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The Ties That Bind: Filmmaker Thom Zimny On His HBO Documentary About Bruce Springsteen's The River

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“That song makes its bones in the last verse,” says Bruce Springsteen.

It’s midway through “The Ties That Bind,” Thom Zimny’s documentary about the making of Bruce's 1980 album, The River, which premieres tonight on HBO. The song in question is “Point Blank.” And Springsteen is about to give you a moment to remember.

Sitting in his kitchen, wearing a black t-shirt, playing a Gibson J-200 that’s more old than vintage, Bruce has been trying to plumb the depths of this song, one of the most underrated in his massive body of work. Then, instinctively, he realizes that he should be showing, not telling, and starts with that key verse.

“Once I dreamed we were together again, baby you and me,” he sings quietly over an even quieter acoustic accompaniment. “Back home in those old clubs, the way we used to be…”

In just a few lines, Springsteen lays out the often-conflicting ideas at the core of his work, both then and now.

The balance between the personal and the political. Between commitment and the danger that comes with it. Between living life and writing songs about it.

It’s classic yin and yang stuff, not the least of which finds the leader of arguably the world’s tightest rock and roll band gently strumming a song on a sixty-year old guitar while perched on a wooden chair.

“When I nailed that verse,” he says after a long pause to collect his thoughts, "I nailed the song."

It’s two minutes of pure magic.

It’s also of a piece with an intimate hour that’s consistently magical, thanks in large part to Zimny’s surprising and often-inspired choices.

The River is, in many ways, Springsteen’s busiest record. The two-record set juxtaposes dark acoustic numbers like “Point Blank,” the title track, and “Wreck on The Highway,” with rollicking frat rock classics like “Sherry Darlin’” “Cadillac Ranch” and the hit single, “Hungry Heart.”

Indeed, as the documentary reveals, an earlier version of the record was scrapped because as Springsteen put it, “It was good, but as I listened to it, it just didn’t feel big enough,” he explains. “It wasn’t quite funky enough.” (Outtakes from that record along with period concert footage will be part of Columbia Records' “The Ties That Bind” box set which will be released next month.)

To explain this complex, ambitious record in such a straightforward way, is counter-intuitive, to say the least. I talked with Zimny, who has worked closely with Springsteen for a decade and a half and directed the feature-length documentary, The Promise , about the making of “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” about the bold choices that make “The Ties That Bind” documentary feel so organic.

I was really surprised at how quiet and intimate the film was, which made for an interesting contrast with the record.

I’m really glad to hear you describe it that way. Working with [longtime Springsteen producer] Jon [Landau] and Bruce in the cutting room, they’d have a conversation that had a certain tone to it. I wanted this to have that same quietness. But also to have that passion come across.

Compared to the Born to Run and Darkness projects, The Ties That Bind is less about the process and more about the record itself.

I wanted it to be just Bruce’s voice. The other films told the story with engineers and other band members, but with The River I didn’t want it to be the “making of,” but to get into the themes of the writing.

I love how simple the set up is. We start out in the driveway in front of his open garage door, and then you move to his kitchen.

It gave me a freedom to keep that intimacy. And that spontaneity. Sometimes in the middle of the interview he’d break out into song, “Wreck on the Highway” or “Point Blank.” They were not scripted moments. They just happened. That’s a different quality than the other films.

They’re really amazing performances.

You have to be open to the moment. You might have another idea of how you want to have “Wreck on the Highway” covered in the structure of the film, but in the middle of the interview you get this fantastic country version that you never dreamed of. But it tells the story.

The camera angles are really tight, to the point where you don’t always see the guitar in his lap.

Those acoustic performances, I deliberately shot close up so that you could see the expression in his eyes.Early on in the cutting room, Jon Landau taught me that Bruce’s eyes tell the story in a lot of ways. I used that idea in this documentary because I didn’t cut away to a performance that much. I really let it linger.

I love that performance of “Two Hearts” at the beginning.

That opening quote sets up the theme of the film. I give Jon a lot of credit. Early on, I played him” Two Hearts” and he was really excited about that performance, and the way it worked so well with the interview.  Jon was a big help. He brought out certain ideas about the internal dialogue of the movie.

Just before the song Bruce is making a point about his reluctance to, as he puts it, “dive in with both feet.”

I deliberately opened the film so that it felt like we were in mid-conversation. It’s spontaneous. It kind of takes down that fourth wall. You set up a structure that’s makes you feel like you’re in the room with Bruce and we’re conversing. One of the ideas that came across is “The story is just the story. It’s not living.” He wanted to go beyond the characters, and at age 30, to experience these things for himself that he was starting to think about.

That really dovetails beautifully with that performance of “Two Hearts.” I’ve always thought of it as a kind of consummate E Street Band song.

I’ve seen Bruce play “Two Hearts” with the band, of course, but seeing Bruce play it after that opening quote gave it a whole new meaning. I heard the lyrics differently. And I heard the themes differently. The themes of fear of commitment. Or the idea of a bigger connection with the world.

As a filmmaker you want to creep in silently and show the viewer a side of the music they haven’t seen. “Two Hearts,” when it’s played on a guitar in the backyard, and it’s shot in a different way where we see his eyes and focus on the lyrics that way, it helps support the storytelling. If it gives a fan a new take on the song, then I’m happy.

It’s really something to get a fresh perspective on these songs we’ve known so well for so long.

The side of me that was a fan was excited because I was hearing things I didn’t know about. I felt very lucky that I was able to tell the story in a way that feels like the record.

He turns in a record that has “Hungry Heart” and “The River” and he’s still thinks it’s not there. He’s continues to work for a year, pushing himself, trying to gets to a place where he thinks he’s telling the full story. As a filmmaker, that’s an exciting story. It was a very intense journey making the film, but it was inspirational working with Jon and Bruce.

What I really like in that segment and throughout “Ties That Bind” is that sense that Bruce is really thinking, really figuring something out in the moment and not just working from talking points, so to speak.

From the other films, I learned to let Bruce have those moments where he’s finding his thoughts. He’s expanding on certain ideas. And you let that happen on camera. You don’t end up with tight sound bites, you actually see the process of him conversing and thinking about the making of the record.

The film ends on one of those moments, not on music or words, but actually on a pause.

As a filmmaker, I wanted to honor those moments of conversation with Bruce where you get to see him thinking about something and feeling things. And the way that you do that is just to stay on his face, and let the moment be. Don’t get in the way.

I wanted to have these small moments, because they’re storytelling points. The film ends on a note where Bruce returns to the theme that we started on. And then it has a pause.

For me it’s a beautiful moment, because it captures the feeling I was hoping to convey. You’re engaged with him and he’s engaged with the ideas of the film. If you were in a room with Bruce talking to him, that would be the feeling. A personal conversation. A quiet conversation.

There’s no need to cut away to archival footage after he says something. We’re lingering on his expression. Sometimes you just let something be.

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