Truth or Myth? Fact-Checking Bruce Springsteen Biopic 'Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere'

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere delivers both hits and misses about Bruce Springsteen's life and career.

Released on October 24, the Scott Cooper-directed film follows the singer's journey in the music industry, specifically the moment he records his 1982 album Nebraska, when "he was a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past."

The synopsis from the 20th Century Studios adds, "Recorded on a 4-track recorder in Springsteen's New Jersey bedroom, the album marked a pivotal time in his life and is considered one of his most enduring works—a raw, haunted acoustic record populated by lost souls searching for a reason to believe."

The cast includes Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser and Stephen Graham.

Young portrays Faye, a single mom who works as a waitress. However, the character is not a real person in Springsteen's life. Instead, she is a composite inspired by several women the singer dated.

"In '81 and '82 it was so hard for him, even when he knows that he should have been with people or was having a great time and was getting everything he needed in a relationship," Cooper said of Faye.

After wrapping up a tour in the early 1970s, the Boss began working on Nebraska using a home-recording machine and released the album with the original demo recordings in 1982.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere also touches on the "Dancing in the Dark" singer's family life, including his strained relationship with his father, Douglas. The scenes, including the one in which he goes to pick up his father at a bar, are drawn from real-life events.

Springsteen previously opened up about his trip to the bar during Springsteen on Broadway in 2017, admitting it both "thrilled" and "terrified" him.

"It thrilled me because I had been given the license by my mother, the law, to go into the bar! I'm a kid! But it terrified me because to enter the bar is to enter my father's privileged, private and sacred space," he shared. "He was not to be disturbed when he's down at the bar. Everybody knew that … I would stand there lost in the noise and the hustle of the crowd and I would drink in that dim smell of beer and booze and aftershave."

He added, "Now, to a kid, that was the scent of adulthood. It was the scent of manhood. I wanted some of that."

Like his father, Springsteen dealt with mental health challenges.

Before the biopic's release, Cooper teased that the film would "shed light" on the "My Hometown" singer's mental health concerns.

"This is probably his most painful chapter, most vulnerable chapter of his life," Cooper told People. "He was just coming off of The River tour to great acclaim and success."

The director shared, "Instead of chasing the roar of arenas and hit singles, he had the courage to look inward and face a lot of unresolved trauma that he had dealt with."

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere also captures the creation of "Born in the U.S.A." accurately. As the biopic shows, Springsteen indeed delayed the release of the song and its album until 1984.

In the film's final part, Springsteen leaves New Jersey and moves to Los Angeles after releasing Nebraska. According to The Times, the relocation did happen, with the singer-songwriter living in the City of Angels on and off for about a decade.

However, Springsteen and his family eventually returned to his home state.

"When Patti and I had children, we were not comfortable about them growing up in Los Angeles," he admitted to The Times. "I grew up on a block that had six houses with my relatives in them, so we came back here. The kids had aunts and uncles nearby and it was a good payoff for not being where the industry is: normal life."

"You grow up in a place that you weren't so sure about for a variety of reasons. Then, whether for nostalgia or the feeling that you're on solid ground, you find yourself returning. Now I love my home town," he continued.