E10 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019
Springsteen can be seen roaming
amid the brush, reflecting on the
American Dream, its disappoint-
ments, personal demons (“If I
loved you deeply,” he says at one
point, “I would try to hurt you.”)
and his cardinal theme: “the
struggle between individual free-
dom and communal life.”
Eventually, “Western Stars”
morphed from a straightforward
concert doc to a sweeping mon-
tage and introspective portrait,
composed of present-day footage,
home movies, archival photo-
graphs and an achingly beautiful
live performance. In the process,
Zimny realized that Springsteen’s
instincts as an image-maker were
just as canny more than 40 years
after “Jungleland.” The two were
in “constant communication”
throughout filming, Zimny says,
with Springsteen throwing out
ideas far beyond just the music.
“It’s getting texts, it’s getting im-
agery, it’s getting lines from a
song and visual references.”
At one point, Zimny received a
text from Springsteen suggesting
a shot of his hand on the steering
wheel of a vintage El Camino,
then a similar image, this time
including Scialfa’s hand. The
bookends made the final cut,
symbols of freedom and commu-
nity writ large, but also a man
reconciling a lifetime of restless-
ness and all-consuming ambition
to the consolations of domesticity
and commitment.
For Landau, the themes and
imagery of “Western Stars” circle
back to the conversations he and
Springsteen had about their mu-
tual love for John Ford decades
ago. But mostly, he says, it reflects
“the maturation of Bruce’s whole
life of learning about film.” More
than any previous movie or video,
“this one is him from the get-go,
100 percent,” Landau says. “Every
idea, word, sound, edit and cut.”
Springsteen describes “West-
ern Stars” as of a piece with both
his 2016 memoir and the Broad-
way show — a trilogy that, per-
haps unconsciously, was part of
his coming to terms with the
birthday he just celebrated.
“I was thinking, ‘How do I sum
up my experience to this point?’ ”
he says. “The book, the play and
this film, they all serve that pur-
pose. It kind of cleanses the
palate, and it will allow me to
move on to whatever we do next.”
The “we” i n that sentence is the
E Street Band and “next” is re-
cording a new batch of songs he
wrote for them earlier this year.
Springsteen doesn’t see another
movie in his immediate future,
unless it’s the four-minute kind
he’s been making all along.
“Music was always enough for
me,” he says philosophically.
“A nything else that came along
was just an adjunct, and an or-
ganic and happy accident that
came from being a musician,
which is what I wanted to be my
whole life.”
[email protected]that comes instinctively from our
shared love of Sergio Leone, who
is the man who proved that you
could never be too close,” he
explains. But it’s also the result of
learning over the years that
Springsteen is physically far
more expressive than stylized vi-
suals or manipulative edits. Even
on huge stadium screens, Landau
observes, the close-up has always
been king. “The story of the song
is on his face,” he says. “If you
weren’t hearing the lyrics, you’d
still have some idea of what he’s
saying just from looking at him.”A
s a movie, “Western Stars”
began with a modest prop-
osition. Instead of touring
for the album, Springsteen in-
tended to release a documentary
of a performance he and his wife,
Patti Scialfa, recorded over two
days with a band and a 30-piece
orchestra in their farm’s 100-
year-old barn. “I said, ‘Okay, I’ll
shoot the record start to finish,’ ”
Springsteen recalls, “and that
would be my tour.”
But as he watched the concert
footage, he realized that the
songs and their lush ’70s-era ar-
rangements needed more con-
text. One night, while Scialfa
watched TV, Springsteen spent a
couple of hours writing introduc-
tions that became the voice-over
script for “Western Stars.” He and
Zimny went to the California
desert near Joshua Tree, wheregone from scruffy b oardwalk hus-
tler to bandana-and-biceps teen
idol to a multimillionaire in
working-class drag.
In the 1992 single “Better
Days,” Springsteen sang about
being “a rich man in a poor man’s
shirt.” Today, in addition to the
sprawling horse farm in New
Jersey, he owns homes in Florida
and Los Angeles, but still con-
vincingly radiates man-of-the-
people modesty, a contradiction
he deflects by being the first
person to call it an act. (“I made
everything up!” he says at one
point. “It’s a fascinating magic
trick.”) Springsteen admits that
he continues to find the notion of
authenticity elusive, “knowing
what a self-creation I was, and to
some degree still am. But the
strange thing of it all is that if you
do it long enough, you start to
become the thing that you pre-
tended to be.”
