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Jeremy Allen White on setting boundaries with Bruce Springsteen · The Front

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Andrew. Have you seen the movie?
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: I got an exclusive screening in They open a whole
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: cinema just for me. Oh cool. That must have been weird,
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: very weird. Three hundred seats and me in the center
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: in the dark room.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Did you get popcorn?
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: They saw him out a coffee and popcorn and they
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: call it work.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. There's a new movie out in cinemas,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a biopic of Bruce Springsteen called Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: But it's not about the Boss brancing around on stage
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: in tight jeans and a half buttoned cowboy shirt, sweating
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and belting out one of his anthems like Born in
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  Speaker 1: the USA. It's about Springsteen's sad, bastard pace back in
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties, when he retreated to a bedroom
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and wrote the album Nebraska, Ten beautiful songs, all complete downers.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: For all the reasons, Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska is seen as
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: modern and relevant today, exploring ideas of isolation, loneliness, fatalism,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and hopelessness. All those very qualities made the album so
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: unorthodox and risky in nineteen eighty two, and that's not
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: even factoring in the fact Springsteen produced the album himself,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: not in a commercial studio, but at home with a
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: four track recorder and a mental breakdown on the way.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Today I'm joined by the Australians National music writer Andrew McMillan.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: His feature on the movie is live now at the
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Australians newly launched Culture section. Go do the Australian dot
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: com dot u slash culture, or in the Australians app
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: tap the Culture tab at the top. It's full of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the very latest in visual art, music, film, TV, entertainment
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and much more. Here's Jeremy ellen White speaking to Andrew McMillan.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: What did you find were your most valuable resources when
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: preparing for the role.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Really, the most helpful was having access to Bruce and
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: really trying to understand on a human level, forget the
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: rock star, what was going on with him during this period.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: And I'm very grateful to Bruce for being immediately, so
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: forthcoming and honest. It allowed me as an actor and
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: to start to draw connections and tethers, and then in
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: getting to know Bruce, I was able to find things
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: within him that I knew about myself that I could
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: kind of decide to expand on or grin to surface.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Will they blew a chicken Man and Philly last night?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Now they blew up his house?
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: To Andrew, we're talking today about an album that Bruce
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Bringsteen super fans no one loved. The rest of us
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: who have a more casual relationship with the Boss might
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: not know about Nebraska. What's Nebraska all about? And where
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: did it come in Bruce Bringsteen's life.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Nebraska is an album that Bruce created not knowing he
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: was making an album. He finished the river and the
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: touring behind that album, playing to arenas full of fans,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: big rock and roll shows with the East Street Band,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: and then, rather than continuing on in that vein of
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: making upbeat rock and roll songs, he took himself away
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: to a rented ranch house in New Jersey by himself,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: got a TIAC four track recorder, and he started creating
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: what he thought were demo songs for his next album potentially,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: But in the process of writing and recording this album,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: he came up with the quietest, darkest set of songs
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: that he had released certainly to that point in time.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty two and still in twenty twenty five.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: It's probably the case.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: It's a very sad version of Bruce Bringsteen who we
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: hear on this album, and there are stories that he
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: tells in his songs that seem almost childlike to me.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: You know. There's a song about a police officer with
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a wayward brother who has to try and help his
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: brother avoid going to jail. Stories of heartbreak, and some
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: very powerful stories about being an outsider looking in. Mentioned
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: on the Hill is about a kid with his dad
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: looking up at the town's big grand house.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: Who's a please sadsw.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: That feels autobiographical, was it?
