¶ Intro / Opening
Will you wait, miss.
Welcome back, midnight viewers to Anthologies Attack, where we look at anthologies in every media, every genre. And joining me here in the Anthologies Attack Control Room is back from his hiatus in the appilation Wilderness, mister Antonio Lapour.
Here you hit that dred on. Happy New Year, too.
Happy new to you? Oh my god? We're recording this on New Year's Day. Is our first recording of twenty twenty five.
Yes, well, what a way to kick off the new year, which is certainly promising to be a weird one. I
¶ Introducing the Coen Brothers
think our filmmakers chosen for this week, I think are appropriate to the tone of twenty twenty five, which is it's gonna be filled with wacky characters doing some despicable things, and some of it'll be funny and some of it'll be.
Drunk, and all will be surreal. Because the filmmakers you're talking about is the Cohen brothers, Joel and Ethan Cohen. Now, this is a new Year, new episode of Anthologies Attack. We haven't done one in a little while, and this is technically not an anthology at all, but it is a wind up toward a fantastic anthology by the Coen brothers that'll be coming up soon. That is the the ballad of Buster Scrugs. We're gonna be We'll be covering that in a future episode. But as a primer, a primer,
what do you say, I say primer. I keep hearing primer. I think Primmer would have a double m.
Wouldn't wouldn't, Bob ros say, now adds a primer here of titanium white and continue long.
I'm primer as a primer for ballad Buster Skirks. But we're taking a look back at a film from ten years ago. This is their look at the folk world, and you know, totally appropriate time wise, given that there is currently a film out by James Mangold called A Complete Unknown, a biography of Bob Dylan. It takes place from nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty five. Three characters
from that movie appear in this movie. Those characters are Bob Dylan himself, Albert Grossman here Bud Grossman in the film we're talking about, and Dave Van Ronk, who is a giant in the folk music scene from that era. They've based there. They've based a film on Van Runk, but changed a lot of it, so instead we're getting inside.
¶ Inside Llewyn Davis
Lewin Davis, what'd you say?
You played folk songs?
Alkso solo act?
Now?
I had a partner threw himself off the George Washington Bridge.
George Washington Bridge.
You throw yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge traditionally George Washington Bridge. Who does that?
If I hand rain.
Nose?
I fly?
Explain the cat? What's its name?
I don't know the gold coins cat.
It's slipped out and I don't have the key.
My honey fairy.
Will don't tell Jim. Obviously I had a man.
Stung and tall.
He moved his body.
Doctor cannon Ball.
Well fed the way. No, there was no advance on my solo record. There's gotta be some royalty. Christ's sake. It's cold out. I don't even have a winter coat. You're kidding me, Ain't this kidd?
No?
No, I remember one evening.
In the porn ray.
In my heart?
Do you ever think about the future at all?
You mean fine?
Cause hotels on the moon, Okay.
I want you to leave, get out of here.
I mean, well, Danny, your uncle's a bad man.
Okay, show super.
Fine, lashing with living without the one? You know?
Anywhere money, I'm interested in gigging here, Okay, let's hear something. You don't want to hear the record?
Why should I hear? Play me something? Play me something? From Inside Lewin Davis. Is Lewin Davis based on someone? Or is it? Oh?
Yeah?
Oh?
He is Inside Lewin Davis. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen, starring Oscar and Carrie Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Headland, f Murray Abraham, Justin Timberlake, Adam Driver. Oh my god, it just goes on and on. Max Casella, who's great in it? This was released December sixth two thirteen. Yes, to answer your question, Antonio, the Giant I mentioned, Dave van Ronk is the basis for Lewin Davis in this film. He's lightly based on him in nineteen six where he
released an album Inside. Dave van Ronk. The song that Lewin Davis starts the film with, hang Me is a song that he popularized. In fact, a couple of the songs he sings in this Dave Van Ronk was once in the merchant Marines before he became a folk singer, and he stood in the shadow of everyone who towered over him in that scene. In every future music scene
becoming kind of a footnote. So no surprise he would be the member of the folk music scene that the Cohen Brothers would gravitate towards and tell a story with absolutely no plot at all. What was your first encounter with mister Lewin Davis?
All right, when it came out. I love the Coen Brothers. My my writing and producing partner, Matt Chavrudin and I we often joke are about us being like low rent Cohen bro like, we're like b movie Cohen Brothers. I think they're the best, or at least they're definitely among the best. They're definitely the caretakers of storytellers about interesting white people.
But they're definitely.
What's funny, Yeah, I'm gonna take that that joke and go back real quick, and you're like, it's funny? Had I just said that? But then Joel just made the greatest Macbeth since Orson Wells with one and only Denzel Washington. That's gonna eat.
My shoes and eat then put a comedy thriller starring two lesbians as their leads, you.
Know, And I haven't seen that yet, and it's unlay list of movies to watch I've got that one and Past Lives are my like on my next to watch list.
Did they need to get away from each other to have a non white male lead?
I think so, you know, I think so I get together. They've found a niche, so to speak, of doing movies about somewhat likeable losers who are in way over their heads. Like there's generally the plot of their pictures. I mean, whether it's the dude or high or what's the guy's name and no country or old men. Josh Browlin's character is another you know, likable loser in way over his head.
The entire cast of Old Brotherware, aren't they the.
