Emerald City Video

Last week saw the release of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, colloquially known to basically everyone as “the Springsteen movie.” Here’s the thing, though: There have been a number of movies about and featuring Bruce Springsteen.

Though Deliver Me From Nowhere is the first narrative feature, filmmaker Thom Zimny has worked with Springsteen on a number of documentaries and performance films over the course of about 25 years.

The most recent, and arguably the most comprehensive, is Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, which followed Springsteen and his iconic band on their most recent tour.

(Technically, Zimny filmed Nebraska Live, a short concert for the Nebraska ’82 box set, since then — but it’s a lot less like a “movie” than Road Diary.)

Last year, I spoke with Zimny about Road Diary in an interview that never ended up being published anywhere. With Nebraska ’82 in stores and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere in theaters, it seems like as good a time as any to revisit the conversation.

Russ Burlingame: What made you decide to structure Road Diary around the setlist?

Thom Zimny: With Road Diary, I remember watching the dailies, and the raw footage, and seeing those initial days of the rehearsals — and one of the things I really was moved by was just Bruce listing the songs to the band. I would play that scene again and again.

Sometimes in the editing room, you really don’t have an understanding of why you’re attracted to something. You just like it, play it again, like it, play it again. Slowly, I understood that the setlist that he was yelling to the band in the room was not just a list of songs, but was the details of a story — a story he was trying to construct with them during the rehearsals. [It was] a story of songs, and songs that cover decades.

I knew right there that my gut reaction to that footage was the film gods pointing me in a direction of the importance of the setlist — the importance of Bruce the storyteller — and then looking at the songs, and what they carry. There are themes there: themes of friendship, redemption, an understanding of your present day, the past. So that’s how I came to the place of focusing on Bruce’s preparation.

Burlingame: For those of us who spend way too much time on the internet, the idea of a “static” setlist has actually been a point of contention during this tour. What are your thoughts on that?

Zimny: When I’ve heard the phrase “static setlist,” that sets up an emotional space that, if a song is repeated, that it’s repeated exactly the same way as the night before.

In my experience seeing Bruce Springsteen in the E Street Band, and Bruce as a solo artist, I have witnessed him singing the song “Born to Run” so many different times. I knew as a filmmaker, I could hold on to those experiences, because each time he sings it, it has a different feeling for me.

It’s not about the first time I saw it. It’s not about the night before. His songs are big enough to hold emotional space that, though it might be the same exact song, there’s a difference in the night’s performance. You have have to be present in a certain way, and not looking at it from the scorecard.

I didn’t spend a lot of time on that, or discuss it with Bruce — that idea of a static setlist as opposed to changing it up — because it just didn’t exist that way for me as a director. I saw each show evolving, and when you start to really watch and pay attention, you realize that the subtleties of the space, where they are, the whole show itself…everything is delivered differently.

That’s what I wanted to get at, was those details, in Road Diary.

Burlingame: For you as a filmmaker, is it challenging crafting a narrative where you’re kind of competing with Bruce’s storytelling cadence? Obviously, he has a really specific very deliberate way of telling stories.

Zimny: Well, when I was making Road Diary, and actually this, I think applies to all the films I’ve worked on with Bruce, the analogy of being “in the band” is a thing that I can relate to. I’m making these films, and I’m in a space where I’m “in” the band. I’m not trying to make something that’s outside of Bruce and the world of the music. I want to stay in sync.

I want to stay in pocket with the rhythm of what I’m seeing before me. It’s no different than being a person in the band, and suddenly playing a different style. It just wouldn’t instinctually make sense, but also it’s not something that I strive for. With Road Diary, I wanted it to be a film that had the feeling of being 16 and being a fan. It’s seeing backstage like never before, and then being at a tavern and sitting next to Bruce, and he’s whispering these thoughts on mortality, and the joys of life, and the pain of life.

You’re having this tavern conversation, and then there’s the hanging out with the E Street Band, which is the story of the road. All these are a choir of voices. They’re all voices I wish as a fan I could have experienced, and I chase that. I [think], “This would be cool. This is something that no one has seen.”

The band getting together in a circle. What happens? I have seen this many times, but what are they thinking about? What do they see this as? What does Bruce say to them? Let’s explore this.

So what you’re doing is, you’re looking at the small details of the road, and with Road Diary, I constantly would look at a song and say, it’s not just “Night Shift” playing. It’s something else. Why is he picking that song? What happens in that song that can push the ideas and themes even further?

