Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
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| The Q&A for Deliver Me From Nowhere: September 29, 2025 |
There have been many recent biopics focusing on pop icons of the past 60 years. Typically, they fudge the history in the service of mythologizing the subject, leading to some crowning achievement. Think of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Queen's triumphant performance at "Live Aid," circumstantial facts be damned. Or "A Complete Unknown" and its version of Bob Dylan surviving a violently booing and projectile-throwing mob when he dared to go electric at Newport. Or "Elvis," in whatever passed for triumph in that movie.
If there was a singular moment of triumph on "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere," it was when Bruce Springsteen showed up in a therapist's office for the first time. This film, based in large part by Warren Zanes's book "Deliver Me From Nowhere," and also in part on Springsteen's autobiography, is a character study of a person struggling to find his place in the world, one uncertain step at a time. In that context, the story was compelling.
As a hard-core fan going back years before the events depicted in "Deliver Me From Nowhere," I'm familiar with the basic subject matter here. Once, many years ago, someone who was close to Bruce told me that everyone was scared that he'd end up driving through a concrete wall, literally. In this movie, that was brought to life. Jeremy Allen White was astonishingly intense in the title role. Unlike Timothy Chalamet as Dylan, for example, there was never a single moment in this film where I imagined I was seeing Bruce Springsteen on screen. That's a good thing, in its way; no one could recreate Springsteen live, and White was credible as a stage Bruce mostly to the extent that he was really sweaty on stage. So I was never tempted to sing along. The in-studio performance of "Born in the U.S.A." (as recorded, with a glockenspiel part that was later edited down) was also strong and pretty much note perfect, so fans could imagine the scene. The bar band scenes at The Stone Pony were less compelling. Nonetheless, White completely sold the idea of what it was like to be Springsteen in 1982.
One positive for me was that there were relatively few composite or invented characters. Yes, there were two, and I'll get to those. But at the core of the Springsteen operation, these were the real people. Chuck Plotkin (plated by Marc Maron) really did save the mastering process. Mike Batlan (played brilliantly by Paul Walter Hauser) really did the recording in Bruce's bedroom. Plotkin hasn't worked with Bruce in 20 years, and Batlan eventually sued Bruce for unpaid wages. In this film, both got sympathetic treatments, with Batlan often getting the best lines ("I liked 'Born in the USA'" maybe my favorite, with his reaction to Bruce listening to Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop" being up there as well). Al Teller (David Krumholtz) really had the role at Columbia portrayed in the movie, and if his scene with Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), and Jimmy Iovine was... Jimmy Iovine. And yes, dammit, Iovine stole the show again.
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| Scott Cooper and Jeremy Allen White |
By far the biggest false note in the movie was the girlfriend, Faye (Odessa Young). The performance was fine, and I understand having a composite there; anything seriously resembling real life in that regard might have detracted from the central focus of the movie. Nonetheless, making the girlfriend literally the single mother figure that Bruce dreamed about in songs of that period such as "I Wanna Marry You" and his added verse to "Jersey Girl," seemed a bit much; when Faye complained to Bruce that she and her daughter were "real people," I nearly laughed. Likewise, while most of the specific vignettes were more or less accurate, there was one particularly cringy scene depicting the spiritual origins of the song "Mansion on the Hill." I'm ok with not acknowledging the folk or country inspirations for "Nebraska" beyond Iovine's hysterical diatribe, and that includes leaving out the Hank Williams song from which Bruce borrowed both the title and much of the theme. Nonetheless, treating that song as if it were literally inspired by Bruce's memories of himself and his sister Ginny as children running through corn fields under a big mansion on a hill, that was... beyond what I was willing to pass off as artistic license. Other little bits, such as the burning man scene that Bruce emphasized in his autobiography and also in his Broadway show, might be lost on people who hadn't experienced those items.
A central plotline in "Deliver Me From Nowhere" was the strained relationship between Bruce Springsteen and his father, Douglas Springsteen (Stephen Graham). In this movie, Douglas Springsteen was mostly a sulking, occasionally violent and spiritually (and sometimes literally) lost man, without much in the way of explanation -- that is, as Bruce saw and eventually understood him. That ultimately led to the final triumph of the movie, placed in 1984 as Bruce opened his monumental "Born in the U.S.A" tour. That scene didn't happen in real life, at least not until several years later, Here, it helped resolve that conflict, and confirmed that Springsteen would, perhaps, find his way.
After the showing of the film, Jeremy Allen White and director Scott Cooper stayed for a Q&A session, in which I learned, among other things, that a painting above Bruce's bed as shown in the movie, was actually the painting that hung above Bruce's bed at the time. Bruce had spoken and performed the prior night at the initial showing of the film in New York.
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