Interview courtesy of Element Pictures
When Joel and Ethan Coen first told their trusted collaborator – musician, songwriter and producer T Bone Burnett – that they wanted each and every song in their new movie, Inside Llewyn Davis, performed live he knew that they were taking a huge risk. And that’s exactly what he expected of them. Taking risks is all part of the creative process, he says, and this one paid off handsomely. “The Coens saying ‘we’re going to do this whole thing live’ was taking the biggest risk they could take,” he says.
“And you know risk is what separates the artist from the artisan and for the Coens to take the risk was really exciting and in this film it pays off beautifully. When the finest filmmakers, in my view, working today take this big a risk and just knock it out of the park, that’s a measure of how good they are. People are going to be watching this film in 50 years time.”
The film recounts a week in the life of a young folk singer, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), who is struggling to make his mark on the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene in New York in 1961. With no possessions apart from his much loved old Gibson guitar Llewyn drifts from gig to gig, living hand to mouth and staying on the couch at a procession of friends’ apartments as he struggles to keep his dream of making it as a musician alive.
Inside Llewyn Davis premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 where it received rapturous reviews and was awarded the Grand Prix. The film evocatively captures the Greenwich scene just before Bob Dylan appeared and changed the face of music forever. For T Bone, a giant of contemporary music who played on Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour in the 1970s, reuniting to work with the Coen Brothers, as executive music producer, was clearly a delight. “I just love working with them,” he says. “So when they call me, I’m there. It’s as simple as that.”
T Bone first worked with the Coens on O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000, winning a Grammy Award for the hit soundtrack album, which introduced bluegrass music to a wider audience. In 2010 he won an Oscar for his song, The Weary Kind, featured in the film Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges as a washed up country star.
For Inside Llewyn Davis, the period recalled folk music greats like the late Dave Van Ronk, a key figure in the folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s and much loved by devotees but an artist who never really enjoyed mainstream success. “They said ‘we’re going to do Greenwich Village folk music 1961 just before Dylan got there with real songs and made up people.’ Well, I was immediately intrigued as you might imagine.
“And one of the sources for Inside Llewyn Davis was Dave Van Ronk for sure. And the music was drawn from Dave Van Ronk’s repertoire although we adapted it to now so we didn’t do them exactly the way that Dave Van Ronk did.
“We did versions of them for now. Just as we did with I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow in O Brother, Where Art Thou? It was a Stanley Brothers song we did a version of it that was closer in tone to a Traffic record than it was to a Stanley Brothers record but we used that source and updated it. And that’s the process. That’s what has been happening with music for centuries really.”
Inside Llewyn Davis also stars Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan as a husband and wife singing duo, Jim and Jean, who’s personal and professional lives cross over with Llewyn’s with disastrous results.
Jean has had a fling with Llewyn resulting in an unwanted pregnancy and Jim invited Llewyn to play on a song – which the credibility conscious Llewyn considers a sell out – Please, Mr Kennedy that goes on to become a hit after Llewyn has signed away his royalties for a one off fee.
Nothing, it seems, can go right for Llewyn even though he is a talented singer and musician. And he may now be a giant of the music business but T Bone himself can relate to the life of a struggling player.
“Oh yeah, it’s me and it’s all my friends (laughs). He’s everybody who is not Bob Dylan,” he laughs. “Llewyn is not a hero, he’s very human and you relate to him in that way. He’s a little guy fighting a big fight.”
“And musically he is really, really good. But here’s the thing, I think Llewyn Davis will have a hit record now. I think he’s going to have the hit record that he deserved 40 years ago – even though he didn’t really exist back then.”
The actor charged with bringing Llewyn to life – and playing all the music live on each and every take in the film – was Oscar Isaac and he did a brilliant job, says T Bone.
“Oscar had to play and sing incredibly well with a 30 minute repertoire that he was able to do well enough and consistently enough so that we could film it live. So with the music parts of the film you are essentially watching live performances – you are not watching somebody lip synch, you are watching them perform. And that is incredibly compelling. He did a great job.”
