Faye, Bruce Springsteen’s girlfriend in ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’ is not a real person

The stress and anxieties of Bruce Springsteen’s early career are laid bare in the new biopic, “Deliver Me from Nowhere,” which often manifests itself on screen in his inconsistent treatment of his girlfriend Faye Romano.

Australian actor Odessa Young stars alongside Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen’s love interest Faye, a young single mother from Springsteen’s hometown and fan of the budding rock star. In the film, Faye’s brother, a former classmate of Springsteen, introduces them after a show at the Stone Pony, a famous New Jersey rock club where Springsteen regularly came for jam sessions in the ’70s and early ’80s.

In real life, The Boss probably met a lot of girls at the Stone Pony – in fact, that’s where Springsteen met his future wifePatti Scialfa — but never, as far as we know, a girl named Faye Romano.

Young described her character in the film as an amalgam of various women Springsteen dated in his 20s and early 30s. Although Faye is not a real personshe represents a pattern of problematic dating born from Springsteen’s fear of commitment at the time.

“It was about capturing the spirit of Bruce; it was never about imitation,” said the writer and director. Scott Cooper told Esquireadding that Springsteen’s involvement in the film was “extensive”.

“I think Bruce was happy to hear me say that there was never any intention of telling the whole Bruce Springsteen story,” Cooper said. “It was about honoring that period: the calm, the research, the emotional honesty.”

Springsteen said he ‘systematically and grossly failed with perfectly good women’

The main plot of “Deliver Me from Nowhere” begins in 1981 with a re-enactment of Springsteen’s concert at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum.

Springsteen’s fame had risen sharply after three commercial breakthroughs – 1975’s “Born to Run,” 1978’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and 1980’s “The River” – and their associated tours. His concerts with the E Street Band have received critical acclaim; he was about to go from local hero to superstar, and his label was eager for more radio hits.

However, as Springsteen wrote in his 2016 autobiography, also titled “Born to Run,” he found the post-tour downtime uncomfortably quiet and unsettling. He began focusing on his early childhood memories – particularly his strained relationship with his father – and channeled them into a series of dark acoustic tracks, which eventually became his seminal 1982 album “Nebraska.”

Springsteen also said that at this time he felt destined to lead a solitary life on the road, which made dating seem like a series of traps that had to be escaped.

“Family was a terrifying and compelling thought for me in 1980,” Springsteen wrote in his autobiography. “I had only my father’s experience and no intimate knowledge of men who were comfortable in family life. I did not trust myself to carry the burden, the responsibility for other lives, for this all-encompassing love.”

“My experience in relationships and love up to that point told me that I wasn’t cut out for it. I felt very uncomfortable, very quickly, with domestic life,” he continued. “Worse still, it revealed a deep-seated anger in me that I was ashamed of but also embraced.”

In his 2012 biography “Bruce,” Peter Ames Carlin recounts a series of failed dates and overlapping relationships during Springsteen’s rise to fame: He was dating ballerina Karen Darvin when “Born to Run” was mastered and finalized; photographer Lynn Goldsmith told Carlin that she considered herself “Bruce’s girlfriend” during the Darkness Tour in 1978; that same year, Springsteen began dating actress Joyce Hyser. Their relationship lasted several years, but unceremoniously collapsed at the end of the River Tour in 1981.

“Honestly, there was nothing more important than his career. That’s what it ultimately came down to,” Hyser told Carlin. “At that time, his whole thing was, ‘When I want to see you, you have to be there, and when I don’t, you have to leave.'”

Indeed, without naming names, Springsteen admitted almost the same thing in his autobiography.

“I had consistently and grossly failed with perfectly good women, over and over again,” he wrote.

“I rarely tried to distance myself from the women themselves,” he continued. “I had a lot of lovely girlfriends who I took care of and who really cared about me. That’s what they triggered, the emotional exposure, the implications of a life of family commitments and burdens.”

“Deliver Me from Nowhere” uses Faye as a foil to Springsteen’s hectic lifestyle

Of all of Springsteen’s documented girlfriends, the fictional Faye seems most similar to Joy Hannan, whom Carlin describes in his biography as “a blessed, trouble-free college graduate from Little Silver, New Jersey.”

Springsteen and Hannan met at The Stone Pony – just as Springsteen meets Faye in the film – in 1976. They dated for about two years, between his relationships with Darvin and Goldsmith.

“I was his best friend,” Hannan told Carlin. “We’d go to the beach, hang out at the Pony, I’d take him sailing. He and I had a great time.”

In “Deliver Me from Nowhere”, Springsteen takes Faye on a date to the Carousel House in Asbury. They also share scenes on the boardwalk and on the beach with Faye’s young daughter, who evokes a childlike lightness and wonder that contrasts with Springsteen’s brooding portrayal.

Faye and her daughter seem to represent the peaceful, fun home life that Springsteen rejects in pursuit of his art — or, perhaps, rejects it because he fears he doesn’t deserve it.

As the film progresses and Springsteen becomes more and more obsessed with his vision of “Nebraska”, his relationship with Faye takes a back seat. When she tries to confront him about his change in behavior, he pushes her away.

Finally, in the couple’s climactic scene, Springsteen tells Faye that he can’t love her better or more than he already loves her – but he knows that’s not what she deserves. Faye leaves in tears and Springsteen flees to California.

“At the end of each affair, I felt a sad relief from the suffocating claustrophobia that love had brought me,” Springsteen wrote in his autobiography. “And I would be free to be… Nothing… Again. I would switch partners, hit rewind, and start at the top, telling myself that this time it would be different. Then it would be high times and laughter until fate and that unbearable anxiety came knocking and it would be one more for the road. “

“I ‘loved’ as best I could, but I hurt some people I really cared about along the way,” he added. “I had no idea how to do anything else.”

“Deliver Me from Nowhere” is currently in theaters.