Old Brotherware out Out, Yes, which is the most lovable losers in movie history. And Lewin Davis where he's he's not as likable, I guess as their usual protagonist, but he's again just a guy who's kind of been over his head. He's like like he feels like he's just almost good enough to be a folks singer, can't quite get anything. And yeah, that's generally they're the thing. Here's the thing. This movie doesn't resonate with me a lot,
Like I don't super enjoy it. But then at the same time, I super identify it with you know, I'm a struggling artist. Making a living is very very very hard. It's very very stressful, and it's very very difficult to maintain that level of artistic integrity and you're still trying to make living and trying to balance both. It's hard. So like, as I'm watching this, my heart breaks for this guy because I've been through a lot of this stuff.
Now brands that I've never misappropriated a cat, never knocked up a lady and acted like an asshole, you know, like I've never I've joined the merger of marines or been addicted to it my dad, you know, make him swail himself. I play at the horror song.
I understand that.
The difficulty that the artist life is, and this movie really kind of encompasses. I'm watching it again. The ladies eat a hell? Is that the whole point the way cycle their nature? Like where he starts with the devil and ends with the devil, almost, you know, like a record going around and round. You know.
The Coen Brothers are often riffing on a theme from movie to movie, and you'll see echoes from one to the other. This certainly reminds me.
Of a serious man.
Yeah, as far as that sort of the biblical connotations to it, it also reminds me very much of O Brother, Where art thou in that it is a quest movie, where in this case it's a quest for him to, I don't know, find some sort of meaning and reason to continue on as an artist in this you know, burned out world. In fact, like gonna be a Barton Fink, and definitely Barton Fink. This seems like, in some ways
a lighter version of Barton Fink. Yeah. You know, they come again and again to creative types and they're always tortured, sometimes at their own hands like Barton, and sometimes because they just can't relate to anyone in humanity, like like Lewin Davis here, I.
Wrote a paper in college of Barton Fink, maybe years and years and years ago, and it was examining Barton think like a retelling of job before they actually did job with serious man. But it was you know, and again it was another allegory a hell too. It's like it was the artist hell, you know, like he's this
struggling writer and now he's in hell. I think the job thing, you know, it's like twenty two or something thing that like, he had everything in New York and it was taken away from him, and now he's trying to find himself again with nothing. Even though he's in this you know, he's a Hollywood an, money and this stuff, but he doesn't have that integrity anyway.
Is that what that movie is about? I always think Barton has zero integrity. I think what he's producing in New York is bullshit, and I think he's lucky to get to get it. And once he gets there, he thinks he's made a masterpiece. And all he's redone is retype his New York play that was bullshit at the beginning. You know whose head is in our box?
His?
Oh yeah, I gotta watch it again.
I to watch it, I know, man, every time I start talking about it to Colin Brothers movie, the next step is to rewatch it. So the plot here as it is, finds our protagonist Lewin Damis, who is a struggling folks singer in New York's Greenwich village. He is CouchSurfing, He's homeless. I never really thought of it. This is like maybe the sixth or seventh time I've seen the movie rewatched it today and realized that he's basically a homeless person.
Yeah, he's hollless.
He's just on people's couches. I think we've all been there, particularly, as you said, if you're pursuing a more artistic lifestyle or not the nine to five, button down thing, which this movie is a. I won't say it's praising this lifestyle,
because it is not. It is showing how difficult and horrible. Yeah, an artist's path is how you're willing to forfeit every creature comfort to exist, as Lewyn Davis calls it at one point, which is her sisters like, is that what we're doing outside of showbiz, all of us, which just existing?
It's not so bad, No, you're It's exactly it. And what I guess there It bugs me because is I try to I suffer like that I have to like give up a lot of creature comforts just to be able to exist as a filmmaker, you know, and the idea that like, you know, only done a full time job and then trying to run my little movie company and edit something this and endit something that, and then put out the marketing for it and then manage film festivals for it and then do this and do that.
It's not easy. It's a full time job in and of itself, with little perks.
We take Lewin Davis here, who is not necessarily and also ran but maybe it never was, though he is well regarded within the folk community, and the film basically without a plot, follows him grasping in every direction at validation that he should keep going as a musician, and in virtually every avenue he takes tells him to stop.
This is all sort of hung around the sort of running not gag necessarily, but a subplot in this plotless film is that he has accidentally one of the couches he's surfing on is the Gore Finds, who are a couple of college educator intellectuals, and he's slept on their couch one night, and on leaving lot left their cat out, this little orange tabby, and he's now he has to basically squire this cat around for the rest of the movie, and sometimes it is the cat, and maybe it isn't,
and the cat maybe represents something and maybe represents something else. Entirely, we're watching him basically come to the conclusion of whether or not he should just give up this whole life.
There's a cat per act. Basically, there's the three cats you know, and then the original cat shows up a game at the end, But then so does you know the guy who beats him up, and then you know him waking on the couch. So it's like the cyclical nature of the movie, like his never ending cycle of being Lewin Davis and not quite getting there.
And a word about the cat. Now this orange tabby now recently, just recently, but I lost my cat van mister van Go, who was an orange Tabby and bore a remarkable resemblance to the cat in this one, including the sort of sleepy hooded eyes of the hero cat here, whose name I don't know and I should I'll find out. No, the cat the characters of the cat is named Ulysses, but I don't know the cat actor's actual name.
Oh no, I don't know the cat actor.