Jon Landau came up with the fantastic bit about “Night Shift” that for him, it reflected the loss of two members of E Street. That is a theme in the film — a theme of how we process loss through music and, and also heal, and that comes into play with the fans, that comes into play with Bruce’s writing. So you circle around, and you have all these tools, but you really don’t jump out and suddenly decide to solo in the middle of the song. That’s the analogy I use as a filmmaker, which is I’m happiest when you feel, not when you notice me stylistically.

That’s the way I treat the concert footage — I’d rather you feel, have a lot of emotions. Road Diary played with a lot of different languages in film, where it played with the concert lighting, but it also played with the light of the space. When you go to Europe, there is an amazing opportunity to film faces in this way that captures the glow of people connecting to the music.

Burlingame: Is time is an enemy on a project like this? You structured the film around the setlist, but nobody’s going to finance a documentary that’s longer than a Springsteen concert. So you’re building a whole film around the setlist, where you have less than the time of a song to communicate the importance of that song.

Zimny: I understand what you’re saying, but one of the gifts that Bruce and Jon have given me is that like the records, there’s no deadline with the films. That doesn’t give me the freedom to be excessive, but we’re not working in a space where we’re trying to get this film out for a certain tour date.

Bruce has said in interviews with me, no one remembers the record [release] date, they remember the record. On this film, and on all the films that I’ve worked on with Bruce, we are chasing the heart of the story, as opposed to a locked-in deadline.

Also, there’s not a set POV. Things change, and I don’t think there’s ever been a discussion of contemporary interests when making these films. We don’t look at the block of films and say, “well, it’d be great to do a live concert thing, because this has been out and this has been out.” The beauty of working with Jon and Bruce has been this thing of, let’s see what happens. Let’s see what the footage tells us. We’ll sit in the edit room together and fall into conversation, so I don’t have [many] constraints in that world. I do have them in other other worlds, though.

Burlingame: You touched on losing Clarence and Danny, and there hasn’t been a full concert video since Hyde Park. That means for people who haven’t physically gone to a show, this is probably the first time they’re going to see Bruce grappling with those issues. How challenging was it to strike the right tone for that, without dragging things down?

Zimny: When I was building Road Diary, I knew I had to give an audience a sense of the history of E Street. What I mean is, a history of the band — that they lost members. There is a generation who didn’t know about Clarence Clemons, the original saxophone player, or Danny Federici, the keyboard player.

I knew that if we talked about it with an element of talking about their beauty, and what they felt from the music, and what they brought to the music, that wouldn’t bring the film to a place that would stop it.

I also didn’t fear going to the place of honestly looking at the sadness, so Bruce delivered this amazing voiceover, and it was a voiceover about missing Clarence and Danny. Also, the band supported me in talking about it in interviews.

I was able to say, in some ways with Road Diary to a new generation that didn’t know the E Street history, there’s music here that reminds you of these guys. The sonic qualities of these guys are in the DNA of the music, so every night there’s a sense of them returning. If it’s the sax solo, or if it’s the keyboards, you get a sense of Danny and Clarence. That’s a really powerful idea as a filmmaker to play with.

So in Road Diary, when Bruce gave me that voiceover, it was really a powerful moment, because I knew I could expand on the themes of loss, and it’s a really universal thing. I’m not talking about the E Street Band’s history, as much as I’m talking about how we process the pain and loss of loved ones. I think Bruce just delivers in the voiceover, about the understanding and powerlessness that one has over time, and time taking away people we love.

Russ: The film was the first time I heard Patti talking about her health. When that went public, what was that like for those of you who have been quietly dealing with it for a while?

Zimny: There was never a discussion on planning to talk about it. I’ve worked with Patti for years with her own music, and she’s currently doing an album now that’s really great, and I’m working with her on, on the visuals with that. I had many long interviews with her, and we got to the place of discussing the live show, and the moments that are in the film come from that conversation.

What I think is really a great gift as a filmmaker is that the whole band — Patti and Max and Nils and Roy and Stevie — have a sense of trust with me, and they let me talk to them for long periods of time, and we’ve covered a lot of ground about the history of the band. Sometimes that ground touches on the difficulties and with Patti, and this very sensitive subject of why we haven’t seen her so much on this past tour.

I felt like one of the musical performances that I really needed to include in the film was the beautiful “Fire.” In that moment, you see [Bruce and Patti’s] bond and you see a sense of a couple’s intimacy. It worked really perfectly in the storytelling, because the movie is about loved ones, and grappling with difficulties, and how again and again, music is part of it. So having Patti sing “Fire” in that moment was really perfect, because it shows the love of her partner, Bruce, but also her love of being in the E Street Band, and the power of this music.