Everyone has seen that Dancing in the Dark video where a pre-fame Courtney Cox got up on stage to dance with The Boss. We know what happened to Ms. Cox, but what about the rest of Bruce Springsteen’s obsessed fans? What’s the fascination? What are their lives like?
Director Baillie Walsh (Footsteps of a Fool) took an interesting approach to Springsteen and I: instead of getting a feel for the legion of Springsteen fans out there by turning his cameras on them, he asked them to turn the cameras on themselves, by shooting their own thoughts and ruminations on The Boss and his impact in their lives and submitting them online.
The resulting film is a crowd-sourced compilation of fan-made self-interviews: an absolutely fascinating collection of stories from those obsessed with the musician that should engage most audiences. Fans may find themselves at home with all the Bruce love; non-fans (myself included) will find this an engrossing insight into these people’s lives.
Getting back to the Dancing in the Dark video, Springsteen and I is at its most fascinating when telling the actual stories of the people who got up there on stage. In rough crowd-shot concert footage, we see a young girl up there dancing with The Boss; twenty years later, she tells us what that meant to her.
Similarly, we hear from an Elvis impersonator who recently took the stage to sing All Shook Up with Bruce. His performance was impressive for a guy who aggravated a leg injury on stage and didn’t know how to transition off the song (he led the E Street Band into Blue Suede Shoes before handing it over to Springsteen.)
Bruce, more than any other contemporary musician, seems to hold a bewitching power over his fans, most of whom have been following the singer-songwriter since the 1970s. Like most fanatics, his faithful legion is a foreign presence to most of us, but Springsteen and I presents an invaluable look into their psyche.
Be sure not to leave the cinema after the 80-minute documentary is finished; as an added bonus, 40 minutes of concert footage from Springsteen’s 2012 Hyde Park concert in London follow the film after the credits have rolled.
The concert footage here was a nice surprise: a definite uptick over the rough (mostly) crowd-sourced footage in the documentary, a total of six songs features Springsteen hits including Shackled and Drawn and We Are Alive, and culminates with a duet featuring Bruce and Paul McCartney teaming up on The Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There.
