this week in film and television

PERFORMA 19

Sarah Friedland’s CROWDS will attract crowds at La MaMa as part of Performa Biennial

Multiple locations
November 1-24, free – $50
performa19.org/tickets

The eighth annual Performa Biennial kicks off today, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Staatliches Bauhaus, the German art school founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius that set in motion a major movement in art, architecture, and design around the world. There will be dozens of performances across disciplines, including film, dance, theater, music, installation, and unique hybrids, often incorporating architectural and sculptural elements, as well as conversations and panel discussions through November 24. The price for ticketed events range from $10 to $50, with most around $15-$25; among the highlights are artist Nairy Baghramian, dancer-choreographer Maria Hassabi, late modernist designer Janette Laverrière, and architect Carlo Mollino’s Entre Deux Actes (Ménage à Quatre), taking place on two floors of a Fifth Avenue town house; Lap-See Lam’s Phantom Banquet, a multimedia performance piece about ghosts and Chinese restaurants in Sweden; Pat’s You’re at Home, a one-night-only collaboration between Jacolby Satterwhite and Nick Weiss; Yvonne Rainer’s restaging of her seminal 1965 work Parts of Some Sextets, with new choreography and a recording of the original score; Huang Po-Chin’s Heaven on Fourth, which tells the story of a Chinese immigrant sex worker who committed suicide in Flushing in 2017; and the grand finale, Radio Voices, led by David J of Bauhaus and Love & Rockets with special guests Curse Mackey, Rona Rougeheart, Vangeline, and Heather Paauwe. But there are also dozens of free shows in cool locations, from museums and art galleries to outside on the street, most of which do not require advance RSVP; the full list is below.

Friday, November 1, 4:00 – 8:00
Saturday November 2, 4:00 – 8:00
Sunday, November 3, 2:00 – 6:00
Zakaria Almoutlak and Andros Zins-Browne: Atlas Unlimited: Acts VII–X, with the voices of Ganavya Doraiswamy and Aliana de la Guardia, 80 Washington Square East

Friday, November 1
through
Sunday, November 24
Ylva Snöfrid: Nostalgia — Acts of Vanitas, daily painting performance ritual, fifth-floor loft at 147 Spring St.

Saturday, November 2
Shu Lea Cheang, Matthew Fuller: SLEEP1237, Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., 5:50 pm – 6:25 am

Gaetano Pesce: WORKINGALLERY, Salon 94 Design, 3 East Eighty-Ninth St., 2:00 – 4:00

Saturday, November 2
through
Sunday, November 24
Yu Cheng-Ta: “Fameme,” live and filmed performances about reality television, Wallplay, 321 Canal St.

Tuesday, November 5
Tara Subkoff: Deepfake, the Hole, 312 Bowery, 7:00

November 6, 13, 16, 20
Luca Veggetti with Moe Yoshida: From Weimar to Taipei (Roland Gebhardt-Mercedes Searer’s Selfdom, Luca Veggetti’s Fourth Character, Chin Chih Yang’s Black Hole, Rolando Peña’s Less Is More), WhiteBox Harlem, 213 East 121st St., 7:00

Thursday, November 7
Yahon Chang: Untitled, Performa Hub: Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster St., 5:00

Sarah Friedland: CROWDS, three-channel video installation of durational dance, La MaMa La Galleria, 47 Great Jones St., 6:00

Saturday, November 9
Pia Camil and Mobile Print Power: Screen Printing Workshop, Queens Museum, 1:00

Niels Bolbrinker and Thomas Tielsch: Bauhaus Spirit: 100 Years of Bauhaus, Goethe-Institut New York, 30 Irving Pl., 3:00

Duke Riley: Non-Essential Consultants, Inc., Red Hook Labs, 133 Imlay St., 6:00

LAP-SEE LAM, PHANTOM BANQUET, 2019. PRODUCTION STILL. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALERIE NORDENHAKE, STOCKHOLM.

