Did Brad Pitt almost play Bruce Springsteen in a biopic?
With the long-awaited Bruce Springsteen biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, set for release later this month, moviegoers will get their chance to put lead actor Jeremy Allen White through the same ringer Timothée Chalamet survived last year.
Will White’s steely blue-eyed gaze – mastered for the past few years as the annoyingly tortured master chef of The Bear – carry over with brown-tinted contact lenses and an early 1980s mullet?
One thing’s for sure. When White’s casting was announced, it instantly made a lot more sense, in the mind’s eye, than Chalamet donning the Dylan fro ever did. And while Bob Dylan was an advisor on A Complete Unknown, Springsteen apparently played a much more hands-on role in the production of this film, serving as ‘The Boss’ in a very real sense and making sure details about Jeremy Allen White’s performance were as true-to-life as one could reasonably ask.
While we wait to pass judgment on Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, though, it’s worth remembering part of the journey that got us here.
Yes, the world isn’t necessarily clamouring for another rock star biopic at the moment, especially when the box office returns have been steadily diminishing. For every Rocketman or Bohemian Rhapsody, there are a lot of films that seem to come and go like tribute bands passing through town on tour: One Love (Bob Marley), Respect (Aretha Franklin), Back to Black (Amy Winehouse), etc. Some say these films fell short because they were cynical attempts by a dead star’s estate to solidify an image and a specific narrative. Others say the scripts were bad and the performances were more like SNL impressions. But what if it just came down to a lack of star power?
The Bruce Springsteen biopic idea has been kicking around long before the current wave of boring biographical movies and was probably whispered about dating as far back as the early 2000s, when Ray and Walk the Line pulled in some Oscars. The rumour mill really got going in 2014, though, when the biggest A-lister of the A-listers, Brad Pitt, was briefly linked to a potential Springsteen movie with the supposed working title The Boss.
Radar Online first reported the story, citing unnamed sources, and it soon spread around Hollywood and all the way to Springsteen’s hometown newspaper, the Asbury Park Press, which printed a quote from the same unnamed source.
“Bruce has had offers before and has always turned them down,” the mysterious shit-stirrer said, “But Brad’s interest has caught his attention.”
The same report noted that Pitt had great respect for Springsteen and that the two had worked together during the ‘Hope for Haiti Now’ charity telethon in 2010.
Despite the suggestion that Brad and Bruce had literally met and discussed the movie idea, the story was never officially substantiated, and it all amounted to nothing in the end. Brad Pitt would not be donning the iconic jeans and bandana of ‘The Boss’. Not in 2014 or 2015. Not ever.
It’s not exactly a ‘what if’ scenario along the lines of Tom Selleck literally passing on Indiana Jones (look it up), but it is interesting to ponder how a Pitt version of a Springsteen film would have looked, especially in the mid-2010s, when Pitt was already in his early 50s and sort of in a weird career pivot point between Moneyball and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The roles are not particularly legendary during this span, and jumping into a high-profile biopic of an icon would certainly have been a massive, interesting swing for a star of Pitt’s calibre.
Realistically, though, even setting the age problem aside, missing out on seeing Brad Pitt play Bruce Springsteen feels like a mild crisis averted. There are major physicality obstacles here; would Pitt be able to pull off shy, aloof, New Jersey genius vibes the way it feels like Jeremy Allen White very possibly could? Also, small point, but can Brad Pitt sing? We should know this, shouldn’t we? He starred as a wannabe rocker in a film called Johnny Suede roughly 35 years ago and allegedly made a pitch to portray the late Jeff Buckley in 2000. But presuming he chose to take on the Springsteen vocal assignment as White has, how much of an abomination might this have been?
Or, counterpoint, would it have been the greatest transformation of Pitt’s career and an Oscar campaign for the ages? Not to mention a huge boost to The Boss’ record sales; so much so that his anti-Trump concerts actually would have worked successfully in the years ahead, completely changing the tenor of American politics and the fate of the wider world?
I suppose we’ll never know. But hopefully Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, the movie we wound up with, doesn’t suck.
