Chapter 1: What is the focus of the Springsteen biopic 'Deliver Me From Nowhere'?
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This is the Sunday Special. I'm Gilbert Cruz. It's possible you've seen somewhere on the internet or somewhere in your social media feeds images of the actor Jeremy Allen White looking a lot like Bruce Springsteen. That's because this Friday, the film Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere, is coming out.
Chapter 2: How do musician biopics reflect the artists' personal struggles?
And it's a movie about a brief and dark and very specific period of Springsteen's life. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Not just that upcoming movie, but we're going to be talking generally about the music biopic. It's a genre that Hollywood loves to dip into, and it's a genre that the Academy really loves to reward with lots and lots of Oscar nominations.
Today, I'm here with two of my colleagues, Lindsay Zolads, a pop music critic here at The Times and author of our Amplifier newsletter. Welcome, Lindsay. Hi.
Chapter 3: What are the common tropes found in musician biopics?
And Joe Coscarelli, a culture reporter and one of the co-hosts of PopCast. Thanks for being here, Joe. Hey, Gilbert.
Hi.
So let's start off by talking about the Springsteen movie. So Deliver Me From Nowhere is about the making of his album Nebraska. It's the early 80s. He's just come off several hit records, a hit tour. And as we all know now, he was driven to record and release this very stripped down, extremely lo-fi album without the E Street Band.
I saw this movie a couple months ago at the Telluride Film Festival. Joe, you recently saw this movie. What sort of expectations did you have going in? What were you curious about?
I was curious about a music biopic that was about a rock star watching Terrence Malick's Badlands. Yes.
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Chapter 4: Which musician biopics break the traditional mold?
And being inspired. Great taste. Yeah, very, very solitary movie. And it's trying to do this thing where it's a zoom in instead of a cradle to grave movie. I think this one seems to be trying to potentially have it both ways in that it is a very narrow story about a critically beloved Springsteen album, but not the best.
biggest Springsteen album, and yet it has these black and white flashbacks over and over again to his semi-traumatic childhood. Not that traumatic, at least in this film, which is an interesting wrinkle. And then it has big hits both from before he started recording Nebraska and the songs, like Born in the USA, that he started writing while recording Nebraska.
So you get a little bit of both where it is a little bit more quiet and direct and specific, but you still have all these Springsteen trappings and Easter eggs for the real fans.
You want to know why I did what I did? Sir, I guess it's just a meanness in this world.
The album Nebraska. It is a, as I said, it's dark music. It's lo-fi, pretty quiet, pretty interior, which the film sort of mirrors in its own way the vibe of that album.
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Chapter 5: How do personal expectations affect the reception of biopics?
A very quiet film. Yeah. I think we got that.
Oh, yeah, we got that one. So this song got a name?
I was going to call it Starkweather, but now I'm thinking Nebraska.
Lindsay, are you a Nebraska person?
I am. I'm a Bruce person generally. I'm a dirtbag from New Jersey. And you've interviewed Bruce. I have interviewed Bruce.
Which not a lot of people on earth can say, I think.
That's true. I have interviewed Bruce.
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Chapter 6: What role does authenticity play in musician portrayals?
I think that for all of these reasons, I'm keeping my expectations sort of low. I haven't seen the film yet. But generally with biopics, I think... the bigger a fan you are and the closer you are to that artist, the more potential there is for disappointment, for sort of having too precious a relationship to that artist, and you're kind of only seeing what's not there.
You're fact-checking it in real time. You're taking, you know... So I think the less familiar you are often with an artist, the more successful a biopic can be for just like telling a story. I think, you know, I can see myself getting a little caught up in the details of this and, you know, just going a little too Bruce nerd about it.
It's an interesting choice to focus the film on, you know, the creation of this album rather than something like Born in the USA or Born to Run.
Absolutely. I mean, it is definitely a counterintuitive choice, and I'm very curious to see how fans receive it, to see how the general public receives it. As an Oscar nerd, I'm certainly curious to see whether or not Jeremy Allen White's performance as Bruce Springsteen or Jeremy Strong's performance as John Landau, his manager, whether or not those get any nods from the Academy.
Joe, what did you think of Jeremy Allen White?
Yeah, that's a guy who did some singing that sounds like Bruce Springsteen. You know, I think there is a real authenticity play with these movies in general, but specifically in something like this, which, again, with the choice of focusing on Nebraska, is sort of saying, we're doing a little bit of an arthouse thing with this.
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Chapter 7: How do biopics influence the audience's connection to music?
And I think Jeremy Allen White, a professional brooder... Whether he's cooking or wearing Calvin Klein's on the top of a skyscraper, what he does is brood. And I think that allows... him to inhabit Bruce.
I think the Jeremy Strong character has a little bit more potential because unless you're like Lindsay and I and have spent a lot of time writing and reporting on music and focus on the lore of the background figures, like John Landau doesn't have this sort of mythic omnipresence that Bruce Springsteen does.
I mean, one of the things, again, I feel like with this one and the Bob Dylan movie from last year, A Complete Unknown, I remember talking to the director of that movie, James Mangold, and he was talking about how he was attempting to not make this your typical biopic. And he would know because he made Walk the Line, in which Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny Cash, many, many years ago.
And I was sort of want to talk about What we think characterizes your classic, your classical music biopic, because you have to have a form to divert from. Lindsay, tell me about the beats that a music biopic has to hit.
Well, we need to know where the artist comes from, both a sense of place and, you know, as we're talking with Bruce, a sense of perhaps familial trauma, a core memory that sets them on the path to expressing themselves in music. You know, we need to see sort of the early artistic awakening happening. Prodigiousness? Yeah, yeah. The early...
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Chapter 8: What upcoming musician biopics are in development?
Inklings of, you know, they're becoming a musician in some way. And then there's arguably the most exciting and fun part, like the sometimes it's a great montage, you know, but the rise to success, you know, you can really have fun with that beat. Yeah. I think. Shooting up the charts.
You see the camera pan over the billboard chart.
We need an arrow going up.
It's like the version of a spinning newspaper telling you the headline. Yeah.
And then perhaps success is not all it's cracked up to be. There's that beat. Sometimes that involves some sort of substance abuse, other sort of problems.
A muse getting left behind, perhaps.
Yeah. A big third act conflict. And then I think we land either... With death, if the person is no longer around, and posthumous canonization. Or you have to figure out some sort of moment of triumph where they get back on the stage after they've been kicked down and, you know, show that they are a true musician and a worthy subject of a triumphant biopic. Good God, that was perfect. Yeah.
Thank you. Someone hiring me to read your script and provide notes, I would be happy to do that.
You were also just doing Walk Hard beat for beat.
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