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I'm Sean Fennissi, editor and chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about our glory days. I'm joined today by my pal Chris Ryan Hiller. Chris, what's up big man? Chris, hopefully you'll be the Clarence Clemens to my boss.
We're here to talk about Bruce Springsteen, among other things. Later in the show, I will have an interview with the writer director, Grinder Chata, who has made a new movie called Blinded by the Light, which is based on a memoir by the writer Safraaz Monzor, and he is obsessed with Bruce Springsteen. And Grinder is as well. And they've made this movie as a sort of ode to the coming of age that Bruce can sometimes inspire inside of a person.
I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves with the Bruce of it, although I will say I'm not a major Bruce person. I know this about you. Nevertheless, I think you and I are going to share our top five Bruce Springsteen songs. How are you feeling about that?
I'm ready to blow the saxophone of takes when it comes to that. Yeah, I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan. Before we get to Bruce, I want to talk to you a little bit about the world of movies. They're quite a big one going on right now.
Let's just sift through some headlines, man. Let's just unfold the days paper. Stock up, stock down. Winners and losers.
I got the trades spread out in front of me. Should we do it in the persona of Johnny Green Book? I've been hoping you would bring Johnny Green Book back to the big picture. Women!
Where have they told us? When did Johnny Green Book just become Pacino? I don't know. It's a character that gets away from me a lot.
Where does he rank in the pantheon of Bobby Sony? Bobby Sony and Johnny Green Book? Yeah, two of your best. Let's talk about some trailers.
A bunch of trailers came out. Trailer for Little Women, which you alluded to, is the new film by Greta Gerwick. This is her second film as a writer-director. You big Louisa May Alcotthead?
Got to admit, I have not hit that one yet. It's in the queue, but I have it. It's one of my embarrassing blind spots in Great American Literary Works as Little Women. Do you think that the listeners of the show are fired up to hear you and I break down Little Women?
I'm sure Dobbins, I just popped out of her song on vacation. I'm sorry she couldn't be here for this, but I'm very excited for this movie. Yeah, I think it looks great. This is probably not in my exact tier of film if you listen to the episode that I did about Sense and Sensibility in Spider-Verse.
I underlined some of my issues. Do you like things with Thanos in it? Yeah, yeah. When I eat as a gauntlet, will there be a gauntlet in Little Women?
No? Will Joe have a gauntlet in this new version? I asked my wife who the fourth one is, and she just looked at me in a way that was just like all the things that I've had to endure. You talking about Drogon and Josh Berlin and Sicario and crime novels that don't matter.
And you're like, who's Joe? Who's the fourth one? It was really a bad beat for me. It's an interesting cast.
It's a reunion for Sir Sharonin and Timothy Chalamet from Lady Bird and Forgata from Lady Bird, Florence Pugh, for whom I have built an imaginary shrine post-mid-Samar. Emma Watson who, you know, I'm just going to say it, not really sold on Emma Watson. I don't really know what to do about that. I'm very enthusiastic for this movie.
I'll tell you why. Tom, because nothing is, I love when filmmakers find thematic relevance in a variety of works that still draws back to the things that they're ultimately interested in. If you watch the first shot of this trailer and you watch Sir Sharonin running across the screen, it calls to mind the image of Greta Gerwig running across the screen in Francis Ha in the trailer for that movie, which is Modern Love Starts Playing. And it feels like Gerwig has a real deep connection with this work as part and parcel with the other things that she's done in her life, like Lady Bird, Light Francis Ha, like Mr.
Miss America, Mr. Miss America. And you can almost feel the crackle of longing to express oneself in all of those movies and longing to be something that you're not yet in those movies. And so I'm very excited to see her apply that to this.
There's a couple of other people that are in this film that I think are noteworthy. One of them is James Norton. Yeah, my guy from the mafia. Yeah, which I didn't really keep.
Yeah, exactly. That was what was better. McMuffie or taboo? McMuffie was a much more pleasant place to live.
I see. Taboo, there's not a great hygiene standards there. How are the rations in the treasure chest on Taboo Island at this point? But, McMuffie, you've got all these empty London condo developments.
Yeah, we've got a big little lyser union happening in this movie, Meryl Streep and Lord Dern are both here. Big little women. Big little women. Tracy Lats is here.
The famed playwright. Back from Lady Bird. A steamed evil character actor. Yeah.
There's another name here that I don't recall seeing in the trailer. Bob Odenkirk. Is he in this? That's what it says.
That's on the internet. What's the moment? Come on. Are you excited for this?
Is this a contender? Is this a heavyweight? What are we doing? It's a really tough one, right?
Because I love grad. I love all the films that you just outlined. I also have not read the source material. I don't have much of a relationship with the 1994 version.
I don't have a relationship with the 40s version of this movie. It's certainly not in the not-for-me camp. Everything is for us. Everything is for everybody.
But I'm just, I don't know. It's just not, I'm not fired up. It looks like little women. I think you're going to have to reckon with this though.
I know. It feels like this movie is going to be a major conversation topic in December and into February. I agree with you. I think we're going through these fits of anxiety about what can and can't be a hit every other week.
And does this have a chance to be in the spirit of something like One Spawn Time in Hollywood, which is similarly not a comic book movie or an action film? I guess we'll wait and see. A couple of other trailers this week. Parasite.
This looks sick. I'm seeing it tonight. Congratulations. Thank you.
Second bite. Which lets come? I don't know. I hope this movie is everything that it has been promised to be.
