Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Deliver Me From Nowhere"

Stations of the Boss: Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Joseph Douglas Springsteen.

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Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, filmmaker Scott Cooper’s adaptation of Warren Zanes’ eponymous nonfiction book about the making of Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska, is pretty conventional. But there’s an odd moment near the end that Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson and I did not discuss on our Pop Culture Happy Hour episode about the movie. While nothing in this barely-fictionalized account of a well-documented chapter in the life of one of the famous musicians in history could be called a spoiler, this is one of the few interpretive choices Cooper makes that’s all surprising or intriguing, so reader beware.

The scene is a coda to the film, following a title card that reads “Ten Months Later,” which I inferred meant that this post-concert scene was set on the opening night of the Born in the U.S.A. tour in June 1984. Springsteen’s father Doug (an underused Stephen Graham) is waiting in The Boss’s dressing room, and he invites his son to sit on his knee. Among his other gentle protests, Jeremy Allen White’s Springsteen says, I’m 32 years old, Pop. But Bruce Joseph Douglas Springsteen (b. Sept. 23, 1949) was 34 when that tour began. I’ve probably misstated my age at some point in my life, but I can’t imagine that film as rigidly researched as this one, derived from an excellent nonfiction book and with its subject a frequent presence on the set, could miss a detail like that. I don’t think it’s an error. As I was watching the movie I thought it might be a clue that this a dream sequence. I went back and checked Springsteen’s memoir Born to Run to see if he made any mention of an odd occurrence like this happening on the beginning of the biggest tour of his career. He did not.

If my voice sounds a little odd on the episode, that’d be because I accidentally recorded myself via my crappy computer microphone instead of my Shure SM7B, a professional mic used by, among others, Marc Maron, who has a small role in the film as studio engineer Chuck Plotkin, whose name will be familiar to you if you’ve pored over 30-plus years of Springsteen liner notes as obsessively as I have. It’s only fitting that I encountered a rare recording-quality problem on the episode where we discuss the making of Bruce’s perfectly imperfect 1982 outlier LP Nebraska.

Meanwhile, my City Paper review of the film — where I go on a bit without getting into the weeds about exactly how old the now-76-year-old Springsteen was when — is here.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Jaws"

Having done the dirty work of surveying all three Jaws sequels for the Paper of Record earlier this summer, it’s only right that three-fourths of the original PCHH cast had me back to talk about the titanic original. Which I’ve seen on the big screen twice this summer.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "The Phoenician Scheme"

A new Wes Anderson joint is a cause for celebration if you’re me. I join pal-for-life Glen Weldon and Code Switch host B.A. Parker to scheme, Phoenician-style. My jokes about how Anderson never phoens it in have all been cut.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "MIssion: Impossible — The Final Reckoning"

When you stare into The Abyss, etc., etc. (Paramount)

When you watch 2018’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout, you can see the shot wherein Tom Cruise breaks his ankle leaping across London rooftops.

When you listen to our new Pop Culture Happy Hour on Mission: Impossible — The Final Recknoning, you can hear the moment when I suffer an aneurysm. It’s when my friends Aisha Harris and Linda Holmes once again compare these films to the Fast & Furious movies. And they are like those, in the sense that the 1969 Rolling Stones and circa 2012 Aerosmith are both rock bands.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Dope Thief"

Wagner Moura and Brian Tyree-Henry in the Apple TV+ adaptation of Dennis Tafoya’s novel’s Dope Thief.

I was glad to join Aisha Harris and Cristina Escobar to talk about the new Apple TV+ adaptation of Dennis Tafoya’s crime novel Dope Thief.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "A Complete Unknown"

Timmy as Bobby. (Fox Searchilight)

I was less than enthused when I read Timothée Chalamet would be playing Bob Dylan in a biopic set during the most widely-covered period of Dylan’s career, circa 1961-5. But I’m glad to say I was wrong! Placed within the Dylan Cinematic Extended Universe, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown is not as original as Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There or the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis, nor is it as informative as No Direction Home, the 2005 Martin Scorsese documentary that covered this same Dylan era — and takes its title from the lyric that immediately precedes “a complete unknown” in “Like a Rolling Stone.” (I actually like the way this suggests Mangold’s dramatization of the same era as a companion piece to Marty’s fact-based account.)

I was glad to sing the praises of the new movie alongside Stephen Thompson and Bedatri D. Choudhury on today’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein I also sneak in my traditional plug for my latest Christmas mixtape.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Joker: Folie à Deux"

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga need to talk. (Warner Bros.)

I saw The Silence of the Lambs again at the Alamo Drafthouse two nights before I saw Joker: Folie à Deux, which reminded me of author Thomas Harris’s Silence sequel novel (and Ridley Scott’s film adaptation, after Silence director Jonathan Demme declined to return) Hannibal in the way it wants to punish those who loved 2019’s Joker.

I didn’t. But I liked Folie à Deux even less. And I’m still higher on it than my conversation-mates Joelle Monique and Glen Weldon!

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Rebel Ridge"

Don Johnson and Aaron Pierre can’t just get along. (Allyson Riggs / Netflix)

I had fun chopping up Jeremy Saulnier’s smart, human-scale revenge (and also cilvil asset forfeiture) thriller Rebel Ridge with old pal Glen Weldon and new pal Marc Rivers. I was never onboard with the Michael-B.-Jordan-as-Superman movement, but Aaron Pierre as Kal-El? I’m here for it.