Becoming a meme doesn’t guarantee you make it into the final cut.
Jeremy Strong fans will learn this the hard way come October 24, when “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” hits theaters. Variety can report that a divisive monologue performed by Strong in the film’s official trailer has been snipped from the final product, the result of a creative decision by director Scott Cooper, per one source.
Strong plays longtime Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau in the unconventional and emotionally charged biopic, which shows the rocker (played by Jeremy Allen White) coming to grips with his depression during the production of the 1982 album “Nebraska.”
“When Bruce was little, he had a hole in the floor of his bedroom. A floor that’s supposed to be solid, he’s supposed to be able to stand on. Bruce didn’t have that,” Strong narrates in the still-circulating trailer. “Bruce is a repairman. What he’s doing with this album is, he’s repairing that hole in his floor. Repairing that hole in himself. Once he’s done that, he’s going to repair the entire world.”
While the speech captures Landau’s hand in Springsteen’s personal and artistic development (stand-in father, consigliere, best friend), many took to social media to mock the prose and how it sets the film’s dramatic stakes. One user appropriated the monologue as an origin story for Fozzie Bear. It then became the latest and greatest use of the Mary Jane Defending Peter Parker template. The examples go on.
An insider familiar with the film said that “in examining the film, it felt unnecessary.” A rep for the project had no comment on the matter.
While it may be easy to take shots at Strong’s “Capital-A Acting” or even Cooper’s script adaptation, we should note that at Friday’s Telluride world premiere of “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” Strong elicited a positive response. His soft-touch portrait of Landau, sneaker-clad and with receding hair and concerned glances, tugged heartstrings. Others on the ground noted that the film is revelatory in how it shows, perhaps for the first time, Landau’s true influence on Springsteen (now a billionaire) and his place in history.
Consider the hole in the floor repaired, but remember the friends we made along the way.
