Coen Brothers - Inside Llewyn Davis

The Coen-quirk continues as the dynamic duo reveal the subject and title of their next film.  Joel and Ethan Coen (A Serious Man) are creating a movie centered around 1960’s folk music scene in New York’s Greenwich Village entitled Inside Llewyn Davis. Though fictional, the main character is said to be modeled after icon Dave Van Ronk.

Dave Van Ronk was known as a founding father of folk and blues revivals of the 1960’s Village scene.  He discovered traditional American music and gradually developed a following that grew with rise of the roots movement.  He was one of the first white, urban singers to find his own voice in the blues idiom.  Among the many friends he inspired and admired were Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joni Mitchell and Mississippi John Hurt. The fact that Ronk had an album called Inside Dave Van Ronk seems to give us a hint as to how the brothers got the title for their project and the character from his posthumous memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street.

The script, written by the Coens, follows the fictional musician Davis as he maneuvers through the many Village happenings. Along with Llewyn’s “music”, we hope to hear authentic to the era riffs like what they did with O Brother Where Art Thou. While still in development, Scott Rudin will produce the film with Robert Graf as executive producer.   Joel and Ethan Coen worked with both producers on the critically acclaimed features No Country for Old Men and True Grit.

Comedy or suspense, fiction or reality—whatever the Brothers Coen decide to do, it’s groovy with me.