The scaled-down music and the personal, dark lyrics on "Nebraska", which came in 1982, found a home with Cooper – and that experience is the basis for the film.
The album came at just the right time for me. I understood the characters, I recognized the darkness, the violence, the danger, says Scott Cooper to TT.
The film is about how Bruce Springsteen felt that something was missing, despite fame and money. He isolated himself, wrote the songs and recorded them acoustically – at the same time as the record company wanted a new studio album in the same style as "The river", which had come two years earlier and become a megahit around the world.
"Extremely generous"
The work on "Nebraska" has been portrayed by Warren Zanes in the book "Deliver me from nowhere" and Cooper and Zanes wrote the script for the film together. But also the main character himself was involved as a sounding board.
Bruce was involved in the work as much as I wanted, says Scott Cooper.
He was always available, he was the one I could test ideas on. He was extremely generous. And now he has seen the film eleven times. After the first screening, he hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and said it was much better than he thought it would be.
A film like this requires an actor who can not only act but also sing. Cooper found his lead actor in Jeremy Allen White, known from the successful TV series "The Bear".
I had seen him in the series and thought he had a quiet intensity, a honesty, a vulnerability and a kind of working-class physicality. When I became interested in him, I did not know that he could sing as well as he can. The only song in the film where we hear Bruce sing is when "Atlantic city" is heard at the end. Everything else is Jeremy.
"Never imitate"
Jeremy Allen White could also walk like Bruce Springsteen, notes Scott Cooper.
But it was never about imitating him. I wanted to see his emotional interior.
Cooper's own favorite song is "My father's house", from "Nebraska".
It's somehow the film's dna. And I feel a kinship with my own dad.
Behind him, Cooper has films in genres such as horror, western, drama, music. He says it's a problem to make films in genres where so many masterpieces have already been made.
But it keeps me sharp.
And what's next?
Sleep.
Gunnar Rehlin/TT
Facts: Scott Cooper
TT
Age: 55 years.
Family: Wife Jocelyne.
Lives: In Los Angeles.
Occupation: Screenwriter, director.
Previous films, selected: "Crazy heart", "Antlers", "Black mass", "Hostiles", "The pale blue eye".
Current with: The Swedish cinema premiere for "Springsteen – deliver me from nowhere" the
