Bruce Springsteen appeared at the New York Film Festival premiere of his biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Sunday, where he surprised the audience with a performance of “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
Springsteen shared video of the performance on Instagram, and before the performance he thanked the audience for coming out, and then gave shout outs to the film’s cast and director, Scott Cooper.
He noted that Jeremy Allen White, who plays him on the big screen, put “his whole heart and soul in the part,” adding, he did a wonderful job “playing a much better-looking version of me.” He also thanked Jeremy Strong, who plays his manager Jon Landau, for his “creativity and his inspiration,” noting, “he played a much, much better looking Jon Landau.”
He called out Stephen Graham “for being the living embodiment of my late father,” and Gabby Hoffman for playing his mom, noting, “They’re all gone now, so it’s nice to have this piece of film.”
Springsteen also shared some “last thoughts” before the song.
“These days we have daily events reminding us of the fact that we’re living through these particularly dangerous times,” Springsteen shared. “I spent my life on the road, I’ve been moving around the world as kind of a musical ambassador for America, trying to measure the distance between American reality, where we’ve often fallen short of our ideals of the American dream.”
He added, “Seeing that America, as battered as she feels right now, but for a lot of folks out there, she continues to be a land of hope and dreams, not of fear or divisiveness or government censorship or hatred…That America is worth fighting for.”
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere hits theaters and IMAX on Oct. 24. Tickets for IMAX screenings are on sale now.
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