Trivia / Inside Llewyn Davis

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• Fake American: The British Carey Mulligan as the American Jean.
• Fake Nationality: The Guatemalan Oscar Isaac as the Welsh-Italian Llewyn, though it's possible Llewyn is at least part Latino; his Italian mother is only mentioned in response to Roland's racist needling and his non-stereotypically-Anglo appearance is remarked upon by other characters.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Unlike Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac hates cats.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: In an interview included on the DVD, Ethan Coen said:
  The cat was a nightmare. The trainer warned us and she was right. She said, uh, "Dogs like to please you. The cat only likes to please itself." A cat basically is impossible to train. We have a lot of footage of cats doing things we don't want them to do, if anyone's interested; I don't know if there's a market for that.
• Playing Against Type: Carey Mulligan, best-known for playing quiet Broken Birds or bright ingenues, plays a foul-mouthed, bitter Jerkass.
• Production Posse: Nearly averted. Aside from John Goodman, none of the major Coen players are featured in this film. To an even greater extent, this marks the first film where neither cinematographer Roger Deakins nor composer Carter Burwell were participants (though there have been previous films where one or the other was not involved).
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Unlike most Coen Brothers films, this one had a hard time finding distribution after its completion due to films about the music industry being box office poison and the lack of a major lead. Finally, CBS Films (who ironically shelved the Coen Brothers-written Gambit and dumped it Direct to DVD in April of the following year.) picked it up for a December 2013 release.
• Star-Making Role: For Oscar Isaac, who was cast in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and X-Men: Apocalypse shortly thereafter.
• What Could Have Been: Casey Affleck, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Reynolds auditioned for the role of Llewyn Davis.

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