Why Bruce Springsteen's documentary “Road Diary” addresses his mortality: 'It's not forever'

Director Thom Zimny teases the upcoming film about Springsteen's life on the road.

The thing about being born to run is that it also means you're born to slow down eventually.

Bruce Springsteen, known by his fans as the Boss, is not immune to this inevitable fact of life. He turned 75 on Sept. 23, and both his most recent album, Letter to You, and the accompanying ongoing tour with the E Street Band deal frankly with mortality. So, it seems a no-brainer that the new documentary, Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, would do the same.

The film, which hits Hulu and Disney+ on Oct. 25, is the latest from longtime Springsteen collaborator, director Thom Zimny. Zimny's been working with the rock & roll legend since 2001, but he was also a fan long before that. Road Diary became an opportunity for him to process and face his own sadness over Springsteen's aging.

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"I can't walk away from the truth," he tells Entertainment Weekly, sitting down for an interview in Toronto the day after the film premiered there. "Getting a sense of the band aging and mortality, it really happened in a deep way. When I made the film Letter to You, I had to face telling that story in the film. And then with Road Diary, it's the same thing where there are quiet moments that it really hits me that this driving force in my life can't be forever. I'm no different than the fan because it's affecting them in the same way."

Zimny says making the film has been a "fantastic reminder" to live in the present. "Bruce has a speech in the film where he says, 'The light is coming down the tracks right at you, and you have to live in the moment,'" he recalls. "It's a great gift to have this awareness, and it's very emotional at times when you really process it. Because I have great love for this world and these people, and at the same time, Bruce is really powerful to remind you that it's not forever."

That really is a reminder from the Boss, not Zimny. The director says there were never any conversations between him and Springsteen about the themes of the documentary or explicit direction that he mirror the messages of the tour. Instead, it arose organically from the film's subjects.

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"I have no memory of him turning to me and saying, 'This is what I'm trying to do,'" Zimny says. "There was no reflective game plan of, 'The doc will have this POV, which then reflects the POV of the live show.' But I do take my cues from him and how the show emotionally feels. If anything, I'm standing in the shadows a little bit and trying to take up a little bit of the energy that I'm witnessing. This show has moments of humor, reflection, and pure rock & roll. I've got to get all that in the doc. I'm not coming up with these ideas on my own. I'm witnessing them unfold."

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Still, Zimny does want to capture something more intangible in the film. One of Springsteen's backup vocalists, Curtis King, describes an E Street Band concert as a "religious experience" in the documentary — and in dealing with matters of legacy and mortality, Zimny hopes to convey the spiritual experience that is seeing Springsteen live.

To do that, Zimny sought to find that "living in the moment" energy via shots of the crowd. "To try to convey the feeling of the spiritual qualities of the experience of the E Street band, I looked at filming it in slow motion and slowing things down so that the viewer could take in things that pass very quickly in real life," he explains. "I really wanted to capture people who were not caring about the camera at all. If they looked into the camera and they did the rock & roll gesture, I had no interest. Nothing is staged. What I'm looking for is trying to get into that soul of the person who's connecting."

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In being present with the footage itself, Zimny found his film. "I look at the footage obsessively believing that it's going to tell me things that the film needs, but also it's going to answer the bigger themes that I'm trying to introduce," he reflects. "The idea of redemption and healing through music, I don't use those phrases anywhere, but I think you can find it in a crowd shot."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.