T Bone worked closely with Isaac and Timberlake and before filming started took them both to a famous Californian guitar store so that they could pick the instruments they would play in the film.
“That was the first part of the characterisation. We had to find an instrument that was Llewyn’s own instrument and it was the same for Justin as Jim. We had to find instruments that blended with their voices – that gave them the support they needed to be the kind of folk singers they were going to be.
“And both times we went to Norm’s Rare Guitars. It’s a legendary place and Norm is so helpful – he is generous and beautiful and he has taken great care of us over the years and it was the same in this case. We went there and he brought out one great guitar after another.
“We discussed it but in both cases as soon as they hit the guitars they hit, we all knew, ‘oh there it is..’ How you know that, I don’t know, but you just know it. Oscar found a little Gibson, an L-1. It’s the kind that Robert Johnson played. And it’s a beautiful, resonant guitar. It’s a light guitar with hardly any lacquer.
“And when Oscar picked up that guitar I could tell it was the right one and so could he. And so could Justin. He got a small-bodied Martin and it was the same thing with him. He picked it up and said, ‘this is good..’ and we went into the back room there and we wrote the melody for Please, Mr Kennedy right there, within five minutes of getting the guitar.”
T Bone’s film work as a music supervisor and composer includes The Big Lebowski and The Ladykillers – both directed by The Coen Brothers – Cold Mountain, Walk The Line, All The King’s Men, Across the Universe and The Hunger Games.
As a record producer he has worked with an array of contemporary artists including Roy Orbison, John Mellencamp, Elvis Costello and Diane Krall, Elton John, Tony Burnett and many others.
Q: You’ve worked with the Coens four times now. Let’s talk about the process. Do they call you up and say ‘hey, we’re thinking of this story, let’s get together to talk about it?’
A: Yes, that’s exactly how it works. I just love working with them. So when they call me, I’m there. It’s as simple as that. They always have several scripts on the go – a while back they had a horror movie in mind. So they have scripts that are ready to go into production at some point but with this particular one they said ‘you know we’re thinking about doing a movie about the Greenwich Village folk music scene in 1961 just before Dylan got there. And we’re trying to figure out who could do it.’ And we talked about the material and they sent me a script. And one of the things that was clear from the script was that unless you knew the music you wouldn’t understand the script at all. The script was indecipherable because the music itself was so much a part of the characterisation and the story telling. So it was clear to me what they were up to – but it was clear to me, too, that it wouldn’t be clear to a lot of other people (laughs). And they wanted to keep it completely live and completely honest, almost in a documentary style when it came to shooting the music sequences and the odds against finding somebody to play Llewyn Davis were extremely high because the demands of the role were intense and no one has ever done anything like Oscar has done in this.
Q: Could you explain that?
A: Well, Oscar had to play and sing incredibly well with a 30-minute repertoire that he was able to do well enough and consistently enough so that we could film it live. So with the music parts of the film you are essentially watching live performances – you are not watching somebody lip synch, you are watching them perform. And that is incredibly compelling. He did a great job.
Q: How do you rate this guy?
A: Llewyn Davis or Oscar?
Q: Both…
A: First of all I would rate Llewyn Davis – Oscar’s Llewyn – as incredibly good and he’s honest and advanced. And because we have the benefit of hindsight we can frame him and I feel they framed him in a really powerful, true way. Llewyn is not a hero, he’s very human and you relate to him in that way. He’s a little guy fighting a big fight. And musically he is really, really good. But here’s the thing, I think Llewyn Davis will have a hit record now. I think he’s going to have the hit record that he deserved 40 years ago – even though he didn’t really exist back then (laughs).
Q: Tell me about how you prepared Oscar musically. Is it true that you took him out to buy Llewyn’s guitar?
A: Yes, that’s right, and Justin too. That was the first part of the characterisation. We had to find an instrument that was Llewyn’s own instrument and it was the same for Justin as Jim. We had to find instruments that blended with their voices – that gave them the support they needed to be the kind of folk singers they were going to be. And both times we went to Norm’s Rare Guitars. It’s a legendary place and Norm is so helpful – he is generous and beautiful and he has taken great care of us over the years and it was the same in this case. We went there and he brought out one great guitar after another.
