Thom Zimny took a fly-on-the-wall approach to his most recent collaboration with Bruce Springsteen, ‘Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band.’ It all started with a text inviting him to join Springsteen and the band for rehearsals.
Zimny’s professional relationship with Springsteen and producer Jon Landau goes back over two decades. If there’s a Springsteen concert film or documentary, Zimny is usually directing behind the camera. He previously won an Emmy for his directing work on the Netflix film version of ‘Springsteen on Broadway.’ Prior to premiering ‘Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’ at TIFF in 2024, the duo premiered ‘Western Stars’ in 2019. A year later, during Covid, Zimny directed a new documentary in collaboration with Springsteen’s 2020 album, ‘Letter to You.’
“I love this process because I would show up, no one was playing to camera, no one was seeing me,” Zimny says of making the documentary. “I had a very small crew, we’d mix in the audience, I’d get shots of the audience, I’d go backstage. The shows were all over Europe, so I was just traveling with everyone and just part of it day by day. It was one of the best filmmaking experiences I ever had. It really was a beautiful thing—the way the band had stayed with me and also spent a lot of time telling me stories.”
The period of 2022-2024 was a rather busy one for the filmmaker. He started 2023 by premiering a new documentary series about musician Willie Nelson. Sly premiered at TIFF in September 2023. In 2024, Zimny and co-director Frank Marshall released a documentary about The Beach Boys on Disney+. A few months later, Zimny returned to TIFF with ‘Road Diary.’
‘Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’ is the most in-depth Springsteen project ever as the film follows Springsteen and the band from the very beginning of rehearsals as they embark on a world tour. In addition to footage from the stage, the film includes backstage moments, archival video, and personal reflections. It allows for fans to take in a unique experience of the tour.
‘Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’ is currently streaming on Hulu.
Awards Focus: It’s so nice to talk with you again—it’s been forever since SXSW 2019!?
Thom Zimny: Yeah, it’s been a long time. The world’s changed. Yeah.
AF: Oh, yeah. ‘Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’ premiered last year in Toronto before arriving on Hulu. How did you balance the time between working on this, ‘Sly,’ and ‘The Beach Boys?‘
Zimny: The world right now—as a filmmaker, you have multiple projects, and all of it was overlapping at different times. My world with Bruce, when I’m traveling with him, it’s really tricky to try to do anything else.
‘Road Diary’ was this great thing of him including me right from the very beginning in rehearsals, and then taking me on the road, and that helped tell this story. But as a filmmaker, and I think it’s with everyone, we’re doing multiple things all at the same time. ‘Road Diary’ was one that took me away for a bit of time on the road, capturing this band nightly all over Europe and America.
AF: What was the genesis of the film?
Zimny: All these films with Bruce start in this space of being undefined. You get a text that says, Come to rehearsal, I’m bringing the guys back together, we’re going to go on the road soon. That’s it. That’s the beginning of the adventure.
For me, as a filmmaker, that’s the start of the question, what is this film going to be? Is this a film? Am I going to the rehearsals? I try to prepare, but I stay very open to the moment.
And with ‘Road Diary,’ what I saw was a story of Bruce—after Covid—wanting to be communicating with his audience, hungry to come back, hungry to come back in and perform songs that he had never performed before.
But also, on a bigger level, it’s the conversation. He wanted to have this conversation with the band again. There’s no solid game plan. There’s no pitching. I’m going there as a guest, filming, not talking to him for a few weeks, filming a lot.
I’m starting to go back to the edit room and piece together a story. I’ll call Jon Landau and I’ll say, oh, it’s very interesting, the rehearsals. I noticed this and I noticed that. I go back and I film Bruce more and then I piece together some things and the three of us sit together and I start to talk about, this is what I think is unfolding in this.
It’s okay, go on the road with us and see what else happens. It’s as casual and focused at the same time as what I’m describing. It’s the opposite of all my other film experiences where things are created with a deck, there’s a POV, there’s a discussion of where they will be. This is much more in the moment, finding out what the film is becoming.
AF: Having known Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau for over two decades, how has the professional shorthand improved?
Zimny: The beauty of working with Jon and Bruce is that not only is our shorthand increased to references to films that we’ve worked on or we admire, and also a film language that we’ve built together, they’ve given me this great thing of two really important things, which is time and trust.
The time to make these films without extreme pressure, to find them, and then also trust to be going into the archive, to be interviewing the band, to be in the mix and forgotten about. That’s the great gift that they give me.
Road Diary was a perfect example of that because I was a fly on the wall. They forgot about me and I just was able to capture so much and get to a place of telling the story.
AF: That segues into my next question. This was a pretty big Springsteen tour after he took a break for ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ and then the pandemic happened. What was it like to be a fly on the wall during this entire process?
Zimny: The biggest thing of being part of the crew was it was an amazing feeling to watch these guys walk in the room after six years of not being together, hug, embrace, and then Bruce put on this guitar and play again. It was both this joy and also this feeling of, are they going to do it again?
To be a fly on the wall with E Street Band in Europe, where you’re walking down a long hallway and all of a sudden, you start to hear this high-pitched crowd and it’s getting louder and louder and louder. It’s an amazing feeling as a filmmaker. I tried to carry it into the sound design, into the editing of the film.
