Hey, it's Scott Cooper. I am the writer and director of “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” This is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. “There's one more song I have to put down.” Because it's not about performance. It's about confession in which we see that Jeremy Allen White, who plays Bruce Springsteen, is about to record his most personal and lasting song. This series is meant to show that songwriting is not about invention, but, as Bruce said to me, about excavation: that he dug where it hurt most. And I didn't want to capture the spectacle of Bruce Springsteen, but the intimacy. In this particular scene, “My Father's House,” this is obviously Jeremy singing in the bedroom, but there's a moment where I switch to the image of young Bruce standing next to the tree. ♫ … through the trees … ♫ where I weave in Bruce's voice from the original Nebraska recording, which represents how I wanted the film to feel like it was being chased by Bruce Springsteen and haunted by his pain. The reason I chose to film the flashbacks in black and white is because Bruce said to me that he only sees this time in his life as Black and White in terms of Jeremy Allen White's performance as Bruce, both because he embodies Bruce, but also the singing wasn't about mimicry or imitation, it was about finding the truth about who Bruce is. ♫ My father's house was shining hard and bright. ♫ See, father and son in 1958, watching “The Night of the Hunter.” And this is a film that isn't just a cinematic reference. It's a psychological mirror for Bruce. It's a metaphor for Bruce's childhood fears, as he tries to escape the darkness that shaped him. And by showing young Bruce with his father, even though we've had flashbacks in other places in the film, this isn't a flashback, but more of a confrontation. And we see his father's silence, his stoicism, his refusal to comfort young Bruce, and that grows older. Bruce's greatest wound. Decades later, seeing the older Bruce in the theater, seeing his younger self with his father, means to me that Bruce is still searching for meaning in that silence.
