‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Hey, it’s Scott Cooper. I’m the writer and director of “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” This is one of my favorite sequences in the film. “There’s just one more track I have to lay down.” Because it’s not about performance. It’s about confession where we see Jeremy Allen White, who’s playing Bruce Springsteen, is about to record his most personal and enduring song. This sequence is meant to show songwriting isn’t about invention, but, as Bruce said to me, excavation: that he dug down where it hurt most. And I wanted to capture not the spectacle of Bruce Springsteen, but the intimacy. In this particular sequence, “My Father’s House,” obviously, this is Jeremy singing in the bedroom, but there’s a moment here when I cut to the image of young Bruce standing next to the tree. ♫ … through the trees … ♫ where I weave in Bruce’s voice from the original “Nebraska” recording, which speaks to how I wanted the movie to feel like it’s haunted by Bruce Springsteen and haunted by his pain. The reason I chose to shoot the flashbacks in black and white is because Bruce said to me that he only thinks of this time in his life as black and white. In terms of Jeremy Allen White’s performance as Bruce, both as he embodies Bruce, but also in singing, it wasn’t about mimicry or imitation, it was about finding the truth of who Bruce is. ♫ My father’s house stood shining hard and bright. ♫ You see, father and son in 1958, watching “The Night of the Hunter.” And this is a film that isn’t just a cinematic reference. It’s a psychological mirror for Bruce. It’s a metaphor for Bruce’s childhood anxieties, where he’s trying to outrun the darkness that shaped him. And by showing young Bruce with his father, though we’ve had flashbacks in other places in the film, this isn’t a flashback, but it’s more a confrontation. And we see his father’s silence, his stoicism, his refusal to comfort young Bruce, and that becomes older Bruce’s greatest wound. Decades later, seeing older Bruce in the theater, watching his younger self with his father, for me, means that Bruce is still searching that silence for meaning.