It doesn’t make any sense, which is why it makes perfect sense. If you were going to make a movie about Bruce Springsteen and you cared about box-office returns, you’d focus on the breakthrough with “Born to Run,” the world conquest with “Born in the U.S.A.,” the response to 9/11 with “The Rising.” You’d play the hits, you’d play them loud and you’d want people coming out of the theater shouting, “Tramps like us, baby we were born to runnnnn!”
The thing is, Bruce Springsteen doesn’t like those kinds of greatest-hits biopics. Neither does Scott Cooper. So Cooper’s Springsteen movie, made with the full cooperation of its subject (but without him exercising any control), focuses on a dark chapter in between the successes.
It finds the Boss, played by Jeremy Allen White, racked with depression in the aftermath of his first Top 10 single, “Hungry Heart,” and putting the surefire hit album he’s been making on hold so that he can sit at home and record a batch of grim songs about killers and lost men and fathers and sons at loose ends.
Those songs turned into the classic 1982 album “Nebraska,” which flew in the face of every record-business truism about how to follow a hit but might have saved Springsteen’s life by helping him commit commercial suicide.
That is the story in Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” a defiantly low-key antidote to the usual rock ‘n’ roll biopic. It’s not the rock movie a studio exec would dream of any more than “Nebraska” was the Springsteen album Columbia Records wanted back in ’82, and that’s why it makes perfect sense. (The film’s grosses were sadly tepid — but as Springsteen pointed out, “Nebraska” didn’t sell all that well either.)
White’s Springsteen is a tortured soul, dredging up his darkest songs from unresolved childhood traumas rooted in his relationship with his troubled father, played by “Adolescence” co-creator and star Stephen Graham. Jeremy Strong plays Jon Landau, Springsteen’s longtime manager, producer, sounding board, confidant and creative protector. As somebody who helped chronicle “Nebraska” when it first came out and has known the principals for decades, I can testify that both Jeremys nail it.
When I spoke to Cooper and White about the film, the writer-director began the conversation by passing along a tidbit he finds irresistible.
SCOTT COOPER Jeremy, did you know that Steve wrote the original review of “Nebraska” for Rolling Stone in 1982?
JEREMY ALLEN WHITE No!
Yeah, I wrote about music for many years before I ever wrote about film. And the funny thing, Jeremy, was that in that review, I interpreted the song “Reason to Believe” as having a sense of hope to it…
WHITE Did he correct you?
Bruce didn’t, but he has talked about how bleak that song was, and I always felt that I had missed the point. Recently, though, I’ve been cheered up by reading interviews where you said you interpreted the song the same way.
WHITE I knew that he had said that, but we got together at his house a couple weeks prior to when we started filming, and I did say, “Talk to me about ‘Reason to Believe.’ I’ve read what you’ve said, but with all due respect, I disagree. I hear hope. Or I choose to hear it that way.” It became a conversation about ownership of music. Is it OK to correct how something is received? Is it our responsibility to tell people, “Oh no, that’s not how it went”?
And really, that’s what the song is about. It’s about people choosing to find hope.
COOPER That’s Springsteen! I interpret it the same way you and Jeremy and many others have. But Bruce sees it as nihilistic, as his darkest song. So to Jeremy’s point, it’s about: How do we receive art? How do we interpret it?
WHITE I felt most joyous singing that song out of all the songs. (Laughs)
Scott, I know that your dad introduced you to “Nebraska.” Was that your entry point to Bruce?
COOPER Yes, it was. Up until that point, I wasn’t particularly familiar with his albums. I was more connected to R.E.M. or classic country or even jazz or bluegrass. But that got me at just the right time. A disaffected 18-year-old who wasn’t quite sure of his place in the world connected to the darkness in Bruce’s album. And it’s an album that I have turned to ever since then. It was something I knew I could connect with when I most needed it.
Jeremy, you weren’t really a Bruce aficionado, right?
WHITE No. I was of course familiar with Bruce. I grew up in New York and we had a radio, so I knew Bruce Springsteen. But I grew up in the early ’90s and my parents were Bruce’s age. The records in the house were older, more like stuff that Bruce would listen to. All the stuff I listened to was more like ’60s, I would say, than ’70s or ’80s.
I knew some of the hits. And I listened to “Nebraska” for the first time with some friends when I must have been in my early 20s. At that time, everybody was listening to Bon Iver. “For Emma, Forever Ago,” his first album, had come out and there was all this lore around how he recorded it by himself in a cabin.
And then my buddy Gabriel told me, “There’s this Bruce Springsteen record and it’s similar. He recorded it by himself in this house.” I listened to it with my ear focused on the far-out concept of recording a record on your own, which now is pretty common.
I remember just thinking it was a cool record. That was all that was important to me in my teens and 20s when I was listening to music. I was like, “That’s cool. That’s not cool. That’s cool. That’s not cool.” I remember listening to “Nebraska” and on first listen hearing “Highway Patrolman” and “Johnny 99” and thinking, that’s some outlaw stuff, that’s cool.
COOPER It’s so funny how that album even then predicted the world that we’re living in now, with disaffected men, moral ambiguity and quiet desperation. Now that I know his catalog so well, I think it’s the most punk thing Bruce ever did. Not in sound but in spirit. No tour, no band, no polish, just the truth on tape for sure.
