The first trailer for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, released yesterday, had the internet buzzing with the dead-on accuracy of star Jeremy Allen White performing, as Bruce Springsteen, the song “Born To Run.”
And now Springsteen himself has given the film his thumbs up, though not without some reservations: Springsteen says in a new interview with Rolling Stone that while he occasionally visited the set during shooting, he stayed home on days when the movie was getting too personal.
Asked whether watching scenes depicting his troubled childhood were emotionally intense, the singer-songwriter said, “Well, some of the scenes I wasn’t at. If there was a scene coming up that was sometimes really deeply personal, I wanted the actors to feel completely free, and I didn’t want to get in the way, and so I would just stay at home.”
Springsteen adds, though, that if director Scott Cooper wanted or needed him on set, The Boss would do his best to be there. “But I was on tour in Canada for the whole first month or so of the filming, and so I was out really out on the road quite a bit and working at that time,” he says.
Springsteen has been photographed visiting the set (see above), and was asked by Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene what is was like seeing himself being portrayed by an actor.
“I’m sure it’s much worse for the actor than for me,” Springsteen says. “Jeremy Allen White was very, very tolerant of me the days that I would appear on the set. I said to him, ‘Look, anytime I’m in the way, just give me the look and I’m on my way home.’ So the days that I got out there, he was wonderfully tolerant with me being there. And it was just fun. It was enjoyable.”
Continues Springsteen, “I mean, there’s some unusualness to it because the movie involves, in some ways, some of the most painful days of my life. But it was a great project, and Jeremy and Jeremy Strong [who plays manager Jon Landau] were both fantastic, terrific in it as were all the other actors. Stephen Graham plays my dad, and he’s out of this world, but everybody that was engaged in the film, they were all tremendous.”
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Norwhere arrives in theaters October 24. The film is produced by Cooper, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Eric Robinson and Scott Stuber. Tracey Landon, Jon Vein and Zanes executive produce.
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