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The Bruce Springsteen biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” makes its debut in movie theatres nationwide on Friday, and critics have given it generally high praise overall. The movie focuses on a two-year stretch in 1981 and 1982 when The Boss, coming off the success of “The River” and a long concert tour, struggles with the making of his next album, “Nebraska.” Jon Crowley is the executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, and appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to describe the thrill of watching the biopic of Jersey’s native son come together.
Crowley described his favorite moment on the set for host Larry Mendte, when one of the film’s technical advisors suddenly walked up to him: “I was on my phone, of course, and I looked down and I see a pair of boots walk up next to me, but they’re not standing parallel to me; the toes are pointing at me, and I thought, well, who’s standing six inches away looking at me? And I look up and I hear this: ‘Hey, how are you?’ And it was Springsteen. He was there. He was there most days of filming. So, you talk about a meta-experience- there’s Jeremy Allen White playing Springsteen, and six inches away is the real Springsteen.”
Crowley saw a preview of the film and couldn’t stop raving about it, particularly the appearance of one unexpected “co-star” who almost didn’t make the cut: “They talked for, like, half a minute about moving this film, in the beginning, to Pittsburgh, and Springsteen himself said no… it’s got to be authentically Springsteen, authentically New Jersey, and so it stayed. And Jersey is a character in this movie… and Jersey’s never looked better in so many scenes.”
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