake. hm.

no, O.I. is presumably the lead. Timbo/Mulligan are a folk rivas of Davis's.

I'm glad JT looks diff enough that I can pretend it's not him.

ashamed of beard?

too easy

y'all JT haters are crazy, although I'm not sure the folk scene suits him very well. do love that he is biting my beard and peacoat look though.

not hating! just... unsure. i'm sure my concerns will prove unfounded because i really want this to be an awesome movie, but i've never seen JT act in a dramatic role. i have expectations that must me maintained!

I did not know who Oscar Isaac was til I looked up the resume

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:39 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

he's been the best thing about almost every movie ive seen him in (damning w/faint praise in some cases). i dunno where he came from but he seems to have a lot of promise

going to go ahead and assume you're talking about this: "Lenny the Wonder Dog - Fartman (as Oscar Isaac Hernandez)"

am wondering if F Murray Abraham's role is as folk club owner or Beat poet

also if title is Inside Daisy Clover hommage

beardo timbo does have a "young dave van ronk" look going on.

van ronk has an album called "Inside Dave Van Ronk", soooo...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GVKH99SKL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

likely just an allusion rather than some roman a clef bio tho

oh yeah, i doubt that the coens would do that kinda movie, but i'm assuming that's where they got the title...

great album btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5ngyALMRR4

yup

hey all right

yes yes yes

Hmmm. I hope this is one of those instances where the actual film is much, much better than the trailer, b/c this doesn't look so hot.

i didnt watch it but im already sold on the combo of subject and filmmakers

I'm honestly amazed at how much Oscar Isaac looks like my friend Jesse Poe of Tanakh.

dylan in the trailer, hmmm

It says Joel & Ethan Coen on the trailer, that's good enough for me.

i didnt watch it but im already sold on the combo of subject and filmmakers
yeah, me too.

dylan in the trailer, hmmm

I know. Why??

wiki sez: It is loosely based on Dave Van Ronk's posthumously published memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street. which is a good enough reason for me, coens an added bonus imho

so maybe tylerw was even more on the nose upthread than we thought

ya but they announced a NEW one, adding just a tinge of sweetness to an otherwise bitter, bitter year

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:31 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark

lol

xp yeah, looks like they even pretty much re-created that van ronk album cover

f murray!

abraham!

SHOOOOOUT...

I rewatched this recently and liked it much better than the first time I saw it. The first time I resented Llewyn for being so self-destructive, but the second time I saw him as a worthy tragic hero. It also compares favorably to the recent Dylan movie which was set in a similar milieu but is a much more linear story.

Also yeah, as discussed above I think Llewyn is pretty clearly based on Dave Van Ronk.

I enjoyed my rewatch last night too.

It takes a contemplative dip in the second half, especially during the dreamlike roadtrip sequence, which I'm a bit not-sure about, especially after the more comedic first half. I suppose it's necessary on a tonal basis that he isn't just chasing a cat around NYC for the whole film.

Not sure how much I empathise with Llewyn's character. There's a lot of Larry David-style "you reap what you sow" karma going on. He is a prick, even if it's explainable by his recent bereavement.

But on the whole this is a top tier film. The songs and performances alone are wonderful, and Please Mr Kennedy has a habit of popping round unexpectedly and wanting to stay the night in my brain. I loved a lot of the other songs too - 500 Miles, Queen Jane, the Auld Triangle...

ha, my friend's uncle wrote 'Please Mr. Kennedy'... she just lives up the road

I really love this movie. Llewyn is a prick, and also there's no reason to think he's especially talented — the movie makes clear that he's just OK, he's a minor player. That's one reason I think it's a lot more interesting both in concept and execution than the Dylan movie (which notably did not make any serious effort to give a real sense of the Village scene). It's about this legendary time and place, but its focus is resolutely unlegendary.

I think it's hard to tell if he is meant to be very talented, or whether he's just not the right shape for the cookie cutter.