What's it been promised? A pom-dore winning masterpiece from one of the greatest living filmmakers, Bong Jun-ho. Since this film premiered at Cannes, hashtag BongHive has emerged. Oh cool.
Loud and clear. Are you in the BongHive? I'm not part of Bong Twitter. I love his films and his work.
Yeah. Bong is an interesting figure in the world. His most recent movie is Oak Jun, which is a movie that I thought was brave and interesting. Not my favorite movie.
He has made some incredible films though. Memories of Murder and Particular I think of and Snowpiercer I think of. Parasite. It feels like one of those movies that it's going to be a little bit tough to talk about until the world is starting to see it.
Yeah. And I think one of the big tests here will be will a lot of people go see this film because it's getting a pretty heavy push already from neon. It's obviously got tremendous buzz. Celebrated coming out of Cannes.
You excited? Yeah. I mean, I think it's got real interesting Hitchcock twisted with Ripley kind of a thriller that also is about class and ambition. So I'm just fascinated to check it out.
What do you have a logline of what it's about? So just a brief synopsis of the film here is greed and class discrimination threatened the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy park family and the destitute Kim clan. So perhaps we'll see some class anxiety, perhaps we'll see some physical repulsion potentially. There seems to be a little bit of intellectual culture class in the trailer too.
So I'm very much looking forward to that movie. A couple of other trailers very quickly that have come out last Christmas, which Amanda and I talked about. You know, this is a romance theoretically written by Emma Thompson starring Amelia Clark and Henry Golding seems like a tear dirty. Are you pro Amelia Clark movie star?
Yeah, sure. Yeah. I don't know that this is going to happen, but I'm like, I find her very charming. Yeah.
And this seems like I just wish like the only thing I want to see actually is whether or not the development and like production process for a movie like this coming out in like theaters and having a big push like this feels appreciably different from like the rom-coms you're starting to see on Netflix, where you're kind of like, ah, this kind of use a little bit more time in the oven or was this maybe a pilot script that got turned into a feature. And that goes for TV shows that I've been seeing too recently. Like I was going to talk about Four Weddings in a Funeral on the Watch today and you can feel that being like, are you guys sure you didn't want to just do a remake of Four Weddings in a Funeral, but then you kind of tacked on a 10 episode show about it instead with last Christmas, like it seems like a really kind of like sappy romance movie set during Christmas. Yeah.
And I've been really into the conspiracy theories about like what happens in this movie, which is pretty dope. If any of them actually do happen, I think people are going to like riot in the theaters though. So that's pretty, it's basically people taking the George Michael song and trying to break down lyrically like what could possibly be happening in this movie. A lot of heart transplant talk.
So no spoilers because I don't know nobody's seen it. It is the last Christmas the new Lost. Yeah, exactly. It's the last Christmas because the apocalypse happens at the end of the phone.
They should have called it Lost Christmas. Uh, Terrence Malek has a new movie coming out. So I didn't see this, but was there like a big beef on Twitter about how Malek's bad? Yeah, there was.
I don't know. Do you not want to be the Twitter sheriff? Well, I definitely don't want to be the Twitter sheriff. And as you know, I am not the Twitter sheriff.
Uh, the new movie is called Hidden Life and it's about a conscientious object during World War War II, a German man. I've played by the Helstrom from Glorious Bastards. Yes, it is. Reverse heel turn.
Yes. That is not actors name. I think it's August deal. August deal, that's correct.
And this movie also I would say was lauded at Cannes and was picked up by Fox Searchlight and is being distributed. And you know, Terrence Malek has not exactly had his full blown Oscar moments. There's an expectation that this could finally be his. There was a little bit of hubbub on the internet about whether Terrence Malek is actually bad.
The truth is that like all filmmakers sometimes Terrence Malek is good and sometimes he is bad. And sometimes he is interesting, but this films don't work. This movie using it as an opportunity to interrogate his value as a human makes me like gouge my eyes out. I look forward to the film.
There are instantaneously shots of a hand being run across grass in this trailer. This happens in every Terrence Malek movie. We do this conversation every single time. Yeah.
There's even some of the same like kind of like movements in the living room of a young family that happened in Tree of Life. Yeah. And narration that feels like a letter written to a loved one. You know, it's he has hallmarks.
It's called style, you know, the same way that Martin Square CZ has needle drops from 60s do up songs. Yeah. Terrence Malek, he likes to run his hands over some grass. Do you have favorite non-badlands, non-days of heaven Malek?
Hmm. Well, I love Tree of Life. I recognize the pretensions of Tree of Life. I don't think everything about it works.
I'm not totally sure what's going on with Sean Penn in Tree of Life, but all of the Brad Pit, Chastain, memories of a childhood stuff I think is among the best work he's ever done. And I have admiration for the New World and the Red Line. I'm a big thin red line guy. I was very thrown off by it when I first saw it, but I thought it was I didn't retrospect.
I think it's like a really moving or film. Yeah, I think it's a big thing too. I feel like my days of heaven is my favorite by far. I think that that's one of the great, great, great films.
Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with the hidden life. I'm sure we'll be talking about it again.
I can sense a man, the phantom of Amanda signing through the Malekian conversation. I think it's interesting about little women Paris, like hidden life. I'm going to say I don't think Last Christmas is an Oscar film. No, no.
I feel free to come back with freezing cold takes on me like that. But we got our first batch of Oscar trailers this week, right? Because 1917, presumably we'll also be in the mix. Yeah.
So 1917, which has gotten sort of unremarked upon, which is Sam Mendes' new movie, his first post-bond film. Yeah. And there's, you know, the big rumor about this movie, right? Did Sam Mendes wear a scarf during production?