Q: Did you guide them or did you want them to find the right guitar on their own?
A: We discussed it but in both cases as soon as they hit the guitars they hit, we all knew, ‘oh there it is..’ How you know that, I don’t know, but you just know it. Oscar found a little Gibson, an L-1. It’s the kind that Robert Johnson played. And it’s a beautiful, resonant guitar. It’s a light guitar with hardly any lacquer. These modern guitars are laminated with lacquer but in the old days they hardly had any lacquer on them at all so they were much more resonant. Laminating them with a lot of lacquer really cuts down the resonance. A guitar resonates because there is grain in the wood – it’s a living thing. And when Oscar picked up that guitar I could tell it was the right one and so could he. And so could Justin. He got a small-bodied Martin and it was the same thing with him. He picked it up and said, ‘this is good..’ and we went into the back room there and we wrote the melody for Please Mr Kennedy right there, within five minutes of getting the guitar.
Q: You took them into the studio before filming. Was that a good chance to bond and break the ice as well as work on the music?
A: Yes, it was definitely that. We were at Avatar, a beautiful little analogue studio in New York. You know we’re an analogue shop, we still work analogue and when you work analogue you pull the kind of shenanigans you can pull digitally. You know if something is analogue you are dealing with the real thing – it’s the way to guarantee quality.
Q: But that week together was important?
A: Yes, very much so. Almost always the music in films is pre-recorded because it’s so difficult to set up a shot and if you set up a complex shot and you do a live recording and then you set up another shot with another live recording, the two live recordings may not be able to be cut together at all because of tempo and tone. So most of the time it’s all pre-recorded so that by the time you set up the shots you can do an amazing replication of a live performance that can be totally believable and we’ve done that quite a bit. In O Brother, Where Art Thou? there were two or three performances that were live and worked very well and we just felt with this one, ‘lets do it live the whole way..’ But it requires a lot of work and certainly you want to record everything in advance so that you can put it together in the sequence it’s going to happen in the show, you can listen to it and you can see the pace of the show through that – and you can see if you need a faster number or a slower number.
Q: With O Brother the music took on a life of its own – the soundtrack became a best selling album and audiences discovered artists featured on it as a result. Do you think the same thing will happen with Inside Llewyn Davis?
A: Oh yes, we’re going to do a whole range and we’re going to put it out in multiple formats, including vinyl, and in the highest quality formats. I myself play vinyl all the time, everybody is doing it, and there are five new vinyl shops in Silverlake in Los Angeles. You know what, as a matter of fact digital technology has degraded music to a horrible degree and the audience is getting sick of it. The MP3 as an audio standard is ridiculous. To compare an MP3 to a vinyl record is absurd, it’s like comparing a sunset to a Christmas light. Vinyl is coming back because there are a lot of people out there with taste and good ears. And people are interested in quality again.
Q: How did you arrive at the music you used in the film? Is it all down to you? Or did the Coen Brothers have some specific songs they wanted in there?
A: We’re collaborators. I have as much respect for their musicality as they have for mine, I can tell you that. They don’t produce music in the same way as I do so that’s kind of what I do for them.
Q: Did you know the artists from that era?
A: Yes and they did too. They have deep knowledge of all of this music.
Q: So when they told you about the period that the film was set in, which artists did you immediately think of? Was Dave Van Ronk in your mind right from the start?
A: Well this is the way that they presented it to me when we first talked about it was ‘we’re going to do this story with real songs and made up people.’ They said ‘we’re going to do Greenwich Village folk music 1961 just before Dylan got there with real songs and made up people.’ Well, I was immediately intrigued as you might imagine. And one of the sources for Inside Llewyn Davis was Dave Van Ronk for sure. And the music was drawn from Dave Van Ronk’s repertoire although we adapted it to now so we didn’t do them exactly the way that Dave Van Ronk did. We did versions of them for now. Just as we did with I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow in O Brother, Where Art Thou? It was a Stanley Brothers song we did a version of it that was closer in tone to a Traffic record than it was to a Stanley Brothers record but we used that source and updated it. And that’s the process. That’s what has been happening with music for centuries really.