In fact, the man and the image
feel so organically fused that
Springsteen has become an emo-
tional instrument in his own
right. The latter-day meta-ver-
sion of Bruce Springsteen, as seen
in both “Springsteen on Broad-
way” and “Western Stars,” is si-
multaneously subject and protag-
onist, humble singer-songwriter
and larger-than-life leading man.
In both films, the camera often
pushes in for a tight shot and
stays there, a strategy that Lan-
dau notes is by design. “Some ofsprang directly from the screen:
Sharks-vs.-Jets by way of the
Bowery Boys.
It was also at that time — the
first crest of his eventual super-
stardom — that Springsteen land-
ed on the covers of both Time and
Newsweek, prompting the inevi-
table calls from Hollywood. He
met with Milos Forman, who
considered him for “Hair.” And he
laughs at a classic Kid, I like your
moxie! moment with “King of the
Gypsies” producer Dino De Lau-
rentiis. “I was like, 25, and he was
behind a big desk smoking a big
cigar. It w as just that entire scene,
played out hilariously.”
Eric Roberts eventually got
that part. But Springsteen has no
regrets. “I didn’t have the confi-
dence at the time,” he says. “I
thought, I don’t really deserve to
be working in this arena right
now, because I hadn’t done the
homework. I hadn’t p repared my-
self. Whereas in music, I’d pre-
pared myself thoroughly.”
In a rock-and-roll world that
prizes authenticity above all else,
Springsteen has succeeded at
both embodying unaffected sin-
cerity and shrewdly deploying it
as a brand: In addition to the
unassuming men and women he
valorized in his songs, perhaps
his most brilliant character is
“The Boss,” a Bruce-adjacent alter
ego who, in hundreds of music
videos, movie soundtracks and
“Sopranos” needle-drops, hashis own canon of go-to movies,
each of which has had an imprint
on his records — Ford’s ambiva-
lent Western epic “The Search-
ers,” noir classics “The Night of
the Hunter” a nd “Out of the Past,”
Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” and
“Taxi Driver.” All share Spring-
steen’s love for poetic imagery,
volatile emotion and deep mis-
givings about the American
myth.
“The Grapes of Wrath” would
become the chief influence on
Springsteen’s 1995 record “The
Ghost of To m Joad,” just as the
desolate acoustic mood of “Ne-
braska” had been inspired by
“The Night of the Hunter,” Ter-
rence Malick’s “Badlands” and
the 1980s crime drama “True
Confessions,” with Robert De
Niro and Robert Duvall. “There
was something about the stillness
of it that affected the way that I
wrote at the time,” Springsteen
says. “The violence underneath.”
Nearly every Springsteen rec-
ord has its own musical signature
but also its own production and
lighting design, character arcs
and shot structure: the high-kick-
ing production numbers of “Ro-
salita” and “Out in the Street.”
The gleaming close-ups and
jump-cut rhythms of “Born to
Run.” The “East of Eden” Oedipal
rage o f “A dam Raised a Cain.” The
erotic-thriller charge of “Candy’s
Room” and “I’m on Fire.” The
lurid neon nightscape of “Tunnel
of Love.” The aging actors and
magic-hour tonal values of “West-
ern Stars.” Over the course of a
nearly 50-year career, both as a
solo performer and with the E
Street Band, Springsteen’s music
has become its own extended
cinematic universe, populated by
recurring characters, environ-
ments and themes: broken he-
roes. Rattrap towns. Dashed ide-
als and dogged faith in redemp-
tion. And, always, the beckoning
highway.
Along with the characters he
invented, Springsteen has shaped
his persona to emulate musical
heroes such as Elvis Presley and
Woody Guthrie, as well as his
favorite actors. On the cover of
“Darkness on the Edge of To wn”
he could be Al Pacino imitating a
young De Niro while wearing
Marlon Brando’s T-shirt under
James Dean’s leather jacket.
Springsteen says he was “tremen-
dously” influenced by all those
actors as he sought to forge his
identity as a performer.
“Italian American actors from
the 1970s had a huge impact on
me,” he says. “If you came and saw
us onstage in the ’70s, you saw a
very theatrical performance. I
was kind of channeling all of
those actors from that time, and
bringing them onstage with me.”
Even the piratical high jinks with
Miami Steve Van Zandt and the
playful showdowns with Clar-
ence Clemons felt like they
SPRINGSTEEN FROM E8
movies
The
Boss’s
love of
film was
there all
along
MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POSTROB DEMARTIN/WARNER BROS.
TOP: Bruce Springsteen at home in New Jersey, where he worked on “Western Stars.” ABOVE: A scene from the
film, which evolved from a straightforward documentary into a sweeping montage and introspective portrait.Online: View the video at
wapo.st/springsteen