The Making of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

From left: Ethan Coen, T Bone Burnett and Joel Coen during a break from filming.
From left: Ethan Coen, T Bone Burnett and Joel Coen during a break from filming.
Oscar Isaac (center, with, from left, Justin Timberlake, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen) found a mentor in his pop-star co-star: "He would just be there, listening, working on the song together, taking in some of my ideas, building my confidence."
"When I read the script, I thought it was very funny to see someone striving to survive," Isaac says, "and I thought of Buster Keaton. We root for him. We laugh, yet all this horrible shit constantly happens to him."
"You have to find comic elements in there to make the darkness richer," says John Goodman, pictured with Isaac.
"He just had it," says Burnett of Isaac (with Timberlake). "He had the tone from the first minute."
Carey Mulligan and her husband, Mumford & Sons singer Marcus Mumford, lent Llewyn their pipes.
Garrett Hedlund (left), with Coen brothers veteran John Goodman, who plays a crippled, heroin-addicted jazzman.