Lap-See Lam’s Phantom Banquet takes place at Deitch Projects (photo courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm)

Sunday, November 10
Glendalys Medina: No Microphone, Participant Inc., 253 East Houston St. #1, 4:00

Sunday, November 10, 17, 24
Glendalys Medina: The Shank Live, Participant Inc., 253 East Houston St. #1, 8:00 am

Monday, November 11
Nkisi: Listening Session, Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., 6:00

Monday, November 11
through
Sunday, November 17
Dimitri Chamblas, Sigrid Pawelke: UNLIMITED BODIES, Performa Hub: Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster St., 12:00 and/or 1:00

Tuesday, November 12
Huang Po-Chih, Su Hui-Yu, Yu Cheng-Ta: “The Afterlife of Live Performance” Panel Discussion, Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., 6:00

Adam Weinert: Monuments: Echoes in the Dance Archive, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Ave., 6:00

Tuesday, November 12, 19
Glendalys Medina: Dear Me, Participant Inc., 253 East Houston St. #1, advance RSVP required, 4:00 – 9:00

Wednesday, November 13
Paul Maheke, Ligia Lewis, Nkisi: Levant, Goethe-Institut Cultural Residencies, Ludlow 38, 38 Ludlow St., 6:00

Thursday, November 14
The New Blockheads: The Brotherhood of the New Blockheads, the Mishkin Gallery, 135 East Twenty-Second St., 6:00

Friday, November 15
Bauhaus at the Margins: Gender, Queer, and Sexual Politics, Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., 6:00

Heman Chong, Fyerool Darma, Ho Rui An, and Erika Tan: As the West Slept, Silver Art Projects, 4 World Trade Center, twenty-eighth floor, 7:00

Glendalys Medina: Dear Me, Participant Inc.,

Glendalys Medina’s Dear Me plays to one visitor at a time (photo courtesy the artist)

Saturday, November 16
“A School for Creating Humans”: Bauhaus Education and Aesthetics Revisited, Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., 1:00

Sunday, November 17
Bodybuilding: Architecture and Performance Book Launch, including a lecture-performance by New Affiliates (Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb), Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., 4:00

Lap-See Lam in conversation with Charlene K. Lau, Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., free with advance RSVP, 4:00

Tuesday, November 19, 6:00
through
Sunday, November 24, 8:00
Éva Mag: Dead Matter Moves, production of clay bodies, the Gym at Judson Memorial Church, 243 Thompson St., 1:00 – between 5:00 & 8:00

Tuesday, November 19, 6:00
Friday, November 22, 8:00
Torkwase Dyson: I Can Drink the Distance: Plantationocene in 2 Acts, multimedia performative installation, Pace Gallery, 540 West Twenty-Fifth St.

Thursday, November 21
Machine Dazzle, Narcissister and Rammellzee: Otherworldly: Performance, Costume and Difference, Aronson Gallery, Sheila Johnson Design Center at Parsons School of Design, 66 Fifth Ave., 6:00

Sarah Friedland: CROWDS — Conversation with Tess Takahashi, La MaMa La Galleria, 47 Great Jones St., 7:00

Thursday, November 21, 6:00
Saturday, November 23, 1:00 & 3:00
Sunday, November 24, 1:00 & 3:00
Tarik Kiswanson: AS DEEP AS I COULD REMEMBER, AS FAR AS I COULD SEE, featuring eleven-year-old children reading his writings, Alexander Hamilton US Custom House, 1 Bowling Green, free with advance tickets

Friday, November 22
Tarik Kiswanson: AS DEEP AS I COULD REMEMBER, AS FAR AS I COULD SEE: In Conversation with Performa Curator Charles Aubin, Performa Hub, 47 Wooster St., 5:00

Saturday, November 23
Cecilia Bengolea, Michèle Lamy: Untitled Performa Commission, featuring boxers and ballet, dancehall, vogue, and contemporary dancers, Performa Hub: Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster St., 4:00

Sunday, November 24, 8:00
Éva Mag: Dead Matter Moves — In Conversation with Camilla Larsson and Yuvinka Medina, the Gym at Judson Memorial Church, 243 Thompson St., 3:00

BAM NEXT WAVE: HAMNET / HE DID WHAT?