No, that's not rumor that's fact. That it's a one take movie. Deacons. There's a chance that they didn't cut.
They didn't cut. Roger Cook. The confirmation or denial on this story. No.
It's mostly a series of young Brit, handsome British male actors and then a handful of names you will recognize Colin Furthe at a cover batch of those types were one story, obviously. This has been done before. There was a movie of I think 2015 called Victoria, a Russian film that was all in one take kind of thing. And it was successful and it was inventive.
This would be a bit different. This is harder to blow up. A war movie in one take is, I don't know, maybe unreasonable expectations are being set and it's not one take. It just looked maybe just more of a bird man effect that it feels like one take.
Yeah. But I'm excited. I'm happy that Mendes heard from his grandfather that was told to him about the idea and it's basically a messenger story, like young soldiers given a mission to get to the front line to trench warfare and to get to the front and tell another British officer not to go forward with a going over the wall kind of military move. And if he doesn't do it, I think he said, well, I can't remember what the number is in the trailer.
He's like, 600 people die if you don't get this message to this person. So I obviously took a really compressed storyline. I'm actually kind of agnostic about Sam Mendes as a filmmaker. I think I don't really ever, I actually just don't think about him.
I like Skyfall a lot and watch it whenever it's on cable. But other than that, can't say that I'm like dialing up Jarhead or anything like that. That's true. I think he does not have a, he doesn't have a legacy amongst, you know, cine files as a great filmmaker.
I think he's like major film has been pretty much like swept under the historical rug. And kind of dismantled in a lot of ways. But the films that follow that, some of them I think are very successful and some of them I do not like at all. Road to Perdition, which is really well made speaking of deacons kind of beautifully shot.
Interesting film. I think it's maybe Paul Newman's last performance. Jarhead, you mentioned, I still love Revolutionary Road. I think that's like, I feel like that's an unpopular opinion nowadays.
I think that that's one of the great two-hander performances plus you got that great Michael Shen. Oh, yeah. That was pretty much like a career maker. Yeah.
And then he made a way we go, which the less said about the better rank. And then Skyfall and Spectre. Skyfall's phenomenal. Spectre's not very good.
Yeah, that's interesting. To be considered like a really big deal filmmaker and kind of have that resume. I guess Skyfall will buy a lot of credit. I think it did.
And frankly, it deserves to. And it's worth noting like he also has like a major role in British theatre and actually has like very deep connections across, you know, like with, it seems like he works very well with actors. Very much so. There's a huge New Yorker profile about him, I think last year, that is mostly focused on his work as a director of the stage.
1917, we'll say I'm looking forward to it. So you, we just did these five. Yeah. I don't feel like you're hot for any of them.
I'm not. Well, parasite. Okay. I don't think parasite is going to be a best picture candidate.
Wow, I can't believe you're coming in cold arm, a little women. Well, I just got to be honest with myself. I know what kind of things that I connect to and what kind of things I don't know. That doesn't mean that we won't cover it religiously here on the show.
We will definitely talk about it. It's going to matter. Right as the best. I wish she was doing something different.
I don't hold it against her. I would pay to see it. I would certainly pay to see it. I think she she's shown a real knack for contemporary life that I find interesting, you know, her her performances and her writing love when people like go back into history and see like they see we're not that different.
Things have been changed up. Not that might be bad for society, but like when you said, like, look, people have the same struggles speaking of bad for society and the differences between people. You've set up a beautiful segue into the hunt, which is something that I did not address earlier on the show this week, though. I think it would be strange to leave it unremarked upon.
Yeah. The hunt, of course, is the universal pictures, one house production that was canceled in the aftermath and I don't know. Not rhetorically. No, no, not at all.
We're quite literally. And you know, this is of course in the aftermath of the awful shootings that we experienced in this country two weeks ago. And then the, I guess, inevitable rhetorical cycle that we experienced from both sides, but particularly from the president who I guess was made aware of the release of this film and perhaps misunderstood what this film was about, which then led to a never named the movie specifically. He did not.
There were Fox News stories about it. Exactly. And I guess the heat on the film, which had already decided to shelve its marketing and advertising strategy in the aftermath of these tragic events has pulled it completely from the schedule. This isn't utterly unprecedented, but it is very rare.
And I think a movie company bending its knee to a controversy like this is kind of fascinating. I mean, what did you make of that? You're a fan of Blumhouse films. You are interested in the kind of story that this is, which we should just say quickly is essentially a satire about violence in which wealthy liberals enlist quote unquote deplables.
Well, okay. So I don't, one thing that's worth noting about this is that we actually don't have a lot of specific information about what the movie is about or what the screen is about. We haven't seen it. It kind of got out of control where there is, you know, like there's pieces in the Hollywood reporter that have parts from the screenplay.
The screenplay was written by Damon Lindeloff and accused who obviously if Damon Lindeloff is behind Lost and the leftovers and the forthcoming watchmen show on HBO. And I think it's kind of gotten a little bit away from everybody here where, you know, it is being pitched as liberal leads hunting deplorables, whereas in reality, like from what we know, we don't actually know that that is the way that it's positive. Now, I think also it was rumored that the film is once it's called Red State versus Blue State or Blue State or something like that. So obviously there's a political component to it.
I would just say that, you know, I don't think it appears that when we were wondering a couple of years ago, whether or not art would respond to the political moment. I don't know if it can do that. I don't know if it can do that and actually get a fair shake in any way, shape or form, because, you know, one movie that I was really hoping, if we don't talk about it today, I hope we got to talk about it in the future. It was this movie, Loose.
