A few days before Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band convened at the Vogel theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, to start rehearsals for their 2023 Letter to You tour, filmmaker Thom Zimny received a short text from Springsteen. “Getting the band together,” it read. “You should stop by.”
For the next few months, Zimny and his film crew trailed Springsteen and the E Street Band from Red Bank to production rehearsals in Trenton, New Jersey, and then arenas and stadiums all across the globe, capturing intimate backstage moments, thrilling live performances, and revealing interviews with every single member of the 17-piece band. The result is Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, which premiers Oct. 25 on Hulu and Disney+.
The film marks the first time Springsteen has allowed fans access into rehearsals as he reconnects with longtime bandmates, integrates new ones into the mix, and tries to craft the perfect setlist. The narration is provided by Springsteen himself, but the only people interviewed on camera are members of the E Street Band. “Thom’s vision was to make this a story about the E Street Band,” says Springsteen manger Jon Landau, “and to really show and tell the story of the role of the band in a way that had never been told before.”
In the early days of the E Street Band, little thought was given to capturing studio sessions, concerts, or backstage footage on film. What little that does survive from that era, including Los Angeles 1973, London 1975, Phoenix 1978, and select moments from the Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, is more a product of luck and happenstance than any long-term thinking.
“Bruce always had a sort of superstition,” says Landau. “He’s never wanted to show all the tricks of the trade. On the Darkness tour, we did five radio broadcasts in different regions. He said to us, ‘When I get to ‘Quarter to Three,’ kill the sound.’ He didn’t want to give away the entire show. He wanted to hold something back. That’s why we avoided music videos for a very long time. Bruce just had this ambivalence.”
That ambivalence started to fade in the mid-Nineties when the E Street Band first reunited. He allowed filmmaker Ernie Fritz to shoot their Greatest Hits studio sessions for the documentary Blood Brothers. And when they wrapped up their 1999/00 tour at Madison Square Garden, cameras rolled for an HBO concert special that was released on DVD.
That film was directed by Chris Hilson, who brought Zimny onboard to wrap up the editing process. “There’s this great four-minute sequence in the film during ’10th Avenue Freeze-Out’ where Bruce tells this long story about the band,” says Landau. “He begins on the opposite end of the stage from Clarence, and they start walking towards each other. I remember being in the editing room and watching Thom do a cut on that sequence that was spectacular. I said, ‘Well, okay. This guy’s got some potential here.’ I didn’t know he’d be with us for the next 24 years though.”
In that time, Zimny directed numerous Springsteen concert films, music videos, and documentaries about the making of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River, and Letter to You. “Bruce really loves stability,” says Landau. “Stevie [Van Zandt] goes back with him forever. Garry [Tallent] goes back to 1971, Max [Weinberg], Roy [Bittan], and myself go back to 1974. George Travis, who produces the tours, goes back to 1977. Once Bruce finds the right people in a particular area, he’s not one to wake up in the morning and go, ‘Let me shake this all up.’ He’s been with one record company since 1973.”
Zimny may be the new guy with a mere quarter-century in the Springsteen camp, but there was still a strong sense of comfort among him and the musicians when he showed up with a skeleton film crew on the first days of rehearsals at the Vogel in January 2023. “We were invisible. We would film and stand in a way that didn’t interfere with their natural regrouping for the first time since the world shut down,” Zimny says. “I was a guest, and my job was get as much as I could of what the story that was unfolding in front of me, and stay out of the way.”
The story of the movie started to gel in Zimny’s mind once he saw Springsteen pull out a notebook and go through a setlist that told a tale of friendship, aging, death, and remembrance. “I was trying, as a filmmaker, to grab onto that energy and reflect some of these themes,” says Zimny. “My mission in this film was getting close to something I couldn’t put in words, but it’s this moment in ‘Backstreets’ where Bruce pauses the song to talk about his relationship with George [Theiss], a [Castiles] band member from his youth. All the emotions in that speech, I wanted the film to have a sense of that.”