Q: And the Coens were as aware of this music as you were?
A: Oh yes, they’re aficionados. They are keen and deep observers of our culture – in my view probably the keenest observers ever.
Q: Did you spend time on set?
A: I try to set away from set except for the musical performances and in this case, because we were doing them live, I showed up and I would sit just off camera and I would do time measures to make sure that Oscar wasn’t speeding up or slowing down and that I would know if we did seven takes that maybe one, three and five would be good and two and four, six and seven not so good. And in this case Oscar had studied so deeply and practised so hard that it was really like watching a guy go into a trance. I sat there for hours every day when he was playing and he never varied his tempo once. We were able to cut from any take to any take without having this guide and you know, films always have these guides because you have to be able to go take to take otherwise you are wasting your time. If you’ve done a whole set up and the singer has done it in a different tempo, that set up is useless. So that’s why films are almost always pre-recorded. The Coens saying ‘we’re going to do this whole thing live’ was taking the biggest risk they could take.
Q: But it paid off…
A: Yes, and you know risk is what separates the artist from the artisan and for the Coens to take the risk was really exciting and in this film it pays off beautifully. When the finest filmmakers, in my view, working today take this big a risk and just knock it out of the park, that’s a measure of how good they are. People are going to be watching this film in 50 years time.
Q: You’ve been around musicians all of your life. Did you recognise – and sympathise – with Llewyn, the musician who is on the cusp of success but not quite there?
A: Oh yeah, it’s me and it’s all my friends (laughs). He’s everybody who is not Bob Dylan. And you know here’s the beautiful thing about this movie. And this is the way that life imitates art and goes back and forth. O Brother, Where Art Thou? was essentially a story about some guys who break off a chain gang, they are convicts on the run and they record a song and unbeknownst to them it becomes a big hit and leads to their salvation and their freedom. But in real life there was a guy called James Carter who sang the first song in the movie, the chain gang song (Po’ Lazarus) which was recorded in 1959 on Parchman Farm (a state penitentiary in Mississippi) and didn’t know he had the number one record in the nation for weeks until they showed up with a gold record and a cheque or something. So the story of the movie replicated itself in real life. But it happened again and again. Like with the Fairfield Four who came in and sang and appeared in the film but at that point they were older men in their 60s and 70s at the time and they ended up with a hit record. People bought houses that had never had houses and the story replicated itself again and again. And what is happening is here is that the success that Llewyn Davis should have experienced was actually happening in Cannes when the film was premiered. There was one point at the premier when people were applauding and there was a shot of Oscar on the big screen live and the whole place went crazy. It was that moment. And in show-business all you need is a minute. Like when Michael Jackson moonwalked on that Motown anniversary special. That was his minute. Once he did that – that was it. Bob Dylan owned that moment that night in that club in Greenwich when the New York Times was there. He owned it. In our film, Llewyn Davis was there and it could have been his moment but he was tired, he was beaten down, so even though he did a great show it wasn’t that moment, it wasn’t that electrifying moment of change. But when Oscar was shown on that screen in Cannes the whole place went to that screen, just like the whole country went to Michael Jackson in that moment, like the whole country went to The Beatles when they were on Ed Sullivan. So Llewyn Davis didn’t get his moment but Oscar Isaac did. And that’s the happy ending…
Q: At that time, in 1961, you were very young….
A: I was 13 (laughs)
Q: But you were already into music. What were you listening to then?
A: I was listening to Hoagy Carmichael. I love Hoagy Carmichael and he’s a prototype for me. I was listening to a lot of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. I was just starting to listen to The Stanley Brothers and that deep, mythical mountain music from the Appalachian Mountains. That music is beautiful and true and I still love it. It was the wellspring for the folk music that we hear in Inside Llewyn Davis and for much of the music we still hear today.