I was talking about it as an opportunity. Loose is one of the most provocative, you know, thought-provoking films I've seen in a really long time and was mesmerizing from the moment it starts to the moment it ends. And I was talking with my wife and I was like, I wonder what would happen if that movie, because it starts to Roth and Naomi Watts. And I was like, I wonder what would happen if that was like Robert Downey Jr.
and Scarlett Johansson, where the stars of it were Robert Downey, like megastars were starring in the movie and it got a lot more attention. Yeah, and so it's a very interesting time to actually have films that are dialed to evoke like a kind of like a very passionate and or like territorial response from people like this. Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, the last time I can remember something like this, it was weirdly on similar terms.
It was the interview, James Franco and Seth Rogen's story about assassinating Kim Jong-un, which was of course more comedic and more over the top than the Hunt is meant to be, which is meant to be a little bit more grindhouse, exploitation, blumhouse kind of a movie. But to your point about whether or not we can respond to the world with art, I don't think that movies can, because movies take a long time to make and they take a long time to market and they take a long time to release. And the idea of being instantaneously reactive is impossible. Now they have been reactive in this case by removing the film from release.
I don't really know what that does. I really don't know what that accomplishes in a lot of ways. I mean, the movie is directed by Craig Sobel, we should say who made a, actually a similarly provocative movie called Compliance, that's five or six years ago to loose and you know, you also made a movie called Z for Zachariah. And he seems to have a real sense of the kind of acid dipped, what's really wrong with us at our core.
That seems to be a real point of interest for him. And you know, loose is a movie that is also pursuing that. You know, it's hard to talk about that movie without knowing that people have seen it. It's only been a small number of theaters, but I did mention it on the show earlier this week, but it's one of those films that is not definitive.
Yeah, it is nuanced. I haven't had a conversation with someone after the movie, like I did after loose in a very long time, not only in terms of like, what do you think that movie was about, but actually literally like what happened in a way that I think you're supposed to have that conversation after where you're like, how much did character, how much do characters know at any given moment? At what point was this thing turning one way or another? I would just recommend it to anyone who can hear this podcast.
It was just one of the most interesting movies I've seen this year. I completely agree. And it's very similar in the sense that there's, it's not binary. You know, the hunt controversy is binary.
It's literally binary in the way it's telling the story right, save versus blue state. But this is a, should it be released or should it not be released? Is too fraught a conversation. We cannot be definitive about these feelings.
It's, I felt similarly exasperated by the conversation or whether video games lead to violence and- Yeah, we're back in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I grew up with this. Exactly. And I'm anticipating potentially a similar situation with JoJo Rabbit, which is Taeko YTD's new film that is coming out later this year.
It's going to be premiering at all the fall festivals. And it is also a satire that features Taeko playing Hitler in Germany. He has dubbed it an anti-hate satire. There's already rumblings that some Disney executives who recently purchased Fox are not totally comfortable with the way that this movie is being positioned.
It's certainly not a historically the way a Disney movie looks and sounds. I think we are potentially in, in, in store for a long fall. Well, I think also we're in unprecedented, possibly unprecedented because of the levels of social media, the way that social media communicate these ideas like a brave, awful new world of misinformation. So by the time records can get corrected or by the time anyone actually sees JoJo Rabbit or anyone actually sees the hunt and is like, hey, just, you know, the hunt is basically like the most dangerous game, which is a movie, like, you know, like these movies come out like once every ten years, someone like does something like this.
By the time any of that gets corrected, it's too late. You know, so if they're, if they, if you add JoJo Rabbit, which has been earmarked as an Oscar in an awards contender, put that into the awards sausage making machine of counter campaigns against other awards candidates. It's going to be like pretty radioactive. Between that and once upon a time in Hollywood, it's going to be quite a show for the next six months.
So I am, I am buckled in. You know, the controversy that Disney is potentially fearful of regarding JoJo Rabbit is notable because JoJo Rabbit is a Fox searchlight release as well. Disney's relationship to Fox seems to be somewhat complex at this exact moment. Of course, the merger happened earlier this year since the merger.
None of the Fox films have succeeded at all. There's a couple of reasons for that. Disney CEO and Chairman Bob Iger noted that this is part of the reason why Disney's stock was down. And earnings were down.
And that was considered like a very public dunking. It was. I think what it does is probably puts them in a long term position to succeed. Once the Iger machine takes over Fox production, then all of a sudden they start marking W's.
It'll be fine. But if you go down the list, you know, I mentioned on the show recently I saw Tolkien the other day. That was that's a real dog. It's not a good film.
Dark Phoenix of course, you and I talked about this movie at length. The art of racing in the rain was released last weekend. Did you go see that? No, that's like I'm morally in need of like a car.
Kevin Costner voices a dog owned by my love intimately. What do you think? I like both of those guys. But I don't like to check on the video.
Okay. So you were just movie I kind of liked but completely bombed. And then we got two big ones this fall. I think you and I are pretty pumped for.
At Astra, James Gray's intergalactic daddy issues movie starring Brad Pitt and Ford versus Ferrari, perhaps my most anticipated movie of the fall James Mangold story of Ford versus Ferrari. If these movies fail, is that anything? Does it matter to you? It matters to me because I would like movies like at Astra and Ford versus Ferrari to continue to be made.
So that to that extent, it does. I think it's interesting to me because Disney is some as a company that even with its subsidiaries like Marvel and Pixar has so much control over both how the practice distributed in relation to the other things that Disney is doing. So you see Star Wars making room around and Marvel making room around Star Wars and Disney. And they are very sensitive about how they're releasing stuff.
