\n<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter the success of Scott Cooper\u2018s 2010 debut film, Crazy Heart <\/em>\u2014 the music drama about a faded country singer that landed Jeff Bridges a best actor Oscar \u2014 the filmmaker was deluged with offers for music biopics about some real-life legends: Elvis Presley, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, the Grateful Dead, Jeff Buckley. Instead, Cooper veered off in several different directions. He made a crime drama about a steelworker looking for his missing brother (Out of the Furnace<\/em>), a biopic about mobster Whitey Bulger (Black Mass<\/em>) and a period piece about Edgar Allan Poe (The Pale Blue Eye<\/em>). But one idea continued to nag at the corners of his consciousness: a movie about Bruce Springsteen. It wasn\u2019t until he read Warren Zane\u2019s 2023 book about the rock icon\u2019s struggles with depression in 1982 during the writing and recording of his seminal lo-fi masterwork, Nebraska<\/em>, that inspiration struck. Two years later and with the Boss\u2019 blessing, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere<\/em>, starring Jeremy Allen White, opens the 2025 AFI Fest on Oct. 22 before going wide two days later. Cooper talked with THR<\/em> about capturing the \u201cessence\u201d of Bruce, White\u2019s commitment to the role and the film\u2019s message to Hollywood.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat is your first memory of Springsteen?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tMy father, who passed away the day before I started shooting and to whom I\u2019ve dedicated the film, introduced me to most of my early musical tastes. He introduced me to Bruce through Nebraska<\/em>, and I remember hearing it for the first time in our house on vinyl when I was a disillusioned teenager who wasn\u2019t sure about his place in the world.<\/p>\n \n\tJeremy Allen White has spoken about his initial hesitation to take the role given his lack of experience singing and playing guitar. Was that a concern for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI knew I had the right actor. Jeremy is incredibly committed, and I\u2019d also seen in him the intensity, vulnerability and humility that I knew from Bruce. And, he has a sense of swagger that you can\u2019t learn in acting school. I did not know, however, that he would go to the lengths he did to embody him \u2014 his harmonica playing, his movement. I know that he bears a strong resemblance to Bruce in the \u201980s, and Bruce\u2019s wife has confirmed that, but what we were after is the essence.<\/p>\n \n\tWas there a specific moment when you realized he had gotten that essence?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWe rehearsed with our music producer Dave Cobb in Nashville. We were doing all of the songs on Nebraska<\/em> and \u201cBorn in the USA\u201d and \u201cHungry Heart,\u201d and that was the first time I knew we were going to be more than fine. Once cameras started rolling and I got to see him play \u201cBorn\u201d with [actor-musicians as] an electrified E-Street Band in the very room where the original recording took place, it was spine-tingling.<\/p>\n \n\tYou also filmed in what really looked like the house that Bruce rented in Colts Neck, New\u00a0Jersey, while he was writing the album \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThe original house had been modified from how Bruce remembered it, so we scouted the entire state of New Jersey for one that had the same feeling, the same architecture, was just as close to a lake. When Bruce walked into the house our production designer Stefania Cella found, he just shook his head and said, \u201cThis is it.\u201d We also searched everywhere for a Camaro that was the same make and model and color as the one he had in the \u201980s, and they found it somewhere in the Midwest. I think he\u2019s planning to buy that car now.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tJeremy Strong as Bruce\u2019s manager and record producer, Jon Landau.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of 20th Century Studios<\/p>\n \n\tThe film\u2019s postscript points out that, despite the label\u2019s extreme skepticism, <\/strong>Nebraska<\/em><\/strong> went on to become wildly successful. What point were you hoping to make there?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI wanted to convey the difficulty, for any artist, including myself, of balancing the creative risks we take with the commercial considerations. I think the story of Nebraska<\/em> shows you the importance of having the artistic courage to listen to your intuition. This movie comes out in two weeks, and it\u2019s my fervent hope that people connect to that.<\/p>\n \n\tIt would be easy to read into that even further, that you\u2019re putting out a message to Hollywood decision-makers to focus more on the art and less on the numbers when they\u2019re making those decisions. <\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tYes, I hope so. And I hope people support that.<\/p>\n \n\tThis story appeared in the Oct. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the success of Scott Cooper\u2018s 2010 debut film, Crazy Heart \u2014 the music drama about a faded country singer that landed Jeff Bridges a best actor Oscar \u2014 the filmmaker was deluged with offers for music biopics about some real-life legends: Elvis Presley, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, the Grateful Dead, Jeff Buckley. Instead, Cooper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[17356,17590,546,1112,2107,17589],"class_list":{"0":"post-29828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-capturing","9":"tag-darkest","10":"tag-days","11":"tag-deliver","12":"tag-director","13":"tag-springsteens"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}