FILM 2033: INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

TRIVIA: Joel Coen remarked that "the film doesn't really have a plot. That concerned us at one point; that's why we threw the cat in."

The singing voice of Mike, Llewyn's deceased music partner, is Marcus Mumford of the band Mumford & Sons, and actress Carey Mulligan's husband.

In an interview included on the DVD, Ethan Coen said, "The cat was a nightmare. The trainer warned us and she was right. She said, uh, "Dogs like to please you. The cat only likes to please itself." A cat basically is impossible to train. We have a lot of footage of cats doing things we don't want them to do, if anyone's interested; I don't know if there's a market for that."

The Bud Grossman character played by F. Murray Abraham is based on Albert Grossman, who ran the Gate of Horn club in Chicago and managed acts like Bob Dylan, Peter Paul & Mary, and Janis Joplin.

The folk singer Dave Van Ronk, who was an inspiration for some of the movie's characters and story, released a 1963 album called "Inside Dave Van Ronk." Its cover was a photo of Van Ronk and a cat standing in a doorway. On the "Fresh Air" NPR interview program, host Terry Gross asked the Coens if that was their inspiration for having a cat in the movie, and they said that not only was it not, but also that they hadn't even noticed the cat on the Van Ronk album cover until they'd completed shooting and an art director pointed out the coincidence during post-production.

This is the second Coen Brothers movie with a plot partly inspired by Homer's The Odyssey. When the first one, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), came out, the Coen brothers told several interviewers that had never actually read The Odyssey; in 2013, they told Terry Gross that they had still never gotten around to reading it. One of them said to Gross, "Yeah. It's right by my bedside table. I keep looking over at it and going, ugh."

The film's title only is seen as the name of Llewyn Davis' solo album in the body of the film. It does not appear in the beginning or end credits.

Although there was talk of nominating "Please, Mr. Kennedy" for a Best Original Song Oscar, the fact that it was an amalgam of several period songs, novelty and otherwise, meant the Academy had to pass.

"Jim and Jean" were actually a real American folk-music duo, "Jim Glover and Jean Ray," who performed and recorded in 1960s Greenwich Village. As his Ohio State college roommate, Jim Glover was the person who first introduced legendary performer Phil Ochs to folk music; early on, they were also briefly a duo. Additionally, Jean Ray was noted for being the inspiration for Neil Young 's song "Cinnamon Girl."

Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver would later appear opposite each other on the big screen in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) as Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren respectively.

Inside Llewyn Davis has been highly acclaimed, and was voted the 11th best film released since 2000 by film critics in a 2016 BBC Culture poll. It was also chosen the eleventh "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by The New York Times.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

DIRECTOR TRADEMARK: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen: [Kubrick] The first few shots of the scene in the bathroom were filmed as an one-point perspective, the same way Kubrick filmed the memorable meeting between Jack Torrance and Grady in The Shining (1980) also taking place in a bathroom.

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