I think that they are obviously learning that there is an insatiable thirst for revisiting old properties in the Disney library and are probably feeling very strong about the cards that they're holding. And if you're trying to come to them with an original idea or a historical film about car racing or an original story about space that deals with existential questions about our purpose in the universe, they might be like, I don't understand it. Like if you're going to do that, just remake the black hole. You know, remake do something with what we've got here because that's what we're dealing with.
And I don't know what Disney is going to be like as a landlord. It's going to be very interesting to see. I mean, they've done right by Marvel, you know, Pixar didn't was always fully owned by Disney. You know what I mean?
They were partners at a time and then they were fully purchased. So they've always worked well with companies that they've absorbed, not always, but especially in recent times under the iGRA 10 year they have and they've got a lot of properties. Someone recently noted I thought this was interesting. I think it was on Skymonautson and Forbes that next winter, doing is coming out.
And it's a big move by Warner Brothers to put Dune out next December because for the next 10 years, Disney slash Fox has earmarked the place for the big Christmas blockbuster release. Of course, this Christmas we will get the rise of Skywalker. The one after that will get Avatar. The one after that will get the next Star Wars saga.
The one after that avatar then Star Wars then Avatar. That is what they have mapped out. So Warner Brothers is bid to kind of beat back the Disney machine is to bet on what originally started, I think, as a standalone Dune movie and now sounds like they're doing become a number of films. It's the same thing across the board.
CBS, by a kind of already announced their investigating what they can do with Star Trek and Mission Impossible as cross platform properties that are living like basically creating their own Marvel universes out of Star Trek. I think there are something like there's three Star Trek currently like about to hit either on or about to hit CBS all access. There's still this quintantarntino or rated Star Trek movie floating around an animated Star Trek coming and I'm sure they will start to say why don't we just do the James D. Kirk show and why don't we just do a spot show or whatever.
So we're just going to see like a more and more of these things that nobody ever thought that might be able to support seven eight shows at once and a movie will start to be that. You feel exasperated? I have no interest in like I just I don't find that many stories to be that interesting in that way. I mean I don't think they're understanding necessarily that the specific value of Marvel is the already existing serialized storytelling that was within the comic books.
Dune is like a very like limited proposition. I mean people love fucking doing my mom's right doing like a hundred times doing really cool. I don't know if I want to spend 20 years of doing though we're going to find out because we might have to. Yeah.
Should we make a hard transition to our next segment? Yeah. Yeah, man. Is this a generational thing or do you think you were just never a Bruce guy?
Well, I'll tell you a story. He's only Bruce Princeton. Yes. And it's about fathers.
My dad got remarried in the 90s and I remember when he was getting remarried his girlfriend then fiance then wife at the time he was a huge Bruce fan calling love Bruce and she would say you got to love the boss the boss and my dad would say who's the boss of he's not the boss of me. He really said that and he sounds like John Greenfoot. He does. My father is a police officer from Long Island so you'll forgive him.
But I always got to kick out of it and it became a bit pretty quick. Yeah. He's not the boss of the boss of me and he was always kind of like the boss whatever. My dad is a big like clapping guy.
You know, that's really more of my dad's sound. Cool. And so I didn't that indicates that I didn't grow up with Bruce. Bruce wasn't on in the house as a kid.
And I think by the time I was an adolescent that was discovered Bruce, Bruce was in kind of a weird period. Tunnel of love and then like basically kind of yeah goes to Tom Jodas kind of happening. Like he's not in a highly commercial period. So just that handful of years older that you are than me I think actually probably makes a little bit of a difference there where like you probably got you were probably a little closer to born in the USA.
I mean born in the USA came during that same year of Madonna and Prince and Michael Jackson. So those were like the four Mount Rushmore summer, summer totems and also just growing up. So I went to a school that was kindergarten through 12th grade. So the older kids, they were older kids who were into earlier Bruce and then Philly had two pretty vibrant classic rock radio stations, WMR and WYSP that would, you know, you would just turn it on and they would be playing like all of Rosalita, you know, like so it wouldn't be uncommon to hear stuff from Asbury Park or born to run in the 80s.
And I never really understood him though. Like I never really looked at him as like a real artist when I was a kid. It was only when I moved to Boston. And I met some guys who were musicians who were like obsessed with him and were like, you know, this the live E Street band thing is like basically the best life I've ever made.
And you know, you got to check out Nebraska and Nebraska was like, I think it's the gateway drug for a lot of people where they're like, Oh, I know, born in the USA, but I'm not really sure like how I feel about him. And then they hear Nebraska and they're like, Oh, shit, this guy's in fact, I did that exact for Bobby Wagner yesterday, I'll produce right said to him. If you don't, if you don't respond to the bomb, best consider Nebraska, it's kind of the like, it's a little bit of the hipster, rock critic, indie rock gateway drug too. I think you have to be like, interested.
He's such a got such an interesting career because he has made these left turns before, because he did come off of being one of the biggest rock stars in the world. And he makes essentially like a four track low five bedroom folk album about state troopers and the planes and stuff like that. So, you know, I've always found him very stimulating as an artist. And then there's like just such a wealth of stuff to find that you can just kind of let Bruce Springsteen playlists go.
There's a really great one on Spotify. If people have an account, it's called an opera out on the term Pike and it's a playlist that Greg Dewey from the Afghan we've put together that I listened to a lie. It's really, really good selection. So what would you say your relationship is to him now as an artist?
