Atwood Magazine’s Aidan Moyer offers a behind-the-scenes peek of the Jeremy Allen White-led biopic ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,’ chronicling Bruce Springsteen’s recording of his 1982 album ‘Nebraska.’
Three hundred twenty-somethings are herded into the Stone Pony, dressed in leather and denim ensembles with mops of untamed hair.
The streets of Asbury Park are cordoned off and littered with vintage cars. In this room, on this December morning, it is the early 1980s. With Vox organs, drum risers and saxophone holsters in place, we’re about to hear a familiar song for the first time. In a momentary break from this perfect illusion, director Scott Cooper teases a special guest in the house to kick off the day’s filming.
“Is everybody here from Jersey?!”
Bruce Springsteen emerges from the ether in a white leather jacket. He takes a stage that, for all intents and purposes, is on loan to every other musician who enters these hallowed halls. As we roar in reverence, the Boss insists, “Bring that same energy for the [actors] onstage!” Soaking in the sight of a throwback crowd, Springsteen muses, “Are those YOUR clothes? Ah, they gave ‘em to ya – well, you look great!”
I’ve taken it upon myself to go full ‘method’ as an extra. I’m dressed in vintage Italian cowboy boots, a denim vest, and sporting shoulder-length hair. Tucked into my back pocket is a sketchbook filled with faux ticket stubs and illustrations depicting icons of the day. My bandmate Trevor and I have cross-referenced east coast tour dates from Wings, Stevie Wonder, Tom Petty and the Boss among others to authentically lead our characters from the mid-70s to this night in Jersey.
@20thcentury The Stone Pony, where legends are born. SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE is NOW PLAYING in theaters. Get tickets now.
♬ original sound – 20th Century Studios – 20th Century Studios
Retreating into the shadows, 75-year-old Bruce is replaced by his 33-year-old superstar stand-in, The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White.
White was scouted by Springsteen himself to star in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, a chronicle of the fraught recording sessions that yielded Nebraska. The film draws from Warren Zanes’ immersive 2023 biography of the same name. Zanes delves into the pressure Springsteen felt after the success of The River, a cross-country retreat that spurred a mental breakdown, and the television noir that seeped into Springsteen’s four-track demos. The E-Street Band ran through electric versions of Nebraska – freshly released to tie into the film – but they are absent from the finished product.
Nebraska is an oddity in the early Springsteen canon, a lo-fi meditation in the midst of a creative depression. After a string of album covers adorned with portraits of Bruce in all his glory, his face is nowhere on the album artwork. Its most enduring track, “Atlantic City,” has become a live E-Street staple, but most of the material on Nebraska draws from Flannery O’Connor’s bleak short stories, anecdotes of murderer Charles Starkweather, and the punk stylings of the band Suicide. The film and bio pull their title from a couplet in “State Trooper,” as a wandering driver pleads:
Hey, somebody out there –
Listen to my last prayer
“Hi ho, Silver, oh!”
Deliver me from nowhere
Springsteen recorded Nebraska in Colts Neck, ten minutes away from his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey. Much of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is filmed on location with sets retrofitted to the 1980s and 1950s. Zanes casts Nebraska-era Springsteen as Odysseus, who undertook a twenty-year retreat from Ithaca, before returning in unassuming garb to reclaim his throne.
Springsteen’s homecoming came in the form of meteoric MTV success and his most massive hits. “Born in the USA” initially appeared on Nebraska as a bluesy lament of a Vietnam vet’s plight; the final product has since been co-opted for barbecues and misappropriated for political campaigns.
The concert scene at the Pony, eventually cut from the final film, flashes forward to Dancing in the Dark, recorded for 1984’s Born in the USA at Springsteen’s commercial zenith. Jeremy Allen White and the facsimile E-Street Band run through the number a dozen times. Though their instruments are unplugged, the chord formations are authentic.Max Weinberg’s fills are played with aplomb by Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase. The vocals, piped in through a PA, sound like a mix of live Springsteen performances and White doing an in-studio vocal impression. Our greatest collective acting challenge is pretending not to know every lyric by heart.
With the initial crowd setup complete, we break for lunch. Outside the Pony, Johnny Cannizarro, the spitting image of Steven Van Zandt, greets us warmly. At the stage door, onset photographer Danny Clinch captures Springsteen with a handful of crew members. Trevor and I tuck ourselves into the background and give a ‘thumbs up’ with the hope of technically being photographed with Bruce. As the Boss prowls the lunch line, he spots a row of metalheads in matching leather jackets and quips, “You guys look like the police line-up!” There are whisperings of other notables on set; half of Greta Van Fleet (Jake and Sam Kizca) and Rival Sons’ Josh Buchanan snag some catering.
Onstage, Buchanan’s mic is live and he absolutely rips through some bar band standards, “I Put a Spell On You,” “Lucille,” and “Boom Boom.” He and half of Van Fleet portray Cats On a Smooth Surface, one-time Stone Pony house band. The Kizcas half-jokingly entertain crowd requests: “Play Stairway!” White has clearly labored over Springsteen’s stage persona and sweats and strains his way through his guest appearance.
Schedules are shuffled and weeks pass before the pickup shots are filmed. We trade the stifling heat of the interior concert shots for a brutal January chill. I curse my sleeveless denim vest and too-thin jeans as I post up against a classic car. Smatterings of locals post up across the street to catch a glimpse of the action. The hours of the nightshoot bleed together and there aren’t enough hand and foot warmers on the East Coast to regulate our body heat. Thankfully, mercifully, camera placement is swapped and a handful of us are allowed inside the Pony for coffee and a respite.
Gathered for the final day of the Jersey shoot are Springsteen, Clinch, White and the remaining crew. The Boss is about five feet away, but at the last second, I demur. There is an invisible force field and an unblinking thought – “Don’t ruin it by saying something stupid.”
In the interest of making small talk, I break out my sketchbook and flip through to a double-page spread featuring White as Springsteen and a now-infamous Jon Landau quote – “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen” – and the book is promptly snatched out of my hands. Another extra, Sabrina, has made a beeline to the coffee machine and the Bear himself.
“Jeremy, take a look at this!”
“Woah!”
I’m ushered over to a back corner where an extremely convivial Jeremy Allen White asks me to walk him through the sketchbook page-by-page.
What began as a personal project has turned into a rapid-fire walkthrough: “You’ve got all the stubs – oh, is that Bob Dylan? And you’ve got Stevie Wonder, too!”
Fortunately, Sabrina has the foresight to capture the moment. In the final hour of the final New Jersey shooting day, phone regulations are more lax. White, having removed his brown contacts to unveil piercing baby blues, generously poses with his in-character portrait.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in theaters as of October 24, 2025, coinciding with the release of an expanded Nebraska box set.
— —
:: read past Bruce Springsteen coverage ::
:: connect with Bruce Springsteen here ::
— —
— — — —
Connect to Bruce Springsteen on
Facebook, 𝕏, TikTok, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
© Aidan Moyer
© Aidan Moyer:: Stream Bruce Springsteen ::
