USA TODAY International Edition
Springsteen adds movie star to resume
‘ Western Stars’ film caps period of self- reflection
“Western Stars” documentary caps period of reflection for The Boss
NEW YORK – Go West, Bruce Springsteen.
A trip to the West frames the vibrant “Western Stars,” the new concert film co- directed and starring Springsteen and in theaters Friday. ( Fathom Events will preview the film Wednesday in select theaters.)
Think of the film as a companion, or part of a trilogy, with his “Born to Run” memoir and “Springsteen on Broadway.”
All three works look inward, into the alchemy of how a kid from Freehold, New Jersey, became a rock superstar, best- selling author and now a star of a movie.
And Springsteen believes they are among his best works.
“I think probably coming up on 70 had something to do with it and just being at a certain point in your life and your work life where you felt prepared to sort of summarize the trip you’ve been on for quite a while. It all happened as an accident,” says Springsteen of the trilogy. “Obviously, the timing was right and it was the kind of work I was ready and anxious to do. But all those three things, I’m very proud of all those three things. I think they’re three of the best things I’ve ever done.”
“Western Stars” shows Springsteen performing with a band and orchestra playing songs from his album, “Western Stars.”
The Boss knows the terrain. His family left Freehold for California when he was in his early 20s.
“My dad ( Douglas Springsteen) knew absolutely nothing about California or the West except that was where he wanted to go to begin his new life. And he took my mother and my sister with him and that’s where they went, and that’s what they did,” Springsteen says. “They spent $ 3,000, that was all the money they had. They spent two nights in the car and a night in a motel on the way out there. They just built every
thing from scratch when they got there.”
Springsteen, who was living in Jersey Shore, soon made his way out, too.
“The first time I visited them they were in a tiny little apartment in San Mateo and I was 20 or 21,” Springsteen says. “The idea that continues to hold true for a large portion of the country when people think of creating something new, or becoming something new – that lure of a place to restart your life, retrace your steps, erase your sins – continues to be westward.”
California is the land of dreams and also broken promises. So it is in “Western Stars,” where the album vividly brims with scenic deserts, dusty highways and the last chance stands of wayfarers, cowboys, renegades and solitary figures on the fringes of show business.
“Those were just characters I was interested in and I felt I could write about them in a certain moment,” Springsteen says. “I’ve been involved in writing these Western stories for quite a while. If you go back to ‘ Tom Joad’ ( 1995’ s ‘ The Ghost of Tom Joad’), you have all the border songs that I wrote at the time. If you go to ‘ Devils and Dust,’ ‘ Silver Palomino,’ ‘ Black Cowboys’ and ‘ Matamoros Banks,’ I’ve been writing in the geography for quite a while and this particular record allowed me to sort of draw on what are to me Western musical influences along with Western stories. So I said, ‘ What’s the modern West?’ It’s Hollywood, it’s Los Angeles.
“I went searching there for a few interesting characters to write about.”
A closer look, however, reveals that the film is one of Springsteen’s most personal works, revealing an inner turmoil that has shadowed him throughout adulthood.
“For a long time, if I loved you or if I felt a deep attachment to you, I would hurt you if I could,” says Springsteen in a vignette setting up “Tucson Train” in “Western Stars.”
In the film, Springsteen thanks his wife, Patti Scialfa, and his loved ones and friends for pulling him through the darkness. He’s had bouts of depression and has been in therapy for more than 30 years.
His dad’s struggles with mental illness is depicted in “Born to Run” and “Springsteen on Broadway.”
“Everybody has to find their own way, but if I had grown up in a house, say, where ( treatment) had been part of our resources, it would have been a very different life,” Springsteen says.
The film is, in part, a love letter to Scialfa.
The couple have three children: Evan, 28; Jessica, 27; and Sam, 25.
“Patti was an enormous, enormous part of bringing all of that into my life, that I had resisted and failed to be able to do earlier,” Springsteen says. “I got into a place where I was, I kind of dug myself into a black hole. It took quite a while to dig myself out of it and it took a lot of help from a lot of different places. So I’m very grateful for it and a part of what the film is is a thank you to my lovely wife.”
The musical performances in “Western Stars” were filmed over two days in May inside a barn on Springsteen’s property in Colts Neck, New Jersey.
Springsteen earned his co- director title, says “Western Stars” co- director Thom Zimny.
“Bruce was there with me in the cutting room, he was there discussing things on set with me. He was bringing references. We collaborated together 100% on this, and he was there when I was color correcting and when I was mixing,” says Zimny, who recently won an Emmy for his directing of the Netflix version of “Springsteen on Broadway.”
The stories were in the songs of the album “Western Stars,” mostly composed in 2012.
“It was all there waiting to come out. It was in the record, it just hadn’t been verbalized,” Springsteen says. “Then we started to use them as just voiceovers, and then we needed images to accompany the voiceovers. So Thom had some found images. ... Then we went out and spent a couple of days shooting our own footage and came back. Then ... suddenly we had something that turned into an actual movie, turned into an actual film.” An actual film that Springsteen considers one of his brightest stars. Western or not.