Because he's still, honestly, as active as he's ever been, he did a Broadway show last year, he just released a new record. They're on tour, I think, right? Yeah, there's a new film coming out that he co-directed with Tom Zimney. Like he is, I think he's in his late 60s and he's in the prime of his creative life.
Yeah, I mean, for me, my Bruce Springsteen songs are like fairly obvious. I think he's one of those artists that I don't think for Dylan, I would say my favorite songs are like blown in the wind and like a rolling stone, but with Springsteen, they're closer to that. You like classics. I kind of do.
I am not like constantly on top of it with new Bruce, but I really have enjoyed some of the archival stuff he's done recently. Like the Ties of Bind, which is a collection of songs that he did during the recording of the river, is one of the best things I've heard in the last couple of years. And he put out a record a couple of years ago called The Promise, which included a lot of really good stuff. So yeah, I mean, he's awesome.
I like Bruce Springsteen. I do too. And I've grown into him in a way. And it's also worth saying that for you and I is inescapable for where we grew up.
100%. I suspect that part of the reason I didn't respond to him through my, I don't probably until about 25, is that you're routinely being told he's the best. And you know, an emotional moneyballer like me doesn't really respond to that. There's nobody's in the box.
Nobody's in the box. There's no boss. That's the thing. There's no boss of anybody.
And I probably, the experience I had watching the movie, Blind By The Light, which takes pains to literally put the words that he wrote on screen to show you what his lyrics are like, is similar to something that happened to me as somebody who was hearing the music much later on in life, which is you can hear dancing in the dark or born in the USA, like you could hear the Star Spangled Banner. It's just a melody that is ingrained inside of you, especially if you're from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, you know, Massachusetts. Like in that Eastern Seaboard, Bruce is a lifestyle. And so at a certain point, it just becomes wallpaper.
And then you go back and you listen to the words of Dancing In The Dark, which is one of the most pained songs ever written. It is a wrenching story about a person struggling. It is not a party song. It's not an exultation.
And it's taken me a long time to kind of go back through those songs. And so that's part of the reason why. And I'll say, straightforwardly, like my list is not your deep cuts, du jour. There's some like modestly interesting picks here, but they're pretty classic, especially among like your second degree Bruce fan.
You know, when Corinde was here, she let me know that spring nuts is what people who are obsessed with Bruce Springsteen. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, exactly.
I don't think that they're going to really respect my list. You know, I haven't noted the, you know, which live version I'm referring to here. So when Little Women Hive is done with you and Bong Hive is done with you, then hashtags spring nuts are going to be in your mentions. Yes.
Time you to the train tracks Little Women Hive. Do you want to talk about your number five? It's still in car. I'm driving a school in car.
I don't ever do anything. It's not a way to get caught. Yeah, I like that song. He's a really good short story writer.
Yeah. And he's like really good at character and narrative and economically telling like a story about usually a guy who's kind of like on his last chance, he's got a girl and you might have to do a favor for somebody. You know, that's not what this is. The only car is just an incredible portrait of kind of like a life, like a desolate life and a guy who's kind of running out of chances.
This is a great one. That's from the river, right? Yeah. It's from, yeah.
And then there's different versions of it on Ties of Mind. So I'm curious if the river is your favorite Bruce album because I feel like it fuses it. I listen to Nebraska so much in my early 20s that I think I can't even hear it anymore. I would say I spent the most time at the river in the last five or six years.
Yeah. And I mean, that tends to fuse my interest in him. It's also worth noting that the river sounded like shit for a while on CD. It was a it was like a bad digital transfer, a kind of casualty of that early in the early days and I'm not like a big audio file, but that was one of the records that I needed to discover on vinyl to realize there was a lower end to the band.
Yeah, I don't I came to it so late that by the time I got around to it was probably remastered and sounding perfect. Yeah. And it sounds kind of perfect now. And it ties up on as you said, as a great companion if you wanted to dig deeper into that period, which is about 1980 or so.
And he was like, he was taking some stuff that he was hearing from like Elvis Costello and Punk and he was it's a very tapped in record, I think. That's a very good point about him too, which is that even though every Bruce song is unmistakably Bruce and that kind of like guttural wail and that deep sincerity, that almost unbearable sincerity at times, you can feel him picking and choosing. He's not like Joe Strommer, who if he's like, I like how that sounds. And then he just puts the sound into his clash song.
He finds a way to let the Bruce Springsteen E Street band song like envelop the influence. And I was I kind of like that about him. So my number five is Adam raised the cane. I think is probably the most metal Bruce has ever gotten.
And I love the idea of like a hard rock Bruce listening to like Zeppelin and finding a way to make it his song and still a song about fathers and sons and still a song that is kind of true to his anxieties and interests and like emotional bandwidth, but putting like a rip chord lick on it too, which I feel like he maybe doesn't do as much as I would like him to do. I think that might be another reason why he never quite slotted into my classic rock hierarchy. I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't become one of the biggest artists in the world, you know, because I don't know what happens to his sound. I think he has a very specific idea about what he could do.
I mean, he's obviously drawing a lot from Phil Spector. He's drawing a lot from 60s pop like Motown. And then he's like infusing that with classic rock. But those songs, especially the 80s songs like born in the USA had a sense of radio and had a sense of like what this song would mean in someone's life that is kind of a pop like genius to do that.
That's kind of is perfect for my fourth song actually. What is it? I'm on fire. Yeah, which is probably one of my favorite love songs and is basically just like a Roy Orbison, him, but done as a U2 song, you know, done as a new wave song.
