The upcoming Bruce Springsteen film Deliver Me From Nowhere is based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 book Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Zanes discusses how the film came to be.
Zanes says when he was first approached, he knew they’d have to get Springsteen onboard, so he and the film’s director, Scott Cooper, sent Bruce and his manager, Jon Landau, a one-page description of the project. Then they waited for their response.
But Zanes initially didn’t hear back, because Springsteen was dealing with peptic ulcer disease.
“Later, I was driving, and got a call from Bruce, totally unexpected,” Zanes shares. “At the end, I said: ‘Hey, did you get a chance to look at that description?’ While I was on the phone, he pulled it up. We hung up. Five minutes later, he texted: ‘I’m into this.’”
Zanes spent time on the film’s New Jersey set when production began, as did Springsteen, and Zanes noticed the experience wasn’t an easy one for The Boss.
“There was no hiding the fact that he was there on a regular basis. And there are difficult passages. He was going through some hard stuff, and here he was, watching his life being enacted, reliving it,” Zanes says. “I asked him, ‘Is this as intense for you as it appears it might be?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’”
Zanes wants fans to know Deliver Me From Nowhere will be different from other biopics because “it doesn’t start before success — it starts in the middle.”
“It’s a story about family history, mental health, and an already-successful artist facing a crisis,” he says. “There’s nothing about him making it. No ‘Born to Run’ moment. None of that. We see what he’s haunted by.”
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
