Scott Cooper
Abingdon native Scott Cooper has written and directed the new biographical musical drama, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” which is currently playing at movie theaters.
The film chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album “Nebraska,” when he was a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom. Recorded on a four-track recorder in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom, it is considered his most enduring work, portraying the lives of blue-collar workers who try to succeed in life but fail at every turn.
The film stars Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen. White has won many awards for his work on the television series, “The Bear” (2022–present), for which he received three consecutive Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Critics’ Choice Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
A 1988 graduate of Abingdon High School, Cooper has become one of the top-tier directors in Hollywood over the last 20 years. Growing up, he says he was reared on bluegrass music and Southern literature, which had a profound influence on his creative decisions later in life. He went to Hampden-Sydney College, Hampton Sydney, Virginia, before he ventured north to the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York, where he trained to be an actor.
Cooper had a minor supporting part in “Gods and Generals” (2003), which starred his acting mentor Robert Duvall as General Robert E. Lee. After toiling for several years as an unknown but employable actor, Scott Cooper took his career by the reins and directed “Crazy Heart” (2009), the poignant tale of a broken-down country music singer that earned critical acclaim and several key awards.
Cooper then co-wrote and directed the crime thriller “Out of the Furnace” (2013), starring Christian Bale and Woody Harrelson. Cooper’s next film as a director and producer was the mob drama “Black Mass” (2015), starring Johnny Depp as real-life Boston mobster turned FBI informant James “Whitey” Bulger opposite Joel Edgerton and Dakota Johnson.
His subsequent films were “Hostiles” (2017), “Antlers” (2011) and “The Pale Blue Eye” (2022).
Cooper said that his new movie will “shed light on Springsteen’s struggle with mental illness. This is probably his most painful chapter, most vulnerable chapter of his life. He was just coming off of ‘The River’ tour to great acclaim and success. 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.”
The result of this introspection, Cooper says, “is — well, I think — his best album and one of the best albums of the last 50 years. It isn’t a message movie about mental illness, but I think it’s a part of his creative process.
“I think it’s a very relatable and powerful story,” adds the director. “There’s a lot of music in the film, but it just happens to be his record ‘Nebraska’ and not ‘Born in the USA.’”
