Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – "It’s the story of a neglected soul repairing himself through music"

“I’ve written a lot of other narrative records but there’s just something about that batch of songs on Nebraska that holds some sort of magic. If I had to pick one album out and say, ‘This is going to represent you in fifty years from now’, I’d pick it.”

Forty-three years after its September 1982 release, Bruce Springsteen’s sixth long-player, recorded on a four-track Tascam 144 portastudio in the bedroom of his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, maintains a special place in The Boss’ heart.

Heavily influenced by 1950s serial killer Charles Starkweather and the Flannery O’Connor short stories he devoured as a child, its making is chronicled in the new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which will be in cinemas from October 24.

Based on the must-read Warren Zanes book of the same name, the Scott Cooper-directed film has been made with the blessing of Bruce, who told Variety recently: “They pitched the idea and I said, ‘It sounds like fun’. It’s an interesting concept because it’s only a couple of years out of my life. It’s ’81, ’82, and centred around the creation of that particular record while I was simultaneously recording Born In The USA and also going through some personal difficulties that I’ve been living with my whole life. But it’s fantastic.”

The film features a remarkable star turn from Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), who not only nails Bruce’s look but also manages to sound uncannily like him.

For confirmation of that, check out his singing of the opening “I saw her standing on her front lawn / Just a-twirling her baton/ Me and her went for a ride, sir/ And ten innocent people died,” couplets from the Nebraska title-track on the first trailer.

It also finds White doing a very mean live ‘Born To The Run’ with the cinematic E Street Band almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

As Scott Cooper explains, Deliver Me From Nowhere has a clear arc about Springsteen’s cathartic experience making Nebraska.

“At its core, it’s the story of a neglected soul repairing himself through music,” he says. “Bruce was coming off the enormous success of The River, and from the outside, it looked like everything was going right. But inside, he was quietly unravelling, experiencing a kind of emotional vertigo – the feeling that the life he’d built no longer matched the weight he was carrying.

“Bruce was also haunted — not in a gothic sense, but spiritually. Haunted by his father. Haunted by the fear of success, of no longer being like the people he grew up with in Freehold. Out of that haunted state came, in my view, one of the greatest records of the last 50 years. Nebraska wasn’t planned. Bruce didn’t walk into that room to make a record. He walked in because something deep inside was clawing to get out.”

Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios' SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

A long-time Boss fan, Cooper was enthused by the prospect of adapting the source material.

“Warren’s book struck me as intimate, honest, and deeply moving– a portrait of Bruce wrestling with unresolved trauma that most are unaware of,” he resumes. “It was authentic, fresh, and cinematic. I had no interest in a cradle-to-present day biopic. I wanted something narrower, more intimate, but epic in emotional scope. This isn’t about ‘The Boss’, the icon. It’s about Bruce – alone, at a crossroads, staring inward.

“Before the massive stadiums. Before the synths. Before Born In The USA. I wanted to strip away the mythology of Bruce and find the man in Colts Neck, New Jersey, with nothing but a guitar and four-track cassette recorder, asking the same questions we all ask when we feel lost. To me, that raw honesty is where the music lives. And bringing that to the screen changed me.”

The director enjoyed his interactions with the rock icon.

“Both Jon Landau and Bruce were remarkably generous throughout the script’s development — offering insights, some never before shared — knowing I was striving for authenticity at every step,” he reflects. “They weighed in on everything from production design to costuming, down to the smallest details. I also turned to them during casting, ensuring every choice felt true to the world we were creating.”

Cooper also experienced Springsteen’s generosity during the making of the film. When directing the epic ‘Born To Run’ sequence, the director received the devasting personal news that his home had burned down in the Los Angeles wild-fires. Upon learning that Scott’s wife and kids were sheltering in a hotel, the singer immediately opened his home to them.

“When I returned to LA after wrapping, I joined my family at Bruce’s Los Angeles house,” says Cooper. “He took us in, embraced us, and helped us find our footing. My daughter Stella’s guitar had burned in the fire. So what does Bruce do? He sends her one of his own. That’s the kind of man he is – generous, humble, deeply human. To have him beside me on set every day, and now to have this film as a permanent record of that bond, was life-changing.

“Bruce is famously exacting – he’s called The Boss for a reason. But in the moments that mattered most, he was simply a friend. His generosity, his humanity… being on the receiving end of that has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.”

When it came to portraying Springsteen, meanwhile, star Jeremy Allen acknowledges some initial hesitancy.

“It wasn’t an immediate ‘yes’ for me,” says the actor. “Not because it wasn’t exciting, but because it’s Bruce. I thought about it for a week or so. Then Scott reached out and told me that Bruce had watched some of my work and thought I should do it. We talked about the approach, and I understood that the focus of the film was, at the end of the day, a man rooted in his creative process. Knowing that momentarily alleviated some of the pressure.”

Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios' SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

As he outlines, the first time White ever met the singer was onstage at Wembley Stadium.

“He was doing a big show, as he does,”  he says. “I came early and during rehearsals, he was singing ‘Born To Run’, and he saw me and pulled me up onstage. So, the first ten minutes we spent together was right in the middle of the stage.

“During the show, with the stadium packed, he was trying to find me and hold eye-contact with me. He did this a couple of times, and it was as if he was trying to see if I could handle it. If I could just have a taste. He was transferring some of the energy from these thousands and thousands of fans to me and trying to say, ‘This is the thing’.

As it happens, White was already a fan of Nebraska prior to filming.

“I talked to Bruce a lot about ‘Reason To Believe’, which is the last track on the album. It always filled me with a little bit of hope, but Bruce has told people publicly that he thinks it’s the least hopeful song on the whole record,” jokes White. “But I think that album in particular is about loneliness, people, and obscurity. And it’s something I’ve always found that I could lean on when I was feeling lost or a little bit alone.”

Elsewhere, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’s fine ensemble cast also includes Jeremy Strong (Succession, The Apprentice) as Bruce’s manager and record producer Jon Landau; Johnny Cannizzaro (Jersey Boys, Quantum Leap) as Steve Van Zandt; Gaby Hoffmann (Eric, Zero Day) as his mum Adele; and, in another bravura performance from the English actor, Stephen Graham (Adolescence, A Thousand Blows) as his father Douglas.

A week before Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere hits the big screen, fans have also been able to feast on Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition.

Along with the original ten track album which still sounds as fresh, relevant and poignant as it did back in the day, the four disc package also includes previously unheard Nebraska outtakes; an Electric Nebraska version of the record featuring E Street Band members Gary Tallent, Max Weinberg, Danny Federici, Roy Bittan and Stevie Van Zandt that Bruce recently rediscovered in the Sony Music vaults; and a present day performance film of Nebraska, played in sequence by The Boss for the first time ever at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Among those outtakes is an early version of ‘Born In The USA’, which finds Bruce backed by Messrs. Federici, Tallent and Weinberg.

Quite simply, it all adds up to another extraordinary chapter in the life of a bona-fide icon.

• Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in cinemas now.