WHITE In a way, I knew Suicide (a stark and minimalist electronic duo from the 1970s that figures heavily in the film) more than I knew Bruce, but you hear Suicide in those songs in such a strong way. And I love it so much that Bruce has said that if Elvis was still making music today, it would sound like Suicide. When I first read it, I thought, that doesn’t make any sense. But after giving it some thought and going back and listening, I was like, that’s the truth.
Well, maybe if Elvis was still making music and Colonel Parker wasn’t around to tell him what to do, it might sound like Suicide.
WHITE That’s true.
Scott, you adapted Warren Zanes’ book “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” but that’s a nonfiction book with long stretches that simply discuss the impact of the album. Apart from Bruce’s autobiography, what did you use to flesh out the narrative?
COOPER I gleaned from Warren’s book the emotional texture, the introspection, the sense of isolation, the deeply personal account of Bruce’s creative process. Bruce’s autobiography is where I was able to take Bruce’s voice and his reflections on his lifelong struggle with depression. To really understand Bruce as a man who’s confronting himself rather than an icon performing for others, I had to blend the two. And that allowed me to dramatize not just what happened, but how it felt.
I would say the most I gleaned was from the conversations I had with Bruce — how he accessed his memory of childhood to be able to write the record and how the emotional core of the film is distance. It’s a movie haunted by fathers who don’t know how to love and sons who keep trying to earn that love. That’s Bruce’s story, of course, but I found out over the course of releasing the film that in many ways it’s the story of a lot of people.
Jeremy, what did you turn to in order to prepare?
WHITE I read and listened to Bruce’s book over and over again for the six months I had to prepare. I listened to Bruce’s music, his discography in its entirety, which I think was really helpful. I spoke to people around Bruce and found some help in speaking to Patti (Scialfa, Springsteen’s wife) and (producer) Jimmy Iovine and folks that were around during that time. But at the end of the day, I think it’s similar to Scott. The things that I connected to came most frequently in Bruce’s presence.
I felt a responsibility to learn everything, obviously. But as we got closer and closer to filming, the focus got sharper and sharper into this period of time, into this young man, even away from the idea of Bruce Springsteen. Really just trying to recognize what’s going on in this guy’s head during these months. And Bruce was very helpful in that process. Once we started filming, it was me and Scott and my head was down, but Bruce was around a great deal. I would give him a hug in the morning and give him a hug in the evening, and we’d text each other at the end of the day.
I imagine it was lost on no one that you were in your early 30s, having your first bout of mainstream success after “The Bear,” playing a guy at that age trying to deal with his first bout of mainstream success.
WHITE That was absolutely something Scott and I spoke about. I often thought about the public’s idea of you as compared to your own understanding of self. If you’re having insecurity or doubt in yourself and you’re having these ideas projected onto you, what a delicate and fragile position that can put you in. There was a lot of that going on with Bruce at this time, and that’s certainly a feeling that I have been familiar with.
COOPER What I love is that Jeremy and Bruce represent a stardom that’s built on authenticity rather than being performative. Jeremy is the kind of actor who doesn’t project, he doesn’t manufacture emotion. He just feels, and that’s a rarity. You know, we’re living in an era where celebrity often feels artificial. It’s curated, it’s detached. Jeremy’s the opposite of that. Very grounded, very curious, working-class in spirit. I think he represents something people are hungry for, which is truth.
“Born in the U.S.A.” is obviously a song that can rip your voice up if you try to do it like Bruce a few times. But the “Nebraska” songs are so intimate and bare, and initially I couldn’t believe that was Jeremy singing them.
COOPER Those bedroom (recording) scenes are incredibly difficult, because there’s nothing to hide behind. I don’t want to speak for Jeremy, and he can tell you how hard “Born in the U.S.A.” is to sing, but the other ones are incredibly hard because they’re very naked.
WHITE Yeah. I think you said it: There is no place to hide when you’re singing the songs from “Nebraska.” That’s why the record connects with us. I worked with this wonderful vocal coach for a really long time, and I remember sitting in a recording studio in Nashville alone, listening to Bruce and singing and finding that balance. I sang his songs for, like, five or six hours a day. That was the first time I felt really close to Bruce, and the first time I think I found the confidence that I could do this. I felt that my voice had something to offer to this part of Bruce’s life story.
Bruce was often on the set — but Scott, you’ve said there were times when you filmed sensitive scenes and he would say, “I don’t need to be around for this.” Jeremy, were there moments you preferred that he not be there?
WHITE I think the only times I was really feeling on edge were in the first week or two. There were several things going on with having Bruce around. One of them was, “Is this guy here to pick me apart?” There was a lot of insecurity, and also a great desire to get Bruce’s approval.
And then I thought, I don’t want to be performing from a place of trying to get Bruce to like me, because that’s not really doing him a favor. And so the only times I had a feeling that some space might’ve been nice were in those first couple weeks.
I do think I was nervous about some of the scenes where I would be performing and I knew Bruce was going to be there. But when the days came, it felt wonderful having him there. It gave a heavier weight and responsibility to those moments. But my goodness, when we were shooting at the Stone Pony and Bruce came with (his wife) Patti (Scialfa) and their kids, and then Steven Spielberg came, that was one of those days when… (Laughs)
COOPER I think we all felt it.
WHITE Yeah. We all felt it. But it fed the moment and it fed the performance in a way that was necessary, you know?
COOPER I kind of loved having Steven Spielberg on my left and Bruce on my right as we shot those scenes. Boy, you gotta bring your A game.
WHITE Yeah. Sink or swim.
A version of this story first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
