Watch Bruce Springsteen Perform ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’ at New York Film Festival

Bruce Springsteen took the stage following the New York Film Festival premiere of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere last night for a surprise performance of his song “Land of Hope and Dreams.”   

Before showcasing the song on acoustic guitar, Springsteen took the opportunity to reflect on the film, which stars Jeremy Allen White as the musician himself. Springsteen thanked the actor for “playing a much better-looking version of me” and then thanked Jeremy Strong for playing “a much, much better-looking version” of his manager Jon Landau.

The musician also honored his late parents, Douglas “Dutch” Springsteen and Adele Springsteen, who are portrayed by recent Emmy winner Stephen Graham and Gaby Hoffman in the movie. “They’re all gone now, so it’s nice to have this piece of film,” he noted.

After thanking numerous people involved in the film, Springsteen turned the speech political. “These days we have daily events reminding us of the fact that we’re living through these particularly dangerous times,” Springsteen told the audience. “I spent my life on the road, I’ve been moving around the world as kind of a musical ambassador for America, trying to measure the distance between American reality, where we’ve often fallen short of our ideals of the American dream.”

He added, “But for a lot of folks out there, she continues to be a land of hope and dreams, not of fear or divisiveness or government censorship or hatred. That America’s worth fighting for. So it’s in that spirit I brought along my lifelong weapon of choice, my guitar.”