On one hand he displays Anton Newcombe levels of self-sabotage. Sometimes there's logic to it, like signing his royalties away in favour of a one-off payment. Other times he's just a stubborn and contrary asshole in front of the few people who might be able to give him a leg up in life.

But he also encounters a fair bit of snobbery and racism in the industry: "Stay out of the sun for a while" etc. People want to sign the clean-cut cadet, the Aaran-sweatered harmony groups, the freshly-laundered duo couple...

I think it's not that he isn't talented. It's that he's unmalleable, self-important, a liability, and on top of that not what the industry deems to make them money.

It's interesting at the end, we see Bob Dylan coming up from behind abd performing an original song in an original style. The music industry plays things safe until it doesn't.

my dad was a big folkie in the early sixties, and I've inherited a bunch of his vinyl... there definitely was this clean-cut Kingston Trio vibe before the freaks and weirdos were allowed into the scene, I guess that's what the Timberlake character represents.. the 'acceptable' college folk scene

latest episode of the Blank Check podcast covered this as part of their Coens series. the guest was Rachel Zegler, who claims it as her favorite movie of all time.

Thanks, I'll take a listen to those, seeing as i'm working through them myself at the moment

it's my favorite movie, probably. not that i've seen a huge number of movies

as noted above it really does feel like a companion piece with “A Serious Man” — the constant refrain in the former of “but I didn’t do anything!” always have an ambiguous quality to me… but didn’t he? And isn’t “not anything” also precisely what he’s guilty of? Llewyn also likewise the total architect of his predicament, but also doomed to it, irrevocably. Both are somehow prismastic, or comic/tragic schrodinger’s cats.

“not doing anything” obv—i should not be typing on my phone!

Echoes of Blood Simple's "I haven't done anything funny"

10
9
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One second
Please...
Please Mr Kennedy...

Is so stupidly goofily clever. Like, there must be a special German word for something that is so deceptively smart it appears dumb, or maybe it's the other way round?

And then you realise Jim probably just adapted the same device as 500 Miles' "I am one. I am two, I am three, I am four, I am five hundred miles away from home"

I heard a conversation a while ago on The Female Bob Dylan podcast between Sophie Abramowitz, Sarah Bachman, and Emily Hilliard, talking abt Llewyn Davis. One of them (cant remember who) worked at Folkways around the time Llewyn Davis movie released. She remembere there was a huge anticipation for the movie because of the Van Ronk connection: apparently Folkways & ppl in those circles expected the movie to maybe do what O Brother had done for Bluegrass. Which I kind of get but oh man. What a comedown. Finding out that the Van Ronk inspo was applied very loosely, and that the main character was an asshole, and that the movie is kind of a bummer vs an uplifting knees-up funtime like O Brother didnt help.
So they were kind of bummed and a bit confused afterwards lol

LOL

sorry for some reason that really cracks me up

Like expecting Burn After Reading to glorify top secret government bureaucracy

poor Folkways <3

also

TELL HIM LLEWEN HAS THE CAT

“…LLEWYN IS THE CAT…”

^my favorite bit

also double-condom rant

Please Mr Kennedy... Is so stupidly goofily clever.

Possibly my favorite Adam Driver performance.

UH OH!!

MOUSAKKA!

Poor Gorfeins <3

Also, one of the first times Al Cody speaks ("Downing Street. It's a dump.") I thought he was supposed to be English, which would have been hilarious

I think it's hard to tell if he is meant to be very talented, or whether he's just not the right shape for the cookie cutter.

I absolutely loved ILD, although it's some years since I last watched it. The scene that sticks out in my memory is the audition for which Davis performs "The Death of Queen Jane". For me at least, the rendition is breathtakingly good, but the club owner nevertheless declines to hire him. The point of this, as I took it, is that as talented as Llewyn is, the world has moved on from his old-school folk music, a shift made incarnate at the very end by the appearance of Dylan.

