A Streaming Guide to <i>Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere</i>
Long before Born in the U.S.A. shook the world, Bruce Springsteen recorded an album that nearly broke him. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere revisits the making of Nebraska, the artist’s haunting 1982 album that stripped rock stardom back to its barest, loneliest bones. Directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass) and adapted from Warren Zanes’s book of the same name, the film is now playing exclusively in theaters.
Jeremy Allen White, fresh off his awards-sweeping run in The Bear, transforms into Springsteen during one of the most pivotal periods of his career—when he retreated to his New Jersey farmhouse to record a raw, acoustic collection of songs that would alter his legacy forever. The cast also includes Jeremy Strong as longtime manager Jon Landau, Paul Walter Hauser as guitar tech Mike Batlan, Stephen Graham as Springsteen’s father Doug, Gaby Hoffmann as his mother Adele, and Odessa Young as Faye, a fictional love interest.
In an interview with ABC News, the musician reflected on confronting the darkness that inspired Nebraska. “They tend to be the most interesting moments of your life,” Springsteen said. “At the end of the day, you know, when you’re making your way through some sort of crucible, hopefully to come out the other side with some knowledge gained, some greater sense of self, and a story to tell.”
White went even deeper about the experience in a recent Vogue interview, describing how he was persuaded to take the part by Springsteen himself. “I’d never had any sort of singing training or played the guitar, and I knew that’d be important,” he said. “But Scott sent me the script, and then I realized the film would be quite focused on one period of Bruce’s life—when he was a man looking over the edge and questioning so many things, doubting so much and living in fear. Then Scott said, ‘Bruce really wants you to do this.’ I was like, ‘Okay, well, if he thinks I’m the guy and I can offer something, then I should try.’”
Filmed partly in Colts Neck, New Jersey—the same town where Nebraska was born—the production captures the quiet intensity of Springsteen’s world at the time. “Music was the first way that I really medicated my anxieties and my depression,” Springsteen told ABC News. “I really knew what to do with those three hours on stage. It was the other 21 that were killing me, you know?”
Strong, meanwhile, saw parallels between his own process and Springsteen’s creative philosophy. “Bruce is on my mind a lot,” he told L’Officiel. “He talks about how deeply you can inhabit a song, and I think I’m trying to do the same thing. In my case, the song is a character in a film or a play or a television show—but it’s about how fully and deeply you can be embodied within it.”
Is Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere streaming yet?Not yet. The 20th Century Studios film opens in theaters on October 24 and is likely to arrive on Hulu and Disney+ following its theatrical and digital runs.
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