Last week we posted a Lincoln Center event where the Coen brothers hinted that they were developing a music-related film but they didn’t reveal any details. Today 24 Frames finds a source who says the script is set in mid-century New York City, inhabiting the Village Vanguard coffeehouse culture where the acoustic folk music revival took place, and is loosely based on the life of guitarist Dave van Ronk. Altman’s Nashville meets Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory as remixed by Joel and Ethan Coen? Folk yeah!
Dave Van Ronk, who died in 2002, was known as the uncle of that scene, a big personality famed for his musical acumen, left-wing politics, general erudition and entertaining storytelling. On his watch, era-defining musicians such as Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell were discovered and cultivated…
Van Ronk, who died in 2002 at the age of 66, published a posthumous memoir three years later titled “The Mayor of MacDougal Street” which a collaborator helped collate. The source said the Coens are drawing in part from material in the book.
The Greenwich Village figure, a noted supporter of progressive causes, was also arrested during the neighborhood’s famous Stonewall Riots, an event that gives a van Ronk movie a certain relevance in light of the New York State legislature’s move to legalize gay marriage on Friday.
At the Lincoln Center talk, the Coens compared their movie to “Margot at the Wedding” (Noah Baumbach was on stage with them) suggesting that, like that film, their new work will offer natural dialogue and a feeling of being dropped into the middle of a world. They also said they expected the film to contain musical performances. “We’re working on a movie now that has music in it [that’s] pretty much all performed live, single instrument,” Joel Coen said.
A dozen of my favorite movies about the roots of music movements:
Almost Famous
Nashville
A Mighty Wind
Cadillac Records
The Boat the Rocked
24 Hour Party People
Velvet Goldmine
Purple Rain
Performance
Dreamgirls
Taking Woodstock
American Graffiti
and a dozen others, more specifically focused as musicians’ bio-pics, both real and fictional.
I’m Not There
Bound for Glory
Control
Ray
Bird
The Doors
The Buddy Holly Story
Sid and Nancy
This is Spinal Tap
A Hard Day’s Night
Lady Sings the Blues
The Rose