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Nebraska is a blending of fact and fiction. It's
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: taken from the pages of Bruce's childhood, but he was
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: also researching and reading about things that had happened in
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: real time in nineteen eighty two and also in the
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: recent past, things like a serial killer named Charles Starkweather
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: who who had killed a bunch of people in Nebraska,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: and when he was later caught, he couldn't give any
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: kind of reasonable explanation for why he had done that.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: And Bruce, as a songwriter, found that fascinating and decided
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: to write a song from the perspective of that serial killer.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: But Bruce himself much later in his twenty sixteen book
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Worn to Run, he reflected on Nebraska and described it
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: as an unknowing meditation on my childhood and its mysteries,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: and he wanted the songs to feel like awaking dream
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  Speaker 2: and move like poetry. So it's a set of songs
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: which is rooted in reality, slightly fictionalized, but it's this
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: blend between his distant past, trying to understand his childhood,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: trying to understand his really distant aloof father, and trying
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: to come to terms with the man he was then
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: in his early thirties.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: I went directing to feel Different.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: League Law. Once you have your first top ten, they
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: worked three for the next.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Well, we've never been about singles, but the whole story
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: just trying to break the little new grail.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: We got a little time, just not a lot. The
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: creation of this album is now the subject of a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: movie starring Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Bringsteen. Why did
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the filmmakers choose this part of Bruce Bringsteen's life to
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: bring to the big screen.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Well, it's an adaptation of a great book called Deliver
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Me from Nowhere by Warren Zan's and it's an unusual
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: music biography because it's based on a few months or
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: perhaps at most a year in an artist's life, and
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: that is the time surrounding the recording and later release
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: of Nebraska and the one that came next was Born
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: in the USA, his biggest collection of stadium filling hits.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: The author Warren Zanes wanted to understand how that happened,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: and there was a section Bruce Is Born to Run
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: sixteen memoir where Bruce talked about a mental breakdown that
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: happened immediately after the recording of Nebraska, and that was
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: the first time that Bruce had described that to anyone,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: and he kind of covered in a few pages and
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: then moved on. But Warren Zane's the author of Deliver
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Me from Nowhere, I wanted to know more so with
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Bruce's corporation, he went deep on the time of his
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: life and what led to that mental breakdown. And then
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the reason why it's ending up on screen is because
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: a writer director named Scott Cooper read Warren Zane's book
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: and thought, I need to make a movie based on this.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: It was so gripping and so unusual, such a quiet
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: period of withdrawal one of the world's most known artists. Calm,
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: what's up?
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: You redid everything?
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I subtracted and I pushed.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, you want to spell out from me what exactly
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: you subtracted and what exactly you pushed.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: We're going to get a star.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: He cast Jeremy Allen White, who viewers would know as
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Chef Kami from The Bear, as Bruce Springsteen. They're kind
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: of the same age. They physically look quite similar.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Jeremy Allen White is ridiculously handsome, perhaps more handsome than
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: even Bruce Springsteen, but he comes across in his public
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: persona as a pretty soulful, kind of sensitive guy. What
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: were your impressions of Jeremy Allen White when you interviewed
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: him for The Australian.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: A humble guy, for sure. I love The Bear. I've
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: been watching that show since it came out. But to
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: see him embody a big star like Bruce, that's a
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: major leap, And as Jeremy described it to me, it's
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: probably something he could not have done if he had
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: not previously played a real person, which he did in
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: the twenty twenty three film The Iron Claw.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Perry, I want you to join your brothers in the rack. Yes,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: so I love that.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: We all he plays a professional wrestler and a real
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: person Kerry Yvonne Eric. That gave him the confidence to
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: be able to try something that for any act would
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: be a much bigger leap, which is to play one
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  Speaker 2: of the world's most recognizable rock stars.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Ever, it's interesting, isn't it when an actor is trying
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: to represent a real life person, especially in someone who
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: we know very well. You know, how much do you
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: try and kind of mimic their characteristics and adopt their
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: accent or interpret it your own way. Bruce Springsteen was
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: actually on set for a lot of the filming of
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: this movie. How did Jeremy Allen White deal with that?
