Yes, that was Bruce Springsteen on stage last night with just his guitar at Alice Tully Hall.
Bruce made some nice remarks and then serenaded the crowd at the NY Film Festival after a big standing ovation for the opening of Scott Cooper’s movie, “Deliver Me from Nowhere.”
Jeremy Allen White of “The Bear” plays Bruce circa 1982 and Jeremy Strong of “Succession” is his manager and closest friend, Jon Landau in a film about creativity, depression, loss, and friendship.
“Deliver Me” — based on the book by Warren Zanes — is a very different music film than last year’s “A Complete Unknown” because Springsteen was a decade into being a star when ghosts of his childhood haunted him, and he decided to make a stripped down, personal album called “Nebraska.”
This was right before “Born in the USA” turned him into a worldwide superstar in 1984.
Cooper, director of “Crazy Hearts” which gave us Jeff Bridges’s Oscar winning performance, has shaped a moody movie of rich colors that never loses sight of the friendship between the two men and the pain of creating an album that satisfies an artist’s vision. It’s beautiful work.
White is smaller than Springsteen in real life, but he projects himself as a big presence on screen. He sings the “Nebraska” songs when Bruce is writing and recording, although Cooper uses the real Bruce recordings when they’re playing the music back.
Bruce is just coming off his big hit, “Hungry Heart,” when he decides to pull back and re-evaluate his burgeoning career. He is indeed haunted memories of abusive father — who’s still alive in the movie and played by “Adolescence” star Stephen Graham — and a kind, put upon mother (Gaby Hoffman).
Returning to Asbury Park, Bruce hooks up with the sister of an old friend, played with a lot of warmth and appeal by Odessa Young. Paul Walter Hauser is guitar tech and buddy Mike Batlan who helps Bruce set up a makeshift studio in the bedroom of a rented house where Springsteen can be alone while he composes the album. David Krumholtz is Sony records exec Al Teller who’s not too happy when he hears “Nebraska” for the first time.
“Deliver Me” is less about plot — not a lot really happens — than it is about mood, and the way a real artist finds his way into the great unknown of creating a project. There’s the subplot of the girlfriend, and the father, but really it’s about Bruce emerging from his cocoon into a full grown Monarch butterfly.
Watching “The Bear,” we know no one does angst like White. He is the real Tortured Poets Department, which makes the way he creates Springsteen’s arc so fascinating. He’s very charming as he plumbs the depths of his soul. There’s a heart wrenching scene I don’t want to give away involving father and son, White and Graham, that is unexpected and disarming. It’s what makes “Deliver Me” a great, not a good, movie.
Strong, of course, brings Landau to life, and it’s very key to see how much the singer depends on the manager for support and guidance.
You’re not going to hear the Springsteen catalog, this is no jukebox musical. “Born in the USA” is the only that gets the star treatment. Otherwise, it’s all “Nebraska,” a work of art that echoes Springsteen’s interests in Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. The record company has no hope for a hit but “Nebraska” — without any singles — made it the top 3 and remains a Springsteen staple.
In the audience was Bruce’s famed drummer Max Weinberg, also Clive Davis, who was so instrumental in Bruce’s early career. Also on hand: famed artist and director Julian Schnabel. I was thrilled to run into my old friend, Molly Sims, who’s married to Scott Stuber, one of the producers. Strong and Graham put in appearances at the after party at Ascent in the Time Warner Center, but Bruce, White, and Cooper were all absent. (Also the after party turned out to be an A list, B list affair, which was very weird.)
The most interesting guest: famed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader, who back in 1982 sent Springsteen a screenplay the singer never read called “Born in the USA.” Schrader wanted Bruce to sing and star in the movie. Bruce declined. Schrader told me later that he was in Japan and saw the “Born in the USA” album on sale, with his title and the art work from the unmade screenplay.
Was Schrader mad, I asked? “No,” he said, “I got him to write the title song for another movie I made, Light of Day, with Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett.”
Can Disney — which isn’t really part of the annual awards marathon unless it’s with animation — make this 20th Century Studios film a contender? I sure hope so. It deserves to be in the conversation.
Bruce gave Schrader a sweet shout out, as you’ll see below.