There are several because you can tell almost immediately the one on the train is not the one who wakes him up, right, that's just a continuity era because the one that enclose up when he meets that he meets in the apartment building is one of the most adorable cats of all the time. Anyway, point is about this cat without getting into its implications thematically and otherwise. The sequence of Lewin Davis leaving the apartment realizing he's now let this cat out and he's going to have to
carry this cat with him on his journeys. While going through the subway, He's sitting on the subwit this sequence. I could watch this scene over and over, Antonio. In fact, I have on occasion put this movie on just to watch this sequence and then turn it off. The cat's fascination looking out the window as the different trains are rolling by, there are two black children sitting in the corner who are delighted that this man, this crazy man,
is sitting in the train with an orange cat. There's a businessman who's like looking at the whole thing, A scants I don't know. And the song playing, which is Lewin Davis. Our lead character is a solo folk artist, but he had my old success as a duo, we find out, and that was his partner Mike, who we come to find out is committed suicide.
Fine No I fare the river to the one Oh.
Fair, the way.
Honey Fair.
We get that song a couple of times in this movie, and this becomes a runner in the film. And I noticed that they do this a lot, where they will pick a song if their movie is musically oriented and run with that like I'm a man of constant sorrow obviously, and or brother we aren't there. But Lady Killer also has a couple of tunes that recur over and over again.
Here it's this one, and we'll get a little bit more into the music of it later, But the sound of that song playing and the visials of that cat in nineteen sixty one New York, gritty, grimy New York, it's just delightful to me.
Am.
I just waxing raps on. It might be we can get into the nuts and boll movie, but I'm telling you, there are parts of this movie that I fucking adore.
Yeah, and I agree with you too. There's a lot to really like the cinematography. It's clearly not Deacons as the usual collaborator. And when you say dark and gritty New York of nineteen sixty one or whatever, that's really evident because Deacon's stuff is usually never that desaturated, although like he'll manage to do something make it disaturated and still make it a little a color.
This is their first digital film?
Is this their first digital one? It is?
Okay, you can why Deacons was not It was not involved, though I think it's worked with them again.
Sense no Deacon shoots digital now though.
Yeah, no, no, no, I know.
Yeah, and it does it Yeah, no, I think it was a statially thick. But but there's a different look to to this than there are other films. It definitely feels different than their underwork and you can really like a stick and.
Yeah, definitely the cinematography, but the setting really goes a long way, because you know, we've seen New York portrayed in all of its decades and all of its guys. Is one thing they did very wisely was sent this in winter, but that winter bordering on spring. So yes, there's snow on the ground, but not a ton, just enough to be annoying, just enough to get across the idea that you're in a hostile environment, just enough that all the sand and grit and all the stuff that
they use to dissolve that snow is piled up. It feels grimy and oily.
Yeah, it does. It feels dirty, and it feels definitely feels libd in you know, doesn't feel friendly, which is weird. Vida folk music is so you know, folky and warm and cozy, and why that New York is not. It's interesting how that sound comes out of that world.
And I do encourage everyone to watch A Complete Unknown as a companion piece to this film, because a lot of these same locations, like I said, and a lot of these same characters. Dave van Rocket is character in A Complete Unknown. Albert Grossman, who is the f Murray Abraham character. Bud Grossman in this film was a major player in the folk music scene and the recording of folk music and putting it out. So you know, a lot of these same sort of things recur in it.
But watching the movie, like these coffee houses and basket houses through Dylan's eyes, who sort of shows up as a conquering hero versus somebody who's been fighting in the trenches this whole time, is very illuminating.
I haven't got a chance to watch it. Is it good?
I think it might be the best movie I saw last year.
Oh wow, that's a bold statement. All right, then I'll keep an eye out for it.
Yeah. It bumps up against kneecap that Irish rap movie that I just adore too much. But both musical films this year sort of did it for me.
Well, there you go. You know when they get Timberlake plays she plays gym, right, Yeah, there's something about Timberlake's beard is so funny in that.
He looks letter perfect. I mean, he looks like he should be in the A Complete Unknown movie. He's so squeaky.
Yeah, Like, it's hilarious. And I like Carrie Mulligan.
You know, here's the thing about Carrie Mulligan. If I'm being totally honest, every time I see her in a movie and not realizing it's Carrie Mulligan for a moment, I think, oh my god, Michelle Williams is in this movie. I'm so excited, ha ha ha, And then it's Carrie Mulligan and no offense to her. She seems like a lovely performer and you know she can. She does it. She's okay.
But you know, I like her.
There aren't many like her. There aren't many performances in Coen Brothers movies that I can point to in a scene and go like, eh, that's a bit iffy. Her delivery of asshole here is a little too something.
Yeah, Yeah, you ain't got a point there.
It's like when yeah, she can't get her mouth around Cohen Brother's dialogue.
It might be a little much for her. Yeah, maybe. I like Jaron Gatsby. That movie's kind of a message, really pretty you'll look at and I like hearing it.
I heard it's great young seen it great Gatsby. Never mind moving on. Yeah, Garry Mugan or a Jim and Jane, they're they're at this, like I said, the squeaky clean folk couple. They might be brother and sister for all we know. I mean, they're not.
They're right, they're.
Clearly husband and wife. But but for to the outside world, if you saw them on an album cover, you would be confused. And yeah, absolutely, And so now they represent an avenue of an artistic path that he could be going down. Like that, each of the characters he encounters are basically like another way to make it in the music industry, whether you know whatever that means actually making it.