Dead Centre makes its BAM debut with Hamnet (photo by Ed Lefkowicz)

HAMNET
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
Through November 3, $25
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/hamnet
www.deadcentre.org

What is a son without a father? What is a father without a son? Those questions are at the heart of Dead Centre’s Hamnet, making its New York premiere this week at BAM. The sixty-minute multimedia show is part of new BAM artistic director David Binder’s inaugural Next Wave Festival consisting exclusively of BAM debuts, and this one is highlighted by a dynamite performance by Aran Murphy as the title character, in his professional acting debut. Murphy is a contemporary Hamnet, William Shakespeare’s only son, who died tragically in 1596 at the age of eleven. The boy is dressed in modern clothes, carries around a backpack, and regularly asks Google for information; it’s as if he’s been searching for his father, who abandoned him and his twin sister, Judith, and their mother, Anne Hathaway, in order to write his plays, for more than four hundred years. “To be, or not to be,” he declares several times, hoping that maybe his dad’s writings will help him find him.

Written and directed by Dead Centre founders Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd, Hamnet features a large screen at the back of the stage, where the audience is live-streamed through most of the show. Jose Miguel Jimenez’s innovative video design and Liv O’Donoghue’s choreography form a kind of magic as Hamnet roams Andrew Clancy’s set, sometimes disappearing onscreen even though he is right in front of us, or vice versa, and growing even more complex and eerie when the ghost of his father (Moukarzel) appears. The narrative at times becomes murky and confusing, but the technical wizardry and Murphy’s astounding portrayal overshadow its shortcomings. “Who would fardels bear, / To grunt and sweat under a weary life, / But that the dread of something after death, / The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns, puzzles the will, / And makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of?” Hamlet asks. Hamnet is a hypnotic puzzle about death, grief, and personal identity, albeit one that is not easily unravele’d.

BAM presents free animated street opera on building facade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

HE DID WHAT?
Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Ave. at St. Felix St.
Through November 2, free, 7:00 – 10:00
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.dumbworld.co.uk

After seeing Hamnet, make your way around the corner to BAM’s main home, the Peter Jay Sharp Building, which houses the Howard Gilman Opera House, to catch the world premiere of Dumbworld and Irish National Opera’s He Did What? The ten-minute animated film, conceived and created by Brian Irvine and John McIlduff with video by Killan Waters and Conan McIvor, is projected onto the facade of the building at the corner of Lafayette Ave. and St. Felix St. The audience is given headsets through which they hear the hysterical story of three alter kockers with walkers parading slowly down the street, a man followed by two women. The two women are gossiping about him, as his wife recently caught him in bed with another woman and is deciding what to do about it. The characters are sung by Doreen Curran, Sylvia O’Brien, and Dan Reardon, with music composed by Irvine and played by the RTE Concert Orchestra, conducted by Fergus Shiel. The piece was written and directed by McIlduff; the riotous words also appear on the wall in goofy, graffiti-like type, complementing KAWS’s BAM mural and David Byrne’s bike rack across the street. While Hamnet will have you wondering, “How did they do that?,” the free presentation of He Did What?, running 7:00 to 10:00 nightly through November 2, will have you saying again and again, “He did what?” as well as “Oh no she didn’t. Oh yes she did.”

FIRST SATURDAYS: CROSSING ASIAN AMERICA

Xu Bing, Square Word Calligraphy: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Walt Whitman, ink on paper, 2018 (photo courtesy of the artist)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 2, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum parties with Asian pride in the November edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra (playing works by Mastora Goya and Chen Yihan, featuring such instruments as the koto, erhu, guzheng, and pipa), Hong Kong-born, Brooklyn raised singer-songwriter Reonda, the Metropolitan Opera (previewing Philip Glass’s Akhnaten with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Gandini Juggling, and the Philip Glass Institute at the New School’s College of Performing Arts), Collective BUBBLE_T (with DJ sets by Tito Vida and Stevie Huynh, Clara Lu performing “The Butterfly Lovers” on guzheng, and Walang Hiya NYC), Miho Hatori’s New Optimism, and comics Fumi Abe, Karen Chee, Saurin Choksi, Aidan Park, and Irene Tu; a screening of Mountains That Take Wing (C. A. Griffith & H. L. T. Quan, 2009), followed by a talk with community organizer Akemi Kochiyama, granddaughter of one of the film’s subjects; poetry readings by Diannely Antigua, Mark Doty, and Jessica Greenbaum, hosted by Jason Koo, celebrating Walt Whitman, the inspiration behind the exhibition “One: Xu Bing”; teen pop-up talks in the Arts of Japan galleries; a curator tour of the Arts of China galleries and “One: Xu Bing” with Susan L. Beningson; a hands-on art workshop in which participants can make works on paper with brushpens inspired by the calligraphy in Arts of Asia galleries; and a community talk with the W.O.W. Project about the future of Chinatown. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Garry Winogrand: Color,” “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall,” “JR: Chronicles,” “Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion,” “Infinite Blue,” and more.