The experience of standing on stage and feeling the drums through your whole body, the stage is bouncing with 200,000 people cheering and singing back every musical note, every chorus. In Europe especially, it’s an amazing feeling to witness the connection Bruce has and it’s something that I struggle putting into words because it’s like nothing you can imagine or imagine experiencing.
I always hoped that the film would convey an element of this passion. I love this process because I would show up, no one was playing to camera, no one was seeing me. I had a very small crew, we’d mix in the audience, I’d get shots of the audience, I’d go backstage. The shows were all over Europe, so I was just traveling with everyone and just part of it day by day. It was one of the best filmmaking experiences I ever had. It really was a beautiful thing—the way the band had stayed with me and also spent a lot of time telling me stories.
It would be an off day between shows and I would do interviews with them for two-three hours and they would just give me as much as they could. I was really lucky in that space of both being invisible but being known enough for the trust it takes to make this kind of movie.
AF: One of the things that I appreciated about the documentary was how it was more than just a concert film. Like you just said, you had a few hours to interview everyone in the band.
Zimny: It’s a great thing to be able to play with this sort of hybrid of genres. There’s a verité section that’s a verité doc. There’s a moment of pure sit-down interview. There’s voiceover and score. There’s real time footage of concert footage.
There’s also the dream world of filming the band and the fans in slow motion to accent the emotions that are going on. I’m playing with a lot of different tools.
I think the biggest thing is the score. The score by Ron Aniello was a real huge element in the emotional tone of capturing these voiceovers and driving the film. There’s a lot of different layers of music and sound design, too.
I mixed with the guys from Skywalker and they did an amazing job. You feel like you’re in the pit with the band. You feel like you’re there in the moment, but also it has the quiet intimacy of some of the doc footage.
It’s many, many different worlds I’m playing with and as a filmmaker, I always try to challenge myself that way. How can we go in and out of these types of genres of filmmaking without taking the viewer out? How do I keep them in the space emotionally?
AF: How long was the initial edit?
Zimny: All the edits are a blur. I gotta be honest with you. The edit, I don’t know, but it was like a year, I guess. But I don’t know. You lose a sense of time.
Films become these chapters in your life where—I know where I was during Johnny Cash, but I don’t know the year, and I don’t know the months that I spent making it.
‘Road Diary’ is no different. It’s a beautiful memory, but the reality of the details, they get a little fuzzy, because what happens is that you live the movie. You live the movie every single day, and then all of a sudden this very strange, magical thing happens that people see it.
You have these two different windows, making it and then it in the world. I think it’s about a year to answer your question, but it’s a bit of a blur.
AF: I was referring to run time!
Zimny: Oh, run time. Okay, run time. I’m very particular about run time. I feel like the film will talk to you. It’s really important to listen to the film.
This one definitely had that feeling of wrapping up after a certain period of ideas being developed. I think I’m really sensitive to duration, because that side of me as an editor.
I have also watched Bruce and Jon and made films about it be ruthless in the cutting, where this song didn’t fit on an album. They’re not going to put it in just because it’s a great song. Is it moving the story forward?
My run time has been highly influenced by those editorial statics and work ethics. I hope I answered the question now. (Laughs)
AF: Yeah. Speaking of fitting things in, what are the challenges in deciding what stays in and what goes out?
Zimny: I think the biggest challenge is that you sometimes have amazing moments of concert footage, and it’s the whole song and you love it and you live with it. And you realize, if I put the whole song in, I’m going to just stop the movie right here.
You have to look at the song and stop and go, what best gives the example of the ideas that have been leading up to this moment? If it’s a connection with the audience, it’s picking a moment of “Born in the USA” where you suddenly are hearing the crowd cheer.
And literally, it’s that kind of thing where the music and choices have to be not only the great moments, but they have to drive the story forward. That’s the key for me.
What’s really hard is that a lot of things are great, but you have to have that conversation with yourself to say, is it moving my story forward and is it great enough to keep in the story, to tell another idea, to develop the ideas?
It’s a ruthless conversation you have when you cut your own material. There’s an editor side of me talking to the director every day, and sometimes they get into fights. I’m walking around the city just talking to myself, going, what are you doing?
That’s the beauty of making films, and that’s the beauty of collaborating with Jon and Bruce, because we will discuss a song choice and do 32 versions of it, where we start it here and we end it there, we add 16 frames. All these things matter. It’s reflected in ‘Road Diary,’ but that hasn’t changed tremendously. There’s an attention to detail and to story.
AF: Yeah. I’m sure it’s never an easy decision deciding how much of a song to feature in the film.
Zimny: Absolutely. Absolutely. The music is so powerful so sometimes it takes a little bit of time for the film to talk to you. The film will tell you its duration and it will tell you when something needs to go. When you remove that sequence and it’s always a sequence that you really love and then you play it back, the film almost thanks you just it moves in a different way. I’ve watched this happen as an assistant editor. I’ve experienced it as an editor and now I experience it as a director.
AF: Although at the same time on this end, I would have been fully happy with the full recreation of the concert experience.
Zimny: I’m glad to hear that. You never know. Something like that could happen down the line. It’s a hard thing these days in the market to have live concerts. But Bruce and the band are quite unique that way that they carry a live concert on the small screen and on the big screen. It translates, so fingers crossed something down the road will be that way.
AF: I look forward to seeing whatever you do next.
Zimny: Thank you. Great to connect again.
AF: Likewise. Have a good day.
Zimny: Take care. You, too.