"I don't hear a lot of money here" is such a good line

Devastating for so many different reasons.

"I don't hear a lot of money here" is such a good line

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 6 November 2025 09:51 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

There's a film-school theory that filmmakers should aim to get their pivotal moment in as close to 1 hour as possible. That line is delivered at 01:09, so not far off.

And it's the hardest home truth: "If you want to survive in this game, if you want to make this your career, if you don't want to be sleeping in rail stations and other people's couches for the rest of your life, you're going to have to show some value".

It's an age-old story about the perceived mystique of rock'n'roll. About artistic integrity vs the cold reality of the music business.
I'm reminded of Quadrophenia when Phil Daniels' character is appalled to see top mod Sting working as a bell boy at a Brighton motel - not realising those fancy suits don't pay for themselves.

But even Llewyn is conflicted about where he sits on the "no sell out" spectrum. He stubbornly refuses to entertain his gracious hosts, the Gorfeins and their guests when they ask him to play a song, stating that this is his livelihood and his job; that he is not a performing monkey - apparently having never heard of the expression, "sing for your supper".
Otherwise he's content to whip his guitar out and play it to a non-plussed Johnny Five while Roland Turner sleeps in the back of the car.

motel? hotel ofc

latest episode of the Blank Check podcast covered this as part of their Coens series. the guest was Rachel Zegler, who claims it as her favorite movie of all time.

― jaymc, Wednesday, November 5, 2025 7:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

She was a great guest. Very enthusiastic. I hadn't listened to her previous episodes (A Star Is Born 1976 and Cabaret) because I haven't seen those movies, nor have I seen any of her movies.

_Please Mr Kennedy... Is so stupidly goofily clever._

Possibly my favorite Adam Driver performance.

I love this scene and Driver in it but this is a hilarious challops

I would agree w/ tipsy. I love the whole movie but rewatched it once just to get to that scene.

I really need to watch this movie finally

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwO-k-RqNA

She was a great guest. Very enthusiastic. I hadn't listened to her previous episodes (A Star Is Born 1976 and Cabaret) because I haven't seen those movies, nor have I seen any of her movies.

― peace, man, Thursday, 6 November 2025 11:40 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Really really good guest. Incredibly knowledgeable and witty for someone who's still in their early 20s.

totally. she seems like a good hang.

if they hadn't done True Grit i think ASM -> Hail would've been my favorite 123 run of theirs.

Probably my favorite Cohen movie, but right there with No Country and Burn After Reading. They were really pulling apart the American psyche in this era - No Country with masculinity and independence, Burn with hierarchy and social climbing, and this one with art and culture and class. "I don't hear a lot of money here" is such an American way frame American art.

Music biopics always fall flat because actors aren't musicians, and the appeal of a music star is so inchoate, it can't possible fit into a re-enactment. So the appeal is rendered with adoring crowds "proving it" and rapid editing to simulate excitement. Whereas you could watch a single shot of Dylan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM) and it is more transfixing. The good films set in the world of musicians come at it sideways, capturing a scene and a type more than a superstar.

Yes otm. That's what I was trying to get at earlier, about how it comes at this legendary scene not through a legend. And it's not a realist take, obviously, it's kind of tragicomic. But for me it was much more evocative of the time and place than the Dylan film.

Listened to this. Shocked that it was an R certificate in the US, it was a 15 in the UK.

it has curse words in it. can't let the teens hear those

Funny seeing this for the first time just after seeing Marty Supreme and Stranger Than Paradise because it's a perfect hybrid of those two.

Always thought his beard is too well trimmed for the early 60s.

Serpico vibes

Lol, yeah, or even for the late 60s - cf. Paul McCartney's beard in "Get Back".

I guess the guys in Peter Paul & Mary had kind of well-trimmed goatees.

Dylan moved to an electric razor in '65, obv.

.. and his name was Aiken Drum ..