NYC HORROR: GOD TOLD ME TO

Tony Lo Bianco stars as a New York City cop searching for a cultlike leader in God Told Me To

GOD TOLD ME TO (Larry Cohen, 1976)
BAMfilm, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, November 2, 4:15
Series runs October 31 – November 5
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Watching the first half hour of Larry Cohen’s 1976 thriller, God Told Me To, is extremely difficult, given the continuing spate of mass shootings in the United States and the battle over gun control. The film opens with a man (Sammy Williams) on top of a water tower in New York City, picking off random people down below with a .22 caliber rifle. Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) risks his life to go face-to-face with the soft-spoken killer, who says he did it because “God told me to.” A religious Catholic suffering a crisis of faith, Nicholas gets the same response from a series of other mass murderers, including a cop played by Andy Kaufman, in his big screen debut, who lets loose during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. (The next scene takes place at the Feast of San Gennaro, which is held every September in Little Italy, but it’s clear that six months have not elapsed, so we’ll give Cohen, a native of Washington Heights, poetic license in this case.) As Lo Bianco gets deeper and deeper into the mystery that involves an odd, cultlike figure named Bernard Phillips (Richard Lynch), he also has to deal with his estranged wife, Martha (Sandy Dennis), and his younger girlfriend, Casey Forster (Deborah Raffin). As he gets closer to the truth, he is forced to look deep into his soul amid all the madness. God Told Me To is shot by cinematographer Paul Glickman guerrilla style primarily without city permits and using a handheld camera, keeping the viewer off balance; the choppy editing by Michael D. Corey, Arthur Mandelberg, and William J. Waters doesn’t help smooth things out. The production values are quintessential low-budget mid-’70s, eliciting screams not of horror but of campy enjoyment among the middle-aged, who grew up watching these offbeat films at offbeat times in wood-paneled basements. Inspired by the Bible and one of the very first “aliens visited Earth!” books, Erich von Däniken’s bestselling Chariots of the Gods, Cohen, a producer, director, and writer who made such other low-budget faves as Black Caesar, It’s Alive, Q, The Stuff, and The Masters of Horror episode Pick Me Up, creates some intense scenes, including a hellish visit to a burning underground lair, as the twisting plot enters sci-fi territory involving a very special vagina.

god told me to

One of the undersung actors of the 1970s, Lo Bianco, who starred in such films as The Honeymoon Killers, The French Connection, The Seven-Ups, and Bloodbrothers and played Mayor Fiorella La Guardia in his traveling one-man show The Little Flower, gives one of his most nuanced performances in God Told Me To, whether desperately trying to stop killers or learning some hard facts from an elderly woman in a nursing home, portrayed by Oscar winner Sylvia Sidney. (The film also features old-time Broadway and Hollywood actor Sam Levene as publisher Everett Lukas.) Oscar-winning composer Bernard Herrmann was supposed to write the score but sadly passed away before he could begin, so Frank Cordell took over; the film is dedicated to Herrmann, who had written the score for It’s Alive. Fans of 1960s and 1970s television series will have a field day recognizing familiar faces in small roles, character actors who appeared in multitudes of comedies and dramas; among the names you’ll be Googling to see what else they’ve been in are Mason Adams, Richard Lynch, Harry Bellaver, and John Heffernan. God Told Me To, which was also released as Demon, is a gritty, dark film that resonates in a new way today, especially since all of the killers are white American males with apparent links to a supreme being. The film is screening November 2 as part of the BAM series “NYC Horror,” which runs October 31 to November 5 and includes such other scary New York City-set faves as Michael Almereyda’s Nadja, Michael Winner’s The Sentinel, Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim, and Larry Fessenden’s Habit.

