T Bone Burnett and Oscar Isaac make for an interesting pair.
The former is one of the most celebrated and accomplished individuals in music history, having toured with Bob Dylan, produced albums for such big-name artists as Elton John and Tony Bennett, managed his own successful solo recording career and won several Grammys and an Oscar.
The latter is a relative newcomer to music who has worked with, well, T Bone Burnett. Many people had probably never heard of Isaac until recently.
This odd couple is the heart and soul behind the music for the new Coen Brothers' film, "Inside Llewyn Davis," which opens on Friday. It garnered a Golden Globe nomination for best picture, musical or comedy last week and is considered a likely Oscar contender.
Isaac stars as a singer-songwriter who's struggling to make a living on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. Burnett, who also worked on the mega-popular "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" with the Coens, was the executive music producer for "Llewyn Davis." I recently sat down with both Burnett and Isaac to discuss the film.
Q Oscar, you were born in Guatemala and grew up in Miami -- not exactly hotbeds of Greenwich Village-style folk. What's your music background?
Isaac: My dad grew up in Washington, D.C. Although he wouldn't admit it now, he was a bit of a hippie. So, he fell in love with Dylan and Cat Stevens and Jimi Hendrix. That's what we grew up listening to -- that and the Beatles.
Q T Bone, how did your experience working with Dylan factor into this project?
Burnett: I've been following Bob since about 1962 or 1963. So much that I learned about show business I learned from Bob, which maybe sounds like a funny thing to say because he's known as a writer and he's known as a singer and a musician. But he's also a tremendous showman as well. All art, for me, is at its base storytelling. So, I guess, the main thing I learned from Bob is how to tell stories.
Q What was the collaboration process like?
Isaac: The first thing we did was pick out Llewyn's guitar. So, we went out to (Southern California's) Norman's Rare Guitars, and I tried a bunch of old acoustic guitars. When I picked up that one (in the film), immediately it sounded right. And T Bone said, "OK, you are making music with that one." And that was Llewyn's guitar. Then we just started working on the arrangements. For (Burnett), I think it was a process of stripping away and getting to the real honest sound.
Q So, T Bone, give me the producer's opinion -- how did Oscar do?
Burnett: For the task at hand, I would say that he completely aced it. Never in the history of the cinema has an actor learned to play guitar and sing a whole repertoire of songs and then film them live on the set without the benefit of a guide track of any kind. Always, in films, you have a guide track so that you can cut from take to take. But the Coens just didn't want to do that. They wanted all the details of the risk of a real live performance. So we took the biggest risk that we possibly could, and Oscar just rose to the occasion.
Q What's it like working with the Coens?
Burnett: The truth is that the whole process is just as fun as it gets. This is how making film is supposed to be. It's how making art is supposed to be. It's how making music is supposed to be. It's so wonderful that we can do it transmedia (telling and marketing a story via multiple media forms). The Coens are really leading a whole wave of transmedia storytelling with this.
Isaac: It's history. It's like great old folk songs. (The Coens) are folk artists.
Burnett: They are. I hadn't even thought of that. But you're right. They are folk artists.
Q How important is it for this film to be a kind of history lesson -- to show people what it was actually like to be working in the folk scene during that period?
Isaac: I don't want it to be a history lesson. I don't want to see that movie.
Burnett: I think I can speak for the Coens in saying that it's not as important to know how it was then as it is to know how it is now. So, it's not as important that it be a history lesson as it is to be a true story about the way life is.
Q What are your hopes for the film?
Burnett: Hope will kill you. You got to watch out for hope. But I think what we want is for the movie to live.
Isaac: That it will last a thousand years.
Burnett: For it to reach people and touch people and they will carry it with them to heaven.
Isaac: Yeah, just right.
Follow Jim Harrington at Twitter.com/jimthecritic[1] , www.facebook.com/jim.bayareanews[2] and http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/category/concerts[3] .
References
- ^ Twitter.com/jimthecritic (Twitter.com)
- ^ www.facebook.com/jim.bayareanews (www.facebook.com)
- ^ http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/category/concerts (blogs.mercurynews.com)
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