I'm on fire is born in the USA era. Do you remember connecting with the idea of the album back then when something like that was going around or was he a singles artist? No, I mean, you know, that was that was that was one of the he was one of the first album artists. This and Purple Rain were the ones where I was like, so there's songs that aren't on the radio.
And then of course, also radio was so desperate for that that they would just play on going down and just the same way they would play take me with you from Purple Rain. They would play like the seventh song that wasn't even a single. He'd be like, man, we're just going to play five Prince songs. You're right.
Him, Prince, R.E.M. and U2 were the artists who you would get the classic iconic album and you'd be like, oh, the ninth song is also amazing. And you'd hear it once every 100 days on the radio, but it would fit in just as well as where the streets have no name or where you know, born in the USA. Or you'd find out like, because you're an idiot kid and they'd play, I'm going down for the first time and you'd be like, wait, what is this?
And then you'd realize you just had to listen that far into the record because you kept listening to glory days and born in the USA. So yeah, I'm on fire is my number four. We go down to the river. We're done.
So my number four is the river. We've already talked about that period for him. That's kind of the opposite of what you're saying. I think the river is the last song on the first side of the double album.
So you have to go through that whole record. But I think that's a little bit of a good crash course into the quote unquote real Bruce. You know, the like, the Bruce that Bill Simmons has talked about a little bit, the guy who is on stage at the Odeon screaming into the mic about what his dad did to him or about, you know, what it's like to tune up a car and change your life or what happens when you get married pregnant. It's worth noting for that Odeon thing, maybe think is that and this is something that's I don't.
I mean, I'm sure that this is the case, but there was this the idea of seeing him live and that being like something that people basically like constructed their free time around was to bring steam is on tour. We like, I'm gonna go see springsteen four times. And each night he's going to play for four and a half hours and play 12 Motown covers and then just do like a 30 minute version of Born to Run is like, it was like kind of like a vet, you know, and a lot of the film by the light is oriented around that and saffras who wrote the memoir that the film is based on has seen Bruce over 150 times and is that in the front row over 50 times and has has literally committed. Yeah, the free the stray moments of his life to spending time with this artist.
There's very few people that you can say that about the dead. The dead. That's a good example. I mean, even the iconic artists, like we've already talked about the people's on the show this year.
We've already talked about the one on the show this year. Those artists you almost can't have that same relationship to. I don't really think the stones even had a reputae like they had a chaotic and sort of electric life reputation, but not that idea of creating a lifestyle around going to see them. Yes.
And at least by the time I was a age, they were like out of my price bracket to go see the stones because they were like these stadium rock, like they're playing tattoo you or like voodoo lounge or whatever. And it's just like breaking the bank to go see them at the vet or something. Yeah, Bruce for whatever reason has a different relationship. And you know, correct me if I'm wrong with this because I'm not the kind of person that follows this closely, but doesn't he also not charge as much as say the Eagles for his concerts?
I'm not sure. I wouldn't want to disparage Don Henley. You know, noted. Number three.
I went to say. I'm going to be a rumble out on the prom and me then again. I'm coming by the skin of this to everything dies. Maybe that's a fact.
Maybe everything that dies someday comes back. But you're makeup on. Makes you happy. And maybe the night in the last thing.
This is my number two. Yeah, it's a pretty great song. Pretty great song. I recently used in the opening segment of a Billions episode this season, which there was a character literally known as the chicken man.
So shout out to compliment him over being there, which is what an amazing song. And if you haven't heard the live and NYC album, which I think was recorded, was ever course shortly after 9-11, I can't remember when that came out. There is a version of Atlantic City that is like a version that he does live. That is at once like, I think it's got like Mandolin and it's kind of like a folk rock song for a while.
And then it turns into a Sam Cooke song midway through and it's just unbelievable. Yeah, truly one of the great live artists of all time. My number three speaking of live performances rose to leave it come out tonight. I guess this is probably the kind of like live spring steams fans call to arms, right?
It's kind of the rallying cry. He's closed with the song many times over the years. He made it the first song in the encore many times over the years. It's from the wild, the innocent and the Eastree shuffle, which is only his second album in 1973, which is a pretty great album, but is considered a time when he hadn't yet like figured out his own mythology.
You know, he's writing much more like Bob Dylan than he was like Bruce Springsteen during this period and he's kind of obsessed with Dylan and Van Morrison and these other iconoclastic single male figures of great poetry and searching for meaning in their music. But Rosalita is like kind of a party song and it's a great kind of a hoe down. And I like the idea of there being like one different kind of song for each of my lives. So he's got such a myriad of choices.
That's your three, two is going to guys. Yeah, tell me why. Because I'm pretty into fucking Dead Rock. Pretty into some clean drum sounds.
Anyone who saw the title on this podcast was really weird. This song is astonishing. Is this on Dually's list? It is, right?
Yeah, I think this is like generally in terms of like, I don't get really into the great American songbook, like I'm really like bang a lot of cold porter, but this belongs in there. Wow. Guys, it's an unbelievable love song. This is different tunnel of love.
Are you the kind of Bruce fan that connects with tunnel of love and is like this is secretly the best one? Now I do. Well, I know that Grindr and Zafra's connected over tunnel of love because not a lot of heads. You got to be a real fan to ride for that.
That's when the Bolotai came in and Bruce kind of changed his look. Gone went the Gene Jacket and the Cutoffs and all that. In came black suits, white button downs, the Bolo. You should get a Bolo.