SHIRLEY CLARKE 100: THE CONNECTION

The Connection is part of Shirley Clarke centennial celebration at Film Forum

THE CONNECTION (Shirley Clarke, 1962)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, October 29, 12:30; Monday, November 4, 8:30; Tuesday, November 5, 2:30
Series continues through November 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.milestonefilms.com

“Now look, you cats may know more about junk, see,” square film director Jim Dunn (William Redfield) says midway through The Connection, “but let me swing with this movie, huh?” Adapted by Jack Gelber from his play and directed and edited by Shirley Clarke, The Connection — screening October 29 and November 4-5 in the Film Forum series “Shirley Clarke 100,” celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the New York City native’s birth — is a gritty tale of drug addicts awaiting their fix that was banned for obscenity after only two matinee screenings back in October 1962. In 2012 it was rereleased in a sharp new fiftieth-anniversary print, beautifully restored by Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. In a New York City loft, eight men are waiting for their man: Leach (Warren Finnerty), the ringleader who has an oozing scab on his neck; Solly (Jerome Raphael), an intelligent philosopher who speaks poetically about the state of the world; Ernie (Garry Goodrow), a sad-sack complainer who has pawned his horn but still clutches tight to the mouthpiece as if it were a pacifier; Sam (Jim Anderson), a happy dude who tells rambling stories while spinning a hula hoop; and a jazz quartet consisting of real-life musicians Freddie Redd on piano, Jackie McLean on sax, Larry Richie on drums, and Michael Mattos on bass. Dunn and his cameraman, J. J. Burden (Roscoe Lee Browne), are in the apartment filming the men as Dunn tries to up the drama to make it more cinematic as well as more genuine. “Don’t be afraid, man,” Leach tells him. “It’s just your movie. It’s not real.”

When Cowboy (Carl Lee) ultimately shows with the stuff, Bible-thumping Sister Salvation (Barbara Winchester) at his side, things take a decidedly more drastic turn. Mixing elements of the French New Wave with a John Cassavetes sensibility and cinema verité style, Clarke made an underground indie classic that moves to the beat of an addict’s craving and eventual fix. Shot in a luridly arresting black-and-white by Arthur Ornitz, The Connection is like one long bebop jazz song, giving plenty of time for each player to take his solo, with standout performances by McLean musically and Raphael verbally. The film-within-a-film narrative allows Clarke to experiment with the mechanics of cinema and challenge the audience; when Dunn talks directly into the camera, he is speaking to Burden, yet he is also breaking the fourth wall, addressing the viewer. Cutting between Burden’s steady camera and Dunn’s handheld one, Clarke adds dizzying swirls that rush past like a speeding subway train. A New York City native, Clarke made such other films as The Cool World and Portrait of Jason and won an Academy Award for her 1963 documentary Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World. This new print of The Connection is part of Milestone Films’ Shirley Clarke Project, which has preserved and restored a quartet of her best work. “Shirley Clarke 100” continues through November 5 with screenings of The Cool World and Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World, shown with the shorts In Paris Parks and Christopher and Me.

I LIKE WHAT I KNOW: AN EVENING OF ART, HORROR, AND FOOD CELEBRATING VINCENT PRICE

Vincent Price will be celebrated in film, food, and talk at Nitehawk Cinema on October 29

FILM FEAST
Nitehawk Cinema
188 Prospect Park West
Tuesday, October 29, $150, 7:00
nitehawkcinema.com