The first sequence of the movie takes place in Red Bank and Trenton where the band rehearse the set and welcome in new members Ozzie Melendez, Anthony Almonte, and Ada Dyer. Patti Scialfa is present during the rehearsal process and opening night in Tampa, but she exits the tour early on. No explanation was given until she revealed to Zimny on camera that she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2018.
“That came from that place of trust because I sat across from her and went through so many different questions about the tour and her history,” says Zimny. “In those conversations came out the details of why she wasn’t touring. She trusted me, and trust is such a huge element in the process of making these films. I wanted to have that in the film, but I also wanted to have the sense of strength and hope and love that she brings on stage. That’s why I included her performance of ‘Fire’ in Los Angeles. It shows an intimate side of her and Bruce that’s very rare.”
About 40 minutes into the film, the action moves over to Europe, where Springsteen enjoys a fanatical following and headlines soccer stadiums. Hardcore fans in Norway, Italy, and England share their stories on camera. “We’ve spent a fair amount of time among ourselves discussing [Springsteen’s popularity in Europe] and analyzing it,” says Landau. “And we’re just in the ‘enjoying it’ stage now. There’s just a unique character to our European audiences. The film happens to focus on Barcelona, which has one of our most inspired audiences. We have a real soft spot for them.”
Much of the movie takes place in the present, but there are brief trips back to the early days via the recollections of Van Zandt, Tallent, Weinberg, and Bittan. “I love having a choir of overlapping voices that are giving you experiences,” says Zimny. “They all have musical voices. Stevie’s voice is fantastic in telling some of the early days of the E Street. You get Roy and his sense of humor. And then you get the dryness of Garry and his delivery. At the end of it, you get the poetic voice of Bruce’s voiceover, his narration, which is like a friend coming to you and saying, ‘This is what I think is really going on.’”
Throughout production, Zimny sent Springsteen incomplete sequences he worked up. He’d respond with voiceovers inspired by what he saw. “I’m able to take that voiceover, put it against my image,” says Zimny. “And every single time it takes it to a whole other place where I rework the whole thing.”
Road Diary centers around footage from the 2023 tour, but Zimny and his crew were present in Asbury Park in September when Springsteen headlined Sea.Hear.Now in front of 35,000 fans crammed onto the beach. “Can you imagine what that night was like for Bruce?” asks Landau. “Imagine this lonely kid from Freehold and all we know about him as child growing up, and then to be the man today in that same place?”
It’s unclear what’ll happen with that footage, but Zimny hopes to make more Springsteen movies in the coming years. “There’s not a single chapter of Bruce’s world that I don’t find myself going, ‘Oh, that’d be a great story,’” he says, “Whether it’s Born in the U.S.A. or the Other Band [tour of 1992/93] as an example. I’m always looking for different stories, and I find all his chapters really fascinating.”
However, another Springsteen movie is in the works that’s very different from any of Zimny’s documentaries: An adaptation of the 2023 Warren Zanes book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, directed by Scott Cooper. The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White is playing Springsteen, and Succession‘s Jeremy Strong is portraying Landau.
“Jeremy [Strong] and I have gotten to know each other very well,” says Landau. “He’s a fantastic guy, just extraordinary person to begin with. And I don’t know how he refers to himself, but he certainly has some of the method actor to him. And I told him that I did not think it was necessary for him to go the full [Robert] De Niro Raging Bull route by gaining that extra 35 pounds in order to play me.”
Real-life Springsteen is playing a series of Canadian arena shows in November with the E Sweet Band before they head over to Europe next summer. Their plans beyond that are unclear even to Landau. “One way or another, we got to get ourselves to Australia because they’re just the greatest, most wonderful people,” Landau says. “But I am not sitting here holding any as-yet unannounced schedule. This is what we have. Everything that we have is out there now.”
