Darkness On the Edge of Nowhere
"I've been going to the Pony since they let me into the Pony."
My main review of Deliver Me From Nowhere is published over in my bimonthly Salon column. This is a notebook dump for the thoughts that will only make sense to members of the COB.
I was dubious about this film, as I'm sure we all were, but I tried to keep an open mind. The amount of press that Bruce was willing to do was to me a sign that we should all be worried.
I was dubious about A Complete Unknown (the Dylan biopic) before I saw it as well. That is a larger, more public, and more well-known story, so the chances that it would fall flat on its face were huge. But it didn't fall flat. I remember walking out feeling amazing. It was a small group of folks who came out for the early preview, out in the suburbs halfway between Ann Arbor and Detroit. There were people dressed as Bob in different eras.
Caryn Rose
And I walked out feeling uplifted and ebullient. It had just started snowing while we were in the theater and when we walked out, someone was driving around the parking lot with their windows open, blasting "Like A Rolling Stone." Just doing big loops in a half-empty movie theater parking lot as the snow gently fell. It was beautiful and ecstatic.
That is the experience I wanted with this film, and it couldn't have fallen further from the mark.
It feels a lot like the director is actually not a music fan. Because music fans would have made different choices. Remember Springsteen & I? The people who made that film were not Bruce fans or music fans, and it shows. They were not sympathetic to the fans and made everyone look dumb. With Deliver Me From Nowhere, I kept thinking, "This decision was made by someone who has seen Bruce once."
I know that this film is not made for someone who has seen Springsteen, or spent as much time thinking about Bruce Springsteen's life and work, as anyone subscribed to this website has. You get that feeling in the first few seconds with that terrible concert footage. I literally, physically, winced. It was embarrassing. It looked like what someone thinks a concert looks like.
Do we think that Bruce is still mad at Mike Batlan? Because he is such a clown in this. I never knew him (but I think some people reading this might have) but I'm not sure why he's the court jester here. Unless he was? "I really love 'Born in the USA'" was just stupid at that moment. I mean, Iovine said basically the same thing, but worse!
I fucking love that Jimmy Iovine got to play Jimmy Iovine. I was sure it was him but stuck around for the credits the second time I saw it just to make sure.
The most accurate moments in the film: 1) The Action Park commercial on the radio 2) "I've been going to the Pony since they let me into the Pony."
The thing missing from the Pony footage was the line at the pay phone while everyone called their friends. That would have been accurate.
Not accurate: even if we believe that Bruce had the keys to the Carousel House (I was not going to look that up. I have limits) there is no way he was walking around the boardwalk at 2 in the morning in the early 80's!! COME ON. Anyone who went to Asbury in that era knew it was a 50-50 chance that their car would be broken into when they walked out of a show at the Pony or the Fast Lane.
Did anyone else notice the CGI ferris wheel in that last shot of Bruce on the other side of Convention Hall?
The contemporary songs on the radio annoyed me. I mean, fine, they're accurate, but I hated that Santana song when it was popular (I always thought it was Supertramp) and I don't understand why these are the songs that were chosen to illustrate the time. Or if they were supposed to illustrate the time period and weren't just randomly selected. WHO KNOWS
Ultimately I think the problem is that this story doesn't lend itself to a biopic easily. Hours of the E Street Band in the studio trying different versions and not being able to transform the demo songs would not lend itself to great footage, and would have required more musicians and more coaches (Mickey Raphael was the harmonica coach!)
There’s no way that all those conversations took place on the sidewalk outside the Record Plant. THERE ARE LOUNGES
The County Fair sign is a nice touch to the diehards but it also feels a little too much like the setlist on the wall in that opening scene
HE DIDN’T DO BOOM BOOM WITH CATS UNTIL 1984
Can someone please explain what Bruce Springsteen and Garry Tallent were doing out in a canoe together? Everyone keeps dutifully reporting the fact that the boombox was on the fritz because it fell in the water but no one ever asks either of them what the actual heck the two of them were doing out in a boat together. Was this something they did on the regular? I NEED DETAILS
Not for the first time, I wished I could call Holly Cara Price so we could complain about this movie to each other. She would have had things to say.
The wallpaper in the Colts Neck house looks a lot like the Darkness wallpaper and I wonder if that was deliberate. The problem is that they were DISTRACTING in scenes where they weren’t supposed to be distracting. I guess if you don’t have that association then it’s fine?
The wardrobe designer wins all sorts of prizes, however. There's one scene where you can see the pilling on the collar of Bruce's flannel shirt where it would have rubbed up against his beard. And also, all of the t-shirts weren't exact but were close enough. My friend Theresa Kereakes has a post about this over on her website, where she is also selling some cool photographs from the River era.
His handwriting looks nothing like Bruce’s and that doesn’t really matter except it kind of does. Bruce has these big loopy S’s that a handwriting analyst who hung out on rec.music.artists.springsteen once explained pointed to a strong sex drive.
The people I went to see the preview with were musicians / big music fans and their reaction was, "Good rock doc." Someone's wife asked me if I knew all of that before the movie; her husband tried to explain that I am deeply unwell and yes, I knew all of that before the movie. Cut to: Me explaining that the dressing room scene actually happened the night before his first child was born. IT DID NOT HELP THE 'DEEPLY UNWELL' PART.
Caryn Rose
Caryn Rose
Caryn Rose