And they seem like a couple who have integrity. They're singing the old folk songs there people are in love with them. And on top of that, the Jim justin Timberlink's character writes a novelty tune and which is going to make a million dollars.
He's mister Kennedy, Bubble that's good. No where the things.
Sets you read and meat loud and clean rolls.
Mister Kennedy.
He doesn't want their brand of music, and he definitely doesn't want the sellout commerciality. He'll take that money, but he's embarrassed that he's on that album.
Yeah, but then he signs away the royalty so he can get the abortion money right away.
Chance in this movie is It's the Odyssey and It's job combined. Is Lewyn Davis their most unlikable carecter?
He is pretty likable. Let me read it.
Let me read the list of movies Blood, Simple, Raising, Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Hudsucker, Proxy, Fargo, Big Lebowski or Brother, Aren't the Man who Wasn't There? Intolerable, Cruelty, Lady Killers, No Country for Old Men? Burn After reading Serious Man, True Grit Inside, Lewin Davis Hail Caesar, ballad of Buster scrugs. As a lead character goes, is he their most despicable?
Is I wanted to a bathroom because I struggle like you and I my temperate things go. You know, like I'm remember gonna suckle a lady on stage. I don't care as.
Long it's the lowest snap at the lady who wants yeah, or snapping at the lady who just wants him to play the guitar a little bit like I think, but like he he doesn't approach you, and I don't.
Know, there's a lot of like self loathing on his part too. And yeah, you know, like knocking women up that isn't great. Banging the guy's wife isn't great. That's why he's thinking he's in hell and like he's the shitty guy.
This is where he's at.
Not that I've knocked anybody up or you know, heckled anybody from a crowded bar or anything. But I find myself relating to Lewin Davis more than any other Cohen brother's character, honestly.
Just that.
And it is partly what you and I have been talking about, which is if you make a decision in your life at a certain point that you're going to follow some sort of creative path and you're not going to get the business degree or get whatever a cubicle job you're in an uphill battle with everybody, everybody from the straight world. He meets his sister. The first thing she says, yeah, do you have your merchant card? Like,
go get a job. It's a you know, it's a tough road to ho So it's like I relate to Lewin Davis so much on that level. I don't relate on what he's doing in his actions necessarily, but I also recognize his his recognizing the weight of the world around him. It's a fucking horrible slug, you know.
I think, why one, I think he's a shitty character or a shitty guy.
At least you and I are wor a perspective is the we Oh, we do see a lot of oursonals and a lot of us that we have to deal with. And yeah, that's an uphill battle against the squares, so to speak. You know, I have to go see my
sister asking for money sometime. You know, I up saying, God, she believes her, and you thinks I'm brilliant, and it's like happy to support you know what you can, but like it's still hard, you know, and when your friends all have houses and wives and kids and stuff, and you're like, well, I'm trying to get my next feature up about it, It's like, ah, fuck, dude, it's not it's it stinks.
And the funny thing is even people in the industry that I deal with, you know, like a lot of them have great jobs because their gricks and their ac canvas and their customers and their hairdressers.
And I'm like, no, I'm a writer, go out to her. I'm the most lauded and least respected. It the same dime. Like, it's weird. Like unless you're you hit the jackpot and make something to everybody doors, you're just like a bum.
But here's the thing, amid no, you're right, amidst all the misery in this movie. Whenever he picks up the guitar, suddenly we're trying sported. In fact, anytime anyone sings in this movie, music is transformative in this film. It stops time and it illuminates things, and it makes us see the characters in in lights that we would have before.
I've often said that you know, even the worst band in the world, if you see them play live and they're halfway competent, you instantly gain a bit of respect for them. Never mind the fact that when Lewin Davis is putting his heart into a song. It's gorgeous, it really is.
The names is a beautiful performance. And then Doman just.
Like bud Golder, but Ray rud Gros were just like, I know's the amount of money I fucked up? I mean that's pucked up.
It's yeah. Every door is closed in his face in this movie.
I think Biden closes the celt and at the.
End, does he I see, here's the thing. Let's talk
¶ The Ending and Its Implications
about the ending.
Yeah, not to go back? Right? No? He does?
Okay, so he gives it all up, but then that door closes on it. He can't live his life. He has to continue, He has to go back just to make money from the basket being passed around at the club. That final performance. This movie does begin and end. It is a mirror because it starts and then the whole movie is a flashback, and then we come back to this opening scene. And as I said, the opening scene,
he's singing a movie. He's singing a song called hang Me, which was the Dave van Ronk standard, and that is a lament. It is a man who has given up entirely and is the only thing that really bothers him. Is how long his body is going to be laying in the ground.
Hang me, Oh, hang me, I'll be didn't gone? Hang me? O, hang me, I'll be didn't go? Wouldn't man hang him? But playing in the grays Now.
In the opening they cut from that to him getting off stage and then being assaulted by the woman's husband, the potential devil character in this film. Right when we come back to the end and he performs he does have But then he performs if I Had Wings again? Now if I Had Wings? We hear at the beginning. It is an angelic sequence with that cat. But that's
him with his partner singing. When he tries to sing the song again, that's the dinner party sequence with the intellectuals that you mentioned that the woman starts singing his dead partner's part. That's where he blows up and freaks out on them.
A have we.
Lord hod fly River to the words, well money, what are you doing? What?
