Inside Llewyn Davis: the story behind the script

Posted on 24 January 2014
By Busrah Osmanoglu
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From the directors of The Lady Killers (2004) and No Country For Old Men (2007), the Coen brothers are back with their latest production Inside Llewyn Davis.

Set in Greenwich Village in 1961, when folk music was first being introduced, Inside Llewyn Davis pursues a week in the life of a young folk singer struggling to be recognized for his music.

Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Issac, faces complications on his journey to seek his destiny in the music business. The infrastructure of the movie, perfectly demonstrates the folk scene in the dark ages before the hit records and big money arrived.

In a recent interview fellow folk musician Elijah Wald said: “It was a time when a small coterie of true believers traded old songs like a secret language.”

The film is set before the arrival of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs’ to New York. It captures a time when nobody expected the village scene to receive so much attention in folk music. The impact was huge and it paved the way for international names to change the course of popular music.

The movie was inspired by folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Experiences described in the singer’s memoir The Mayor Of Macdougal Street are revisited on the big screen.

Wald said: “Llewyn is not Van Ronk, but he sings some of Van Ronk’s songs and shares his background as a working class kid, who split his life between music and occasional jobs as a merchant seaman.”

The time frame is nicely set out in the film using opening of Folk City in January, 1960, and Dylan’s arrival in New York almost exactly a year later. The film captures the time of drastic change when the scene was obviously changing but no one had any clear idea of where it was headed.

The Coen brother’s Inside Llewyn Davis is in cinemas from today.

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