Production
How much did CBS Films pay for the domestic distribution rights of Inside Llewyn Davis?
Inside Llewyn Davis
Set in 1961, "Inside Llewyn Davis" was inspired by the cultural disconnection within a New York–based music scene where the songs seemed to come from all parts of the United States except New York, but whose performers included Brooklyn-born Dave Van Ronk and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Well before writing the script, the Coens began with a single premise: suppose Van Ronk got beat up outside of Gerde's Folk City in the Village. The filmmakers employed that idea in the opening scenes, then periodically returned to the project over the next couple of years to expand the story around a fictional character. One source for the film was Van Ronk's posthumously published (2005) memoir, "The Mayor of MacDougal Street." According to the book's co-author, Elijah Wald, the Coens mined the work "for local color and a few scenes." The character is a composite of Van Ronk, Elliot, and other performers from the New York boroughs who performed in the Village at that time. 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. "Shooting was complicated by an early New York spring, which interfered with the bleak winter atmosphere that prevails throughout the film, and by the difficulty of filming several cats, who, unlike dogs, ignore the desires of filmmakers. On the advice of an animal trainer, the Coens put out a casting call for an orange tabby cat, which is sufficiently common that several cats would be available to play one part. Individual cats were then selected for each scene based on what they were predisposed to do on their own. Producer Scott Rudin, who worked with the Coens on "True Grit" and "No Country for Old Men", collaborated on the project. StudioCanal helped finance it without an American distributor in place. "After shooting in New York City and elsewhere last year...the brothers finished the movie at their own pace", wrote Michael Cieply in a January 2013 "The New York Times" interview with Joel Coen ahead of a private, pre-Grammys screening in Los Angeles. "They could have rushed it into the Oscar season but didn’t." On February 19, CBS Films announced it had picked up the U.S. domestic distribution rights for about $4 million. StudioCanal has rights to international distribution and foreign sales.