But what is that?
What are you doing?
Well, it's Mike's part. Don't do that.
Oh you know what, this is bullshit.
I'm sorry, this is I don't do this, Okay, I do this for a living. It's not a it's not a fucking.
Parlor game, Lewin, Please, that's unfair to lose this bullshit.
I don't ask you over for dinner, and then suggests to give a lecture on the peoples a meso America, whatever your pre Columbia shit is.
So he tries on his own to sing that song and it doesn't work. There here at the end of the movie, he's singing that song and he means it. And I think he has renewed his faith in the music, no matter what the world is going to be throwing at him.
You fa had we nod ah fly the river do luwana? Well, honey.
And I do think even though he's been living this cyclical nature, this hell escape, I think he breaks it at the end because we've seen him get up at the gor Finds house and the cat escape. This time he has the presence of mind to catch the cat. It's like at the end of Rosencrans and guildensterm like, maybe we'll know better next time. There is a possibility here we see Davis at least make the move.
And yeah, I think he responds to the guy beating him up a little soft or two right.
Like he says, people respond is angry.
No, it's not anger at all. It's sort of resignation that of his treatment, because of his treatment, because of his treatment, and you know, as the man is storming off, he's saying, like you can have this cesspool. He's witness somebody actually giving up. He and his wife are getting in the car and they're going back to Arkansas. One brief heckling at a show in New York has ended her career, so he's saying goodbye to them while he's going to continue to soldier on.
Oh that's a good way to play.
Yeah, I think he taught her.
Yeah, that's all right, Well, okay that thank you for Jonings No, no.
On that.
Yeah.
I kind of think this is their most hopeful.
Because it's so heartbreaking this week that load.
Oh the one he heckles on snad.
Interesting, Yeah, this is a heartbreaking.
¶ The Cat as a Metaphor
That is, to me, the worst moment in the film. The Cat in many ways, is representative of his talent and his career throughout the entire movie. It's the one sort of sprightly thing that, no matter what circumstance, is always happy and always ready to go. And at a certain point in this movie he basically abandons the cat and then runs over at the cat, and that's sequence that's secret lost, you know. Yeah, the cat imping off into a forest lit by a tail light in a
snowstorm is one of the most haunting images I've ever seen. Yeah, on a purely on a pent owner level. First of all, just seeing an animal in peril just breaks my heart. And then the idea that this is his career, that he has detonated and it's just limping away into the wilderness is double the heart.
And he's running over it. But John goodwe about John Goodwy just fight.
I was just about to say that Lewin Davis, then what is John Goodwan?
Is the world?
Thing? Is the asshole? You know what I mean?
Like, Yeah, if there's something to be step.
There, maybe Lewin that maybe he's not that hard on.
Yeah, And I think that's exactly why those characters are in there. Lewin at a point in the movie basically hitches a ride to Chicago with a jazz musician and his valet played by Garrett Headland. That's Johnny five and Roland Turner is John Goodman's car. Every character's name is so evocative in this movie, so they're basically the beat generation.
They're the last hip musical scene to come up, and they're giving him his ride to Chicago, which could potentially be his big break or his finale as a musician. And it's exactly what you said, Antonio, Like this is another way to make your life as a musician, strung out on the road, gigging and just endlessly feasting on your own nostalgia. John Goodman never shuts up about some past story, some you know, some gloried moment in his
musical career. Meanwhile, he's in the back of a car like being driven by a monosyllabic thug slash beat poet and you know, some random guy who's about to give up on live.
Yeah, that's it's a weird thing.
And it's like but I mean he's so cool to lure, like just like he's it's well, he gives just back what you know, a liewd of dishes out. I guess at some points of loving too. But how do you how do you big front of a guy who jumped off of building, like jumped off a bridge, and so like.
It's just a cold thing.
Louis Louis partner Mike jumps off the George Washington Bridge and then John Goodwin goes off. He's like, well, why do you jump off the Preple Bridge. That's what you're suposed to jump off. Well say that I believe him for doing it, like the fuck, like come back and then come back with about the canes to get halfway afy gass and all the way up is great.
Yeah, but then his reaction to that is even better. Like in the weirdo pantheon of Cohen Brothers characters, John Goodman's character evidently is a student of of voodoo and uh Brew harria and can curse Lewin Davis and he'll this is the great thing. What he says is I won't curse you to like harm you. You will wonder why is my life turned to shit? And I'll be laughing some kind of what happens.
Yeah. Absolutely, But the thing is that' like you can't practice you're not human. Yeah.
Absolutely, Like it's a weird it's a weird canagon for John Goodman to go off on.
Everything is a surprize, you know, Like there's a lot of there's a phrase of screenwriting about throwing the duck into the window.
Is that what it is? Like when you're still where we're seeing as.
Going one way, you want to shake it up, knowing duck in there, like it'll that's John goodwin By. Everything he does in that.
Movie is just somebody to shake up the scene. Whether it's just in a popread convent arry or him being strung out on smack.
There's just always something surprising going on with that character. So is there a neat injection of the middle.
And not only does he level Lewin Davis the way Lewyn Davis will eventually level that amateur woman from Arkansas, but he levels his entire career as far as his musical choice, like, oh we you know, we play all the notes in jazz, not just three chords B B, A like, Like he completely belittles the higher folk movement.
¶ The Folk Music Scene and Its Evolution
I think, you know, listening to the folks and the folk music like I'm just getting it.
I'm just thank God for the Beatles or else who would have been stuck with all.
Of us well to be there around the same time people were still listening to Elvis Presley. So you know, folk was a neat little sub genre that we all pretend had a bigger impact than it did. I mean the biggest thing that came out of folk music. Let's face, it was Bob Dylan, well, Bob Dillon, who just became a rock star, right, who saw that folk music on its own was a dead genre. I mean it literally is singing songs from the past and when hey, let's use that with some rock and roll, shall we.
Yeah, you're the only one who's ever really able able to pull that office.
Jack White, who who does the greatest cover of Saint James A per worry Blueism has it whole. But you know, not.
Everybody can be as cool as the White strikes.
You know.
During the sequence with the with Roland Turner and Johnny Five, at one point, Lewin Davis sings a song called Green Green Rocky Road right, which is this very sprightly tune, and he uses it like a weapon against them after having you know, been pummeled by by Roland Turner for so on. That is actually a Dave Ronk, Dave Van
Ronk number. And not to get too sort of granular with the portrayal of Dave Van Ronk here as Lewin Davis, but his what I noticed is Dave Van Ronk when he came up actually was at the tail end of that jazz movement, the one that John Goodman's character is representative of, and he was young enough to be at the tail end of it to realize that it was going nowhere, that it was a fad, and that's when he sort of moved into blue and eventually landed in folks.
So by the time he got to folk, he had a very good musical history of American popular music or sub genres of popular music. So in his playing style, he's very much playing rag time. It's a very sprightly picking of the guitar. So he was actually in a on full in ways that everyone wasn't, and I think that fact is kind of left out in the film.
He's only ever shown as a struggling thing, and we see that he performs well in everything, but we can also see everyone's criticism of him and his music that it's not really there's nothing to it.
You know, Yeah, it's not the it's not the the next thing. It's just not adequate, but it's not the it's not it so to speak, you know, or you know, it's not the fire's.
No, And that next fire actually shows up in the finale of this movie, and one of his songs plays over the end credits because while he has reaffirmed while Lewon Davis has reaffirmed his commitment to the musical lifestyle. Out in that alley inside the cafe, Bob Dylan is playing for the first time.
Yeah we've never been.
Which is, you know, cosmically funny, because like I said, I do find this to be an incredibly hopeful ending to the movie. But but it's sitting in the cafe just like a one wall away is an is a man who's going to completely obliterate folk music entirely.
Yeah, that's interesting. They're gonna watch this mango picture now. Yeah, and he also turned the Beatles on to EAD, So there you go.
Let's I just want to shout out their editor, Roderick James.
So you're ry, namic, well rounded editor and delightful.
Oh stuffy old englishman, Roderick James. He's been working with them for a long time, and I.
Think a very very long long time.
I think work here is great for all the musical sequences. I've always loved their sort of musical moments, like just even very simple as the please Mister Kennedy Novelty song recording sequence is so spectacular.
Well you know what I mean, Like you've seen. The bid thing about the Coen Brothers is they're a student of all sid you know, like they're gonna they're gonna work everything then they and they don't shy away from musical numbers, and they have a history of really delightful numbers. And not just yet, but like the Big Labowski that almost sequence is the buzzy Berkeley musical whip about Korea.
You know, the cable guy changing out there. He's got on any rods to the first issue and he's beautiful.
We don't even forget hi about.
He has like two or three of them, especially not Sailor one, which is.
Dynamite and hilarious. Just Hell's Caesar.
Getting better every time I watch it.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, they just blows on you man, Like the first they watching season, I'm like, Okay.
I want to say I love their movies and they usually generally get me.
Also going to shout out to Oscar Isaac.
I like it. I've always really liked him as an actor. From the first movie I saw him and I think was Sucker Budge. I think was his first thing I saw.
Yeah, the first thing for me as well. He's very unnerving in that film.
Yeah, I just think he's great. He's you know, another Kuanto like me. So that's you know, that cultural connection, I guess. So it's like, oh, Podamner is the best actor of those movies, and of course the other are great actors on those Star Wars sequels.
The one and only Adam Driver in his face like he is another guy who I really like, although he is in everything now he's playing these wacky Italian guys.
But I do like Adam Driver and I do like Oscars, and I think they're.
The two Star Wars song about going into outer space.
Yeah, how great is then?
Huh? Well he's more than people to get justin but goes in two actors generally enjoy Oscar Isaac is one of my favorites. He does have that quality that seventies actors had, and I don't Drivers two.
I think you know who else is right in here, Max Casella as the owner of that.
You know, I've har heard of my own's Max Casella from Jukie Els.
Who would have funk Man. He's so funny Toranos, he was great on the He's a great on.
Which is you know that a silly show. But he's in there playing, you know, an ex mom guy who's now a stable hand.
He reminds me of Bruno Kirby another she's steagling little Italian guy.
Yeah.
I met Bruno Kirby one, so yeah, yeah, I wasn't a shore at a movie theater in Los Angeles and he came in and I said, it was I can't I'll never heeart. It was Easter Sunday and he came in with Jennifer jason Lee and my mother the exploded
because it was Jennifer Jason Lee. But she came in and tore her ticket quickly and then just went into the theater and he walked up very slowly, and I was like, oh, a happy Easter, mister Kirbedy, and he like he like hit me in the arm and he went call me Bruno, and then like he just kind of hung out and chatted for a while, and a friend of mine brought up this really embarrassing film that he was in called The herod Experiment from the seventies. It's oh wow, right, and he was like, can you
tell us any stories about the herold Experiment? And he said it like as you know, you were in a terrible movie. And Bruna Kirby sort of stood back and he said, you know what, that was the movie where Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith met and those kids were so in love on that movie, so you know, nothing but fond memories. I thought, Wow, what a fucking class act, man.
Yeah, real class act.
It makes me think of my favorite performance is it the Cushman.
I love that movie so much, and he is just so his in that movie, so hustling from the beginning to the all that I least frame of that movie's magic.
If you haven't seen The Queshman, oh you haven't seen it since the nineties, like, go watch it again. It's just a great, great, great, great movie.
Man, I have not seen that since the nineties. It is worth a rewatch. I think I'm definitely gonna.
I watched it about her ago. I just delighted. I was so disappointed when I got to film school. It wasn't quite like it, but almost like it.
Maxicu Sella is really good at Coen Brothers dialogue. They you know, Tarantino gets a lot of fucking respect for his dialogue, but in stylized dialogue, Land. I don't think you can get better than the Coen Brothers. Just in exchange, Like when they're at the bar, maxic Sella is like, you know, half of the guy come in here, they just want to they just want to fuck change. And then the half of the guys that going to come in here, they want to fuck Jim.
You get it.
They want to fuck Jim. You get it. They wanna fuck Jim. And the Lewin's like, so you're saying half the guys want to fuck Jim exactly. Something of a Mexico. Sela just put me in the mind that he should have been in more Cohen Brothers films.
I think I I'm trying to agree. As much as I love Tarotito and I love Tarantino, it was dialogue and it all sounds to a certain degree like there's you know, Halid and stuff, and you know, but the Tombos have this ability to change their cadence, to change everything the way the character talks from character to character. Taratino Chinny keeps a similarit cadence to everything, like not tow bergs Man. They just go back and forth and they can take Shan Speirior revel.
Kind of dialogue.
And it's also bucks in there and get it all out, like I feel like they write in my pet or sometimes like the way their dialogue flows. Man, it's absolutely the musical and I love Tarantino, but I'm with you the Cones of weather Man.
I wonder which of them is that? Which is I suspect it's Ethan.
Maybe.
I think Ethan is the dialogue guy. I think Ethan is the plant contrivance and dialogue guy. And I think Joel is the weird ones.
Well, he's the he was the original, he was the director. Anything flowed into that part, you know. I think Joel is that might be the mo is the movie guy.
Well, definitely more literary one. He's the Princeton English major guy.
And Joel hung up, you know, getting stolen with Sam RAIDI probably like Bruce Campbell, like he's.
That guy exactly.
Joel I would love to make a movie together.
Yeah.
You know, they had some aborted attempts there, you know, like Sam Raimi has a credit on Hutzucker Proxy for that scrap and he's a producer on it as well, and and Crime Wave. They had a hand in that screenplay that lamented Forgotten. Sam Raimi film.
Bruce Campbell's and Hudsucker.
Oh yeah, he's one of the reporters in the Bullpady. Yeah he looks great. Very Clark Kenton, Oh my god. Yeah, I know I expected him to jump out the window at a certain point.
I love hard soccer. So that's another one. Like it's just a neat piece of art. Like I don't don't care how successful it as they're not produced. Just every play with that of that movie's original and it's just lovely and yeah, Jennifer Jason letys something else?
¶ Coen Brothers' Filmography
Is there any Coen Brothers movie you don't like?
There are Coen Brothers movies that maybe I like less than others, I guess, but everything like Washington, There's od.
The only one I'm iffy about, and that's because I only saw it the one time, so and given their history of once you rewatch it, you get it a little bit more intolerable cruelty.
Yeah, I swore out with you too. I don't remember that being very fond. I remember that being kind of a bland Hollywood.
And that's obviously a throwback to kind of Preston Sturgis. Just I don't know, I just did not connect with that flick.
I don't know, but so the most part, yeah, and me happy man. I watched uler movie.
I was talking with an actress like her mind, she's in the UK, and actually.
Well, what you're gonna call him? Brothers? So oh right, well he says the Big Lebowski, Old Brother, we're out and probably on Raising Arizona. And then but you keep adding that, yeah, and oh we have a buttner fak is really good too, and oh my god, oh no, gargieve, old man is just like my embedding, like drum brother, like you shouldn't be his own gun, but yet it somehow is, you know, And so you keep adding stuff.
To their phlography that be really ignore. My favorite is The Big Lebowski. I getta Lie, I was the right age and the right place, and riot Sime when that movie came out to be a separate.
For the rest of my day. It's just the smallest movie.
But but Old Brother, we're out the whole point. So that's something else.
They've made a few flawless films.
It's really bad, true goodter better better than the original one.
It certainly is. And I think Raising Arizona is a perfect film. I think Aricona is just so good. I think Miller's Crossing is the best Nashal Hamlet movie ever made. I think Big Lebowski is the best Raymond Chandler film never made. Yeah, and the Lady Killers. That does not get the respect it deserves. I think that movie's fucking hilarious and one of their most one of their best characters in g A. Dore, the Tom Hanks character.
I think people just always sponder when it's Tom Hanks is like eel and they just like automatically tune out and that will be like.
Oh, yeah, they that's another one. People should reassess it totally. They don't need to go back and watch again. I've seen it so many fucking times.
But and it's only Rade.
And you know it's a part originated by.
Because yeah, healing, reeling, Yep, where are we here, Lewin Davis.
¶ Final Thoughts on Inside Llewyn Davis
If you want to know what it's like to be a struggling artist, this is the movie for you. I think it's a film that that fans.
Of the Coach should all at least walk towards. It's just film.
It's not my favorite, but again, it's not about so little.
It's just a little it's a little in spots and it's hard to root for the character. But then at the same time my suffer with that character. To you a lot, this movie or it's just like there's a hard watch street. But definitely you know another finding good films for the Coen Brothers.
Yeah, absolutely, this one is creeping slowly up to the top of my Coen Brothers list, honestly, Like, I recognize that there are better made films that they've done, but as far as a personal attachment to it, they get accused of being cold a lot, the same way Kubrick got accused of being cold a lot, which I've never felt with Coen Brothers. I adore their characters, h I McDonough, Are you kidding me?
You know the Coen.
Brothers are cold because they're funny, you know what I mean? Funny people are cold.
And I get another reason.
It's too sas for Kubrick, because Kubrig where he is, there's hollywaeny each every one of his movies you just got to find, but it's there, you know, Like and yeah, Doctors Rakli is one of the best piss funny movies ever made, and very.
Much like the Coen brothers fel Oh, yeah, I would be. It would surprise me if that that wasn't a huge influence.
Yeah.
And you know he was talking Chris Nolan and all his stuff. You're all like Coubert, like Chris all and nothing, like, well, what are you talking about? He makes these important does I'm like, yeah, but had you ever laughed?
And co?
And then a Chris Nolan movie.
There's no humor.
In any of that.
There's humor and says there's humor in the darkest spots and Jack and it's just hilarious. Ship.
It's all dark and disturbing. But the funny is there. People are funny.
The only one he is that doesn't really have any comedy in it is eyes wide shut. But then it's so ridiculous.
Yeah, it's funny.
There's so ridiculous and so self serious. And I go with that's how important we are in these outrets. I'm like like this.
Can you imagine? This is how you view your relationship, This is how your view adultery. It's a fucking brand affair with masked weirdos. Are you're gonna calm down, Tom Cruise? Your wife fantasizes about other people sometimes.
And I'm I'm sure Nicole Timmans fantasizing a lot of other people quite a bit. We're married to Don Crug doesn't seem like he's pleasant, although he really is a great movie star.
I can't take that away from he is the kreb de la.
Prem Did you ever see that interview with her where they asked her what's different now that you're divorced and she said, I can wear high heels again.
You can't. You can't argue that's one funny broad up then, But yeah, those are the great pictures, and check it out.
It's a tiff on it, you know, like there's a different piece of gun. It's we're no plot, but.
A lot of movies going a plot in them.
It's an adventure, it's a quest.
And it's kind of sad.
Yeah, it's a challenging film and overall what it seems like it's a series of this character getting kicked in the series of events of these characters getting kicked in the teeth. And then he's what any other studio film would have done is a big priumphant concert, that last concert on that stage. He would have been the Dylan character and he would have been signed to a record label or whatever, and they don't give us that. But like I said, there are small victories throughout this movie.
The music itself is the victory. The creative process itself is the victory here, and the continued adherents to it. So I do think this is one of their more depressing films, but also one of their more hopeful.
Yeah.
I've said in the minds, but you know, a hope a precious commodity, and I think this ultimately is that and more hopeful in many ways than more obvious examples of it, because you really have to fucking eke hope out of existence when you can.
Yeah, absolutely, Antonio.
Until next time, Where can people find you? If they're looking for you on the internets, you can find me on Instagram, at swamp Media Group or at Swampmedia Group dot com. And as for me, if you're listening here to the regular free feed being, feel free to continue to do that. But if you want to support us, you go over to patreon dot com slash father them alone.
There you're going to get all these episodes early and commercial free, and you'll get access to our Patreon only bonus shows like Cable Box theater where night mister Walters host HP and I take a look at early nineteen eighties, late nineteen seventies, filmed for videotape for Film Broadway Productions, for HBO and Showtime. It is Oh boy, there something else entirely let me tell you. Oh yeah, I can see by your expression, Antonio, that you too are horrified
and intrigued. But let me tell you something, my friend. You have not lived until you've seen Wait until Dark starring Stacy Keach on some theater in Cincinnati.
So wow, wow, that is a really niche podcast, very very niche.
Oh my, yes, well so niche. What The one good thing about it is that everything we talk about is readily available through YouTube, ort archive or whatever. So it's not like we're just niche and off and only the other two people who have any big recollection of this phenomenon that can participate. So anyway, go over there Patreon.
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other fucking great stuff. Ladies and gentlemen midnight viewers, thank you so much for joining us here, and we will catch you in the next episode, which I believe is going to be Buster scrugs look out more Cohens, but in actual anthology, so we'll be adhering back to our original structure.
Do you ever think about the future at all?
The future?
You mean like flying cars, hotels on.
The moon tang And this is why you fucked.
No, it's why you're fucked.
Just trying to blueprint a future move to the suburbs with.
Jim have kids.
That's bad.
If that's what music is for you, a way to get to that place.
And yeah, it's it's it's a little careerist and it's a little square, it's a little sad.
Pass pack
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