A little synth. Yeah, a little synth. Yeah. I think I've done Bruce Springsteen and karaoke, so they were probably women there, but not like a specific like Cyrano de Bergerac kind of thing.
Okay, that's good to know. That's your number one. My number one is Backstreet's. It could be hard to not do a born or run song.
The guttural whale that I was referring to earlier is the thing that I have become most excited about and Backstreet's features the all time Bruce vocal performance, in my opinion. When he lets it rip, when he after the very sort of slow, almost dirge like piano intro and then first verse and then he lets the chorus rip and you can feel him reaching down beneath his lungs trying to get all the air and let loose. It's ecstatic. It's a very unique ability to make people thrilled by the sound of their voice.
So I'm going back streets on a purely visceral level. I'm going to go my number one song is Lucent, which is a song that you can find on the Ties of Fine and it was originally released on tracks, which is a box that came out a while ago, a long time ago. And when I moved in with a bunch of guys in Boston who were all in a band, there was a guy who drew an order, he was also a really great song or musician and we were hanging out and drew was basically like his two favorite things in the world, three favorite things like Nick Drake, Fugazi and Bruce Brinks. And I was kind of like, yeah, and I was like, I get the Nick Drake thing, I get the Fugazi thing.
I'm kind of trying to wrap my head around like what aside from the singles and he was the one who really got me into Atlantic City. And he was the one who played me Lucent for the first time if I'm remembering this correctly because it was practically 20 years ago now. But it was like, I couldn't believe that that was like a song that just didn't make an album. It is this spectacular full-spector rock song and it is so sad and so desperate and so heartbreaking.
And if you haven't heard it, you can please listen to it. Lucent is astonishing. He's like my favorite Bruce Springsteen song. What else do you need to say about Bruce?
Where does Bruce stand on the hunt release the hunt Bruce? Why isn't he commented yet? You want to add him? Is Bruce on Twitter?
Probably not. He's got better things to do. He does have better things to do. We have better things to do on this show as well which is to get to my interview with Grinder Chata.
Chris, will you come back soon and chat with me on the picture? I'll do whatever you need me to do. I love having you here. Thank you.
I'm delighted to be joined by Grinder Chata today. Grinder is the co-writer and producer and of course the director of the new movie Blind by the Light. She is wearing a Bruce Springsteen t-shirt. That is for one reason and that's because Bruce Springsteen is the key part of this film.
Grinder, thanks for being here. Oh, thank you. Lovely to be here. So, this is based in part on Saffrais Manzor's memoir.
Yeah. And you guys have been friends for a long time. I know. And I'm kind of wondering when you first bonded over Bruce.
When did it become clear that you two shared something? Well, I had liked him since I was at school. That's when I was first introduced to Bruce and I went to seem live in 1985 in England. And then I read an article in a newspaper written by Zafras which had a bizarre picture in it with him doing an original selfie before selfies were invented with a camera.
And he was in the frame and in the background was Bruce looking like he was caught in the headlights. And that was the image that I saw in the paper and I was like, oh my God, what is this? And then I saw his name and I said, there's another Asian person who likes Bruce Springsteen in the United Kingdom. Wow.
And then I got in touch and then we just used to talk about Bruce all the time. Was that uncommon? Because in the film it's shown that your friends experienced that that was extraordinarily uncommon. Why was that uncommon for you?
What kind of an environment did you grow up in what kind of schools did you attend? Well, I just went to a regular school in London. My life is very much the life of Ben-Dit-Lite Beckham. That's kind of me and my parents if you like.
And I think just everyone thinks it's really unusual that I like Bruce Springsteen. Everyone's surprised by it. I don't know, that's just people think that. But for me it's a very important part of my life.
But everyone has me down to like other things I guess. And so they're surprised. Even now, even though I made this movie, people don't think that I was a fan of it. And in fact, in 2004 when I made my movie, Bride and Prejudice, I was re-looking at some old interviews for some research.
And in that interview from 2005, one of the questions I'm asked is, which artist would you most like to work with? And I say, hands down, slam dunk Bruce Springsteen. He means a lot to me and I would love to work with him. So that was before we'd even had any idea of making a movie or anything.
That's so interesting. Did you have a perception of what kind of thing you would have wanted to do with him before this came along? Or were you just saying that this is somebody that I connect to and I want to work with? Yeah, basically.
I just made Ben-Dit-Lite Beckham. I think it might have something to do with Philadelphia. You know, so that was a fantastic film. I loved that film.
So it might have been something to do with me thinking, wow, wish I could do something like that. You know. So we know that this is Saffras a story. But how do you also make a movie like this which is very autobiographical and memorialistic.
Also your story. Well, Saffras told me he was writing his memoir and I said, this is fantastic. And when he gave me the galleys before he was published, I said to him, I know how to make a movie out of this fantastic movie. But you know, we have to make some changes.
And he was doing the thing that we all do, you know, people of color. We try to protect our parents and our community. So he'd taken all the drama out of it and all the conflict and made it very much about a very geeky Bruce, but also racism also, you know, his life. But I said I need to put that conflict back in.
I also need to move it away from you. Although you are the inspiration for the story, I need to make it transcend you in some ways. And so I started working on it with him and I introduced a girlfriend. He would never have had a girlfriend at that time, he's far too geeky.
I introduced conflicts with his father, scenes of drama, and he would never have spoken out to his father. If there'd been any conflict, he probably would have gone up to his room and written a poem. So we just brought him to life in a movie where he'd be like different to kind of who he was, but the core idea of a kid who seeks solace in Springsteen's words was essentially saffrazz. But then I kind of had that too, not to the same degree.