Springsteen, silver screen
The Boss launches his Western Stars film in Toronto
“I’ve got some songs I’ve written for the [E Street] band. We want to get back together” BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
IN contrast to his heavily denimclad appearance in Western Stars, Bruce Springsteen is sauntering casually through a Toronto mall in a slim-fitting black jacket and shirt. As a result, the crowds of local students queuing for film festival tickets at the Yongedundas Cineplex on this warm September morning fail to recognise him. But Springsteen is OK with that; he’s clearly just thrilled with the film, which he is presenting with his co-director, Thom Zimny, to a small coterie of press on the morning of its world premiere.
Shot in his barn at Colts Neck, New Jersey, it features live, orchestrated performances of all of Western Stars’ 13 tracks – Socal country-pop operas telling stories of dying stuntmen, fading stars and lovelorn truckers – as well as a bonus encore of Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy”, a touchstone for the project. At first sight, Western Stars appears to be a standard concert movie, but it’s the interstitial moments – be they points of reflection or the incredibly intimate home-movie footage of Springsteen with his wife, Patti Scialfa – that make it a little more bespoke.
Springsteen explains the thought process behind the film in a postscreening Q&A. “When we initially discussed the shooting,” he says, “I wasn’t going to go on tour, so I thought, ‘Well, we’ll just shoot this stuff live from start to finish.’ Which we did, and then we figured, ‘We’ll do what you would normally do on a music pic – get people to talk about how great I am to work with and what a pleasure and honour it was.” He laughs heartily. “The usual shit, y’know?” Instead, Springsteen sat in front of the TV with a pad, writing notes that eventually became a kind of script. “It’s new music,” he reasoned, “so I thought I’d need to help draw people into the songs when they came up on screen.”
During lunch at the nearby Weslodge Saloon, Springsteen politely but nervously holds court as journalists approach for selfies, laughing off any attempts to finagle an exclusive quote. However, following the film’s official public premiere later that evening in Toronto’s cavernous Roy Thomson Hall, he gives a much more revealing interview, explaining how Western Stars ties in with other recent incursions into new territory, such as his run of Broadway shows and his 2016 autobiography, Born To Run. “I’m going to do professional wrestling next,” he deadpans. “Maybe it’s a part of getting older, but the book came very organically, and then the play came, and then this is sort of an extension of that – a tying up of philosophical threads that I’ve been working on my whole life, really. The book, the play, and now this are all summing up my trip to this point.”
On the other hand, Springsteen is fully aware that his hardcore fans – the ones shouting “Brooooooce!” as he takes the stage – aren’t so concerned with his multimedia projects; they want to know what’s happening with the E Street Band. “We want the band to get back together,” he assures. “Y’know, I’ve got some songs I’ve written for the band. I’d like to make a really good rock-band record with those guys.”