In addition to being a horror legend, St. Louis-born actor Vincent Price was an art collector and a chef, writing several books with his wife, Mary, including the indispensable A Treasury of Great Recipes, and the Vincent Price Art Museum houses his collection at East Los Angeles College. On October 29, just in time for Halloween, the Prospect Park Nitehawk Cinema will pay tribute to the wide-ranging legacy of the inimitable Price, who passed away in 1993 at the age of eighty-two, with the special one-time-only presentation “I Like What I Know: An Evening of Art, Horror, and Food Celebrating Vincent Price.” Part of Nitehawk’s Film Feast series, the festivities feature short videos of Price’s dedication to art; a conversation with Price’s daughter, author and inspirational speaker Victoria Price, moderated by Nitehawk programmer, curator, and writer Caryn Coleman; a screening of Roger Corman’s 1960 Edgar Allan Poe classic The Fall of the House of Usher, in which Price stars as Roderick Usher; Poe giveaways; and a four-course meal consisting of dishes inspired by the film and Price’s love of cooking, accompanied by wine and cocktails: “The Great Hamlet’s Dagger” (poached shrimp canape served on black bread with Aquavit cream and American paddlefish caviar, chives), “Duck Flambe Belle Terrasse” (roasted duck breast, potato rosti, fine herbs salad, and flambeed cognac sauce), “Kraft Suppe” (braised short rib served with marrow bone, celery and leek gremolata, roasted carrots, spaetzle, and rich beef broth), and tart aux framboise (raspberry tart with Scotch-scented pastry cream).

WESTERN STARS

Bruce Springsteen takes a deep look into his life in Western Stars (photo courtesy Warner Bros.)

WESTERN STARS (Thom Zimny & Bruce Springsteen, 2019)
Opens Friday, October 25
brucespringsteen.net
www.warnerbros.com

Bruce Springsteen continues his very public deep dive into his psyche and sense of self with the documentary Western Stars, which opens in theaters on October 25. The movie is part of an unofficial trilogy that began with the 2016 memoir Born to Run and was followed by Springsteen on Broadway. Bruce’s (mostly) one-man show ran at the Walter Kerr Theatre for more than a year, concluding in mid-December 2018, and it earned him a special Tony; Western Stars premiered in early October at the Toronto International Film Festival. In June, Springsteen released his nineteenth studio album, Western Stars, a gorgeous collection of swirling California pop songs, paying tribute to the likes of Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach, and Glen Campbell, about characters from the West facing loneliness as they grow older. Bruce opted not to tour behind the album and instead decided to make a film highlighting the music while adding thoughtful, poignant narration, ruminating on character, faith, change, moving forward, and growing wiser with age.

Bruce headed into his hundred-year-old barn on his Colts Neck farm in New Jersey and performed the album live for a small, intimate group of friends and relatives, who sit at small tables as if at a nightclub, politely clapping after some songs. Bruce is joined by his wife, Patti Scialfa, on acoustic guitar and vocals; backup singers including E Street Band violinist Soozie Tyrell; a horn section with regular Bruce sideman Curt Ramm; E Streeter Charlie Giordano on piano and accordion; and a thirty-piece string orchestra. The songs are not mere re-creations from the album but are given more life and breadth here, with dazzling, lush versions of “Hitch Hikin’,” “The Wayfarer,” “Tucson Train,” “Chasin’ Wild Horses,” “Hello Sunshine,” and others; he turns “Stones” and “Moonlight Motel” into powerful duets with Scialfa, who does not sing on the record. (He has called the film a “love letter” to Scialfa.) He also adds a bonus encore that is tremendous fun.

Bruce and Patti pose for the camera on their honeymoon in Western Stars (photo courtesy Warner Bros.)

In between each song, Bruce talks either on camera or in voice-over about the upcoming tune and/or his state of mind as cinematographer Joe DeSalvo films him around the farm and follows him as he visits with his horses and goes to Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Codirected by Springsteen and his longtime collaborator and videographer, Thom Zimny, the film features an inordinate amount of shots of Bruce driving around in cars, donning cowboy hats, examining himself in mirrors, looking out in the distance contemplatively, driving around some more, and putting on more cowboy hats amid close-up after close-up of his expressive face. “The older you get, the heavier that baggage becomes that you haven’t sorted through, so you run. I’ve done a lot of that kind of running,” he admits, waxing philosophic in his gravelly, distinctive voice. “Change — how do you change yourself?” he asks. “It’s easy to lose yourself or never find yourself.” he explains. Zimny intercuts vintage home movies from the Springsteen family archive, including Bruce as a child and, later, in a sweetly romantic moment with Patti at a picnic on their honeymoon, all with new instrumental music playing underneath.

Just as with his autobiography and Broadway show, Springsteen brings up personal flaws and his intