... and the four other things you learn when your life is made
into a movie, according to writer Sarfraz ManzoorSometimes dreams do come true...
he told me how much he loved my
book, that I took the idea of writing
a screenplay seriously. I teamed up with
director Gurinder Chadha, and for the
next few years slogged away on the
script, firstly on my own and later in
collaboration with her and her husband
Paul. It was not until late 2017 that we
had secured both Springsteen’s blessing
and the funding. Suddenly everything
sped up: within months of the funding
being green-lit, a production crew had
been assembled, and the cast and
shooting schedule confirmed.2 __ YOU GET TO GO BACK IN TIME
The first time I walked into the film
production office was like stepping into
the house of a pathological fanatic. There
were walls with my childhood photos,SARFRAZ MANZOOR WROTE
a memoir about his Bruce Springsteen-
obsessed childhood in Luton in the UK;
a memoir he then adapted for the big
screen. The resulting film, Blinded By The
Light, was a smash at Sundance in April,
landing the biggest deal of the festival.
Here he writes exclusively on the biggest
surprises along the way.1 __ THINGS WILL MOVE VERY
SLOWLY — AND THEN VERY FAST
My memoir, Greetings From Bury Park,
was published in 2007. I always hoped
that my story — of being a working-class
British Pakistani teenager from Luton,
whose life is transformed by the music
of Bruce Springsteen — might have the
potential to make a movie, but it wasn’t
until 2010, when I met Springsteen andsnapshots of Luton from the ’80s, and
photocopies of my teenage poems and
diary entries. The production and
costume designers were keen to make the
film as authentic as possible — they even
sourced a sunflower-yellow Vauxhall
Viva, because that was the car my dad
drove. My real father died in 1995, so to
see the actor, Kulvinder Ghir, looking
exactly as my dad did, driving in the
same car he drove, was hugely emotional.
There were a number of times when I
would be watching the monitors in floods
of tears, the memories flooding back.3 __ YOU CAN GET ROB BRYDON
TO PLAY YOUR MATE’S DAD
I know Rob Brydon a tiny bit. We are
both huge Springsteen fans, and after the
script was finished I tweeted him to ask if
he fancied reading it and maybe he might
like to be in it. He tweeted back to say he
was on a train to Crewe but I should
email it to him. I did. He read it, and
by the time the train had arrived inClockwise from above:
Javed (Viveik Kalra)
devotes his life to The
Boss; Manzoor with his
dad and sister in ’80s
Luton; Meeting his
hero; Manzoor on the
making of the film:
“Sometimes dreams
come true.”