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: How would anybody deal with that? Think about it. If
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: you're Jeremy trying to portray Bruce, while Bruce himself is
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: watching your every move on the camera, monitorsays, what a
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: freaky thing to try and achieve. So Jeremy described to
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: me that in that first week of filming, where Bruce
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: and his longtime manager John Landau was sitting outside watching,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: he had to eventually go and ask Bruce, hey, can
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: you give me a bit of space here, just so
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I can get my sea legs and get a feel
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: for how to do this thing, which Bruce understood, and
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: he went away for some time, but oddly he kept
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: coming back to the set. He wanted to be there.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: He wanted to see them make it, which is a
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: really interesting decision for a now seventy six year old
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: man to make. To watch this really troubled, uncertain, pretty
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: dark period of his life where he physically isolated himself.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Bruce wanted to see that done again from a distance.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: And I guess with all the experience and knowledge and
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: wisdom that he's gained since those.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Years, society has changed a lot in the forty years
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: since Bruce Bringsteen went through that. You know, in twenty
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: twenty five, it's pretty normal to talk about mental distress
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: or struggling with your emotions. That was pretty taboo in
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the eighties. And I guess, especially if you're a rock star,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: how do you think they've brought that to life, And
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: what was it like to recreate that for Jeremale and White.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: You're right, Bruce had a breakdown which led to him
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: seeking professional help, which was therapy. I think that Bruce
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: was himself. I don't know if embarrassed is the right word,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: but I'm sure about revealing that part of himself. He
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: described to Warren zanes the author of Delivering Me from Nowhere,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: that he spent the first few years of his therapy
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: sneaking in and out of visiting the person who he
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: had chosen to speak to. So the question is, of course,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: how do you show that on screen without it being
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: dull or boring or uninteresting. It requires a magnetic actor,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: which they certainly have in Jeremy, but it requires a
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: really smart script, which Scott Cooper, the director wrote, based
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: on Warren Zaneser's a book.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Coming up. So can Jeremy Allen White convincingly channel the boss.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: A man stand or did well?
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: How if there was ever a time when it was
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: okay for actors to lip sync or to pretend to
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: be playing instruments if they're doing a movie about a musician,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: it seems like it's over now. Timothy Shallamy sang and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: played as Bob Dylan in the biopic that he made
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. Jeremy Allen White learned to
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: play the guitar and sang Bruce Bringsteen's songs in character
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: for this movie. How do you think he pulled it off?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: And what do you think about that choice of instead
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: of using the original songs and lip syncing along to them,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: recreating them like that, you know, with a whole new voice.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: It's doing the whole thing on hardbone right. Easy mode
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: would be to just like you said, lip sync and
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: to fudge it and to have someone else's hands picking
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: those strings and playing those notes. But Jeremy, as a
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: committed actor, he started this project as a non musician.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: He had never sung, nor played guitar, nor played harmonica.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: He had to learn how to do those three things
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: in a pretty short space of time in order to
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: portray this very stark and vulnerable set of songs. There's
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: no hiding in Nebraska. The recordings themselves are bedroom recordings.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: They're imperfect, and that is part of the charm and
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: appeal for fans who loved that work. But Jeremy, he
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: tasked himself with replicating exactly what Bruce did, and he
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: did such a good job that during the recording sessions,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Bruce himself said that he couldn't tell the difference between
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Jeremy and he. So that shows you the dedication that
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: this man has taken to portraying Springsteen on film, And
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: to go even further, he recorded those songs professionally at
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: RCA Studios in Nashville, and Jeremy Allen White's recordings of
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen's songs are going to be released for the
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: public to hear, so it's going to exist as an
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: audio document as well his performance on screen. I think
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: he's done a phenomenal job of playing those songs and
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: portraying Bruce in his fullness, not just in his gestures
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: and the way he speaks, but his way of phrasing
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: in songs, his way of playing guitar and harmonica. And
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I think anyone who sees the film will agree it's
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: impossible not to be impressed by the dedication and devotion
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: that Jeremy has shown to the role.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Andrew McMillan is the Australian's national music writer. Springsteen Deliver
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Me from Nowhere is out now. Warren Zane's book Deliver
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Me from Nowhere was recently republished in paperback via Crown
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Penguin Random House. Don't forget to check out our culture
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: section live right now at The Australian dot com. Dot au,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: slash culture or in the Australians app. This episode of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: the Front was hosted by me Claire Harvey and produced
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: by Jasper Leek. Thanks for joining us on the Front
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: this week. Our team also includes Kristen Amiot, Lee at Sammerglue,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Tiffany Dimak, Josh Burton and Stephanie Combs.