The 39th AFI Fest kicked off Wednesday night in Hollywood with a brief tribute to Diane Keaton, then an extended celebration of Bruce Springsteen, courtesy of the Scott Cooper drama “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” But that celebration culminated with a performance by the Boss himself, who called the evening “my last night in the movie business” after a series of festival appearances in Telluride, New York and finally Los Angeles.
With a pair of songs that had the TCL Chinese Theater audience on their feet going “Brooooce!” screams more common in arenas and stadiums than in movie theaters, the evening lived up to AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale’s opening comments, which included the promise: “There is no more epic way to kick off this five-day film festival.”
Gazzale began his remarks by showing a photo of AFI winner Keaton on the Chinese silver screen, calling her “our wonderfully warm and wacky friend Diane Keaton” before going on to promise that the more than 150 films that would be shown Wednesday through Sunday would “disrupt your algorithm.”
For his part, Cooper said the first movie he saw when his family moved to Los Angeles was Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” in Chinese. He introduced the cast of his film as well as Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau (played by Jeremy Strong in the film), but fought back tears when he introduced Springsteen by mentioning that the iconic rocker had moved Cooper’s family into his own Los Angeles home after theirs was destroyed in the Palisades fire.
Cooper composed himself long enough to tell the audience, “If you stay until the end of the credits, I promise you it will be worth it” — an allusion to the post-screening entertainment that prompted Springsteen to raise his index finger to his lips and motion for the crowd to be quiet.
The film was warmly received, even without the promise of a mini-concert, but it’s safe to say that almost no one had left when Cooper returned after the screening and said, “I teased that we might have something a little special. Well, ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen.”
To no one’s surprise and everyone’s delight, Springsteen walked away with a guitar and a harmonica. “I really love the people who made this movie,” he said. “They really honored my work, my family and my experience.”
After thanking the filmmakers, actors and studio, Springsteen, who accompanied the film to the Telluride, New York and now AFI festivals and occasionally performs after screenings, added: “This is my last night in the movie business. I’m sticking to music.”
He stuck to the music for the next few minutes, performing an emphatic acoustic version of “Atlantic City,” then launching into a version of his anthemic “Land of Hope and Dreams” that replaced the jubilant dynamism of the usual full-band version with a more measured, sadder version.
Even in the subdued performances, Springsteen managed to bring the drama, stepping away from the microphone to create a ghostly effect on the chorus of Atlantic City (“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact / But maybe everything that dies someday comes back”), then doing the same in the next song on the repeated line, “Meet me in the land of hopes and dreams.”
He dedicated this song to Scott Cooper and prefaced it by telling the crowd that the Chinese Theater reminded him of an old movie palace in Asbury Park, New Jersey. “(But) outside, all hell is breaking loose in the United States,” he said. “For 250 years around the world, despite all the faults we have had, the United States has remained a beacon of freedom and democracy, of hope and liberty. I have spent 50 years traveling as a sort of musical ambassador for America, and I have witnessed all the love and admiration that people around the world have for the America of our highest ideals.
“Despite the terrible damage America has recently suffered, this country and these ideals are worth fighting for.” As the crowd cheered, he added: “I send this as a prayer for America and for our unity. And no kings!”
