Llewyn Davis (character)
| Llewyn Davis | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Coen brothers |
| Portrayed by | Oscar Isaac |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation |
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| Title | Llewyn Davis |
| Family |
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Llewyn Davis /ˈluː.ɪn deɪvɪs/ is a fictional character, the main protagonist and anti-hero from the film Inside Llewyn Davis. He is a young, struggling folk singer trying to become more famous and financially successful after the flop of his debut album, Inside Llewyn Davis.
When creating the character of Llewyn Davis, Joel Coen summed up the idea as "suppose Dave Van Ronk gets beat up outside of Gerde's Folk City. That's the beginning of a movie." The Coen Brothers used "Van Ronk’s posthumous memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street" as an influence for the screenplay and Llewyn Davis' journey. The album cover and title of Inside Llewyn Davis is also directly inspired by Dave Van Ronk's album Inside Dave Van Ronk. In describing how Isaac was cast, Robert Christgau writes that "The Coens... emphasize that Van Ronk's story was only the seed of a fiction, and were pleased to cast Isaac in the title role partly because he's so unlike Van Ronk physically."
In his high school days, Isaac was previously involved in two punk bands and lived a straight-edge lifestyle. Grammy winning producer T-Bone Burnett, who worked with the Coen brothers on O Brother, Where Art Thou? said of Isaac, "I haven't worked with an actor who could play and sing this style of music this well," admits Burnett. "You can't do it with bluster; you have to do it with the rawest honesty you can." Isaac also developed a style of finger-picking that Burnett explains is "a little bit like patting your head and rubbing someone else's stomach — in another country." Isaac described his audition process thus: "I first auditioned for the casting director, did a few scenes. Then I went home and recorded myself playing "Hang Me." That got sent to the Coens. Then I came in and auditioned for them, learned a few extra songs just in case. They sent that over to T Bone. And T Bone said, [invoking a famous line from The Producers] 'I think we've found our Hitler!'" Oscar Isaac "was the opposite of what [the Coen brothers] had initially been looking for: a classically trained actor. But he could also sing and play guitar." In an interview with Rolling Stone, Isaac further noted, "Well, I knew that it was loosely based on Dave Van Ronk [and his memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street], and he was like a six-foot-five, 250 pound Swede. So I came in, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a photograph of a very well-known musician – and I was encouraged because it was a guy who was a little smaller and a dark haired and had a beard. I was like, "So you guys have that picture as kind of a reference?" And they're like, "Oh yeah. He came in. He killed it." The blood just drained out of my face. But then I did the audition and it went well and they called me back." He also describes being influenced by Erik Franzen, an old friend of Dave Van Ronk's, who Davis says "started teaching me this Travis-style picking, which I was not aware of – didn't know how to do it. It's this crazy syncopation. We'd play and I paid him for lessons and then we started playing in the Village. I opened for him a couple times at these open mics. He was like a trainer – the last day before the audition I played for him and then he looked at me and goes "I see the big guy behind you giving the thumb's up."
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