One of the strengths of this very different style of music biopic is how it portrays the struggles of an artist on the ascendency who is compelled to create a collection of dark and introspective songs…
Screenwriter: Scott Cooper
Based on: The non-fiction book Deliver Me from Nowhere by Warren Zanes.
Script source: Script Slug
Synopsis
New Jersey, early-1980s. His star on the ascendency following a successful tour with the E Street Band, 32-year-old singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen finds himself at an emotional crossroads and in the midst of an identity crisis.
Bruce retreats to a rental home in Colt’s Neck, where he writes and records a selection of personal songs, influenced in large part by the film Badlands (1973). Amid pressure from Columbia Records for another hit album, Bruce withdraws into his songs and memories from his fractured childhood, which was dominated by his troubled father and loving mother. He also starts a tentative – ultimately doomed – relationship with local waitress and single mother Faye.
Long-time friend and manager Jon Landau increasingly fears for Bruce’s mental health, while navigating the record company’s expectations. Landau’s fears intensify when he hears the tape of darkly introspective songs Bruce has recorded. Unable to replicate the unique sound captured on Bruce’s TEAC 144 multitrack home recorder, Landau and his team struggle to fulfil his desire to release the album in its original form.
They finally manage to preserve the tone and voice captured in the Colt’s Neck sessions and Nebraska is released. However, things spiral downward for Bruce. A road trip to the house he’s bought in Los Angeles for a fresh start triggers a mental breakdown. On Landau’s advice, Bruce reaches out to a psychiatrist and starts his journey back to health. Bruce returns to the East Coast. He records Born in the U.S.A., heads out on tour with the band, and tentatively reunites with his father.
Establishing the context
Instead of broad brushstrokes to capture the rise and struggles of a globally known artist, Deliver uses a uses a fine point to home in on a specific period in time – during which Bruce Springsteen wrote and recorded what became the 1982 acoustic solo album Nebraska.
Coming off the back of a successful tour with the band, Zanes notes Springsteen’s state of mind, which could be understandably euphoric but instead, as characterised by Jon Landau, he was “so introspective… fears about if he became so big, would it invalidate or contradict his identity an as artist?”. Springsteen himself Springsteen describes this time as a “strange moment”, coming off The River tour and feeling “that hollowness…”.
The result was a period of self-imposed isolation, during which Bruce retreated into a rental house in Colt’s Neck, New Jersey with a guitar and a basic TEAC 144 four-track home recorder. At that point, there was no intention to record an album. However, these “Colt’s Neck sessions” would result in what would become Nebraska, recorded on to a simple cassette tape (largely on 3 January 1982).
It would also lead to the creation of several songs that would find a home on the next album, Born in the U.S.A., which would (in Springsteen’s words) take him to the peak of the “mainstream pop firmament”.
But to get to Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen had to navigate the process of creating Nebraska, which is characterized by its haunting, echoing sound, and desolate themes. Nebraska had many external inspirations, notably Badlands and the fiction of Flannery O’Connor. It was also the result of Springsteen facing up to ghosts from his past while struggling with a looming mental health crisis.
This is shown in the script through Springsteen revisiting his childhood home and triggers which take him and us (via flashbacks) into key moments from his past with his troubled father and loving mother.
This is all channelled into the sessions at the Colt’s Neck house.
The creative process
The nature of the story means we spend a lot of time with Springsteen at the house, as the songs which would become Nebraska are conceived and recorded. This all starts around page 20 of the script, when Springsteen talks to Landau about writing material for the next album before going into the studio. He also brings up the idea of a home recording device.
This leads to the dreaded blank notebook waiting to be filled.
A few pages later, Springsteen catches Badlands on late-night TV. This drives an intense interest in the film’s inspiration; the real-life killing spree of Charles Starkweather, who took teenage Caril Ann Fugate along for the violent ride.
Around page 30, the images from Badlands crystalize in Springsteen’s mind and he scribbles some opening lines for a track called Starkweather. The lines are inspired by the opening of the movie, when Kit (loosely based on Starkweather) sees teen Holly (based on Fugate) twirling a baton on her front lawn.
After grappling with the song in third person for a while, a couple of pages later, Badlands converges with Springsteen’s own dark thoughts. He changes “he” to “I”, in what becomes the title track, Nebraska, which opens: “I saw her standing…”
As described in the script, Bruce is no longer writing about Starkweather, but about himself.
From here, the tracks become personal, written in first person, channelling Bruce’s own thoughts, fears and alienation. Bruce even told Zanes on page 60 of the book: “I’m an alienated person by nature… (the) abyss is under my heels”.
Shortly after, the TEAC 144 arrives and Bruce begins to develop and record songs, including Mansion on a Hill, Johnny 99, Highway Patrolman, and Atlantic City. The script also reflects Bruce creating songs that would later find a home on Born in the U.S.A. – Glory Days, Darlington County, Working on the Highway, I’m on Fire.
Around page 60, Bruce has finished what the script refers to as “THE TAPE” (sic) of all the songs recorded at Colt’s Neck. It’s less emphasised in the produced film, but in the screenplay, the tape takes on a real symbolic significance. In its simplicity, the songs it contains, and the manner in which they were conceived and recorded.
The tape is duly despatched (minus the case) to Landau, who’s left to “sell” it to Columbia Records.
Beyond Bruce’s own creativity, there is a focus on the production side. Again, this reflects the real-life dilemma described in Zanes’ book, after failed attempts to record the songs in the studio, firstly with the band and then as a solo project.
Only later does Bruce realise that what’s on the tape is the album, as recorded, creating the problem of how to transfer material recorded on primitive equipment to modern technology. Eventually, they find a way to preserve the echoes and desolation captured on the tape.
While it’s far from wholly satisfying, the script does effectively dramatize what, on page 266 of his book, Zanes refers to as the “messy in-betweens” of the recording artist, namely the “struggle to create, the waits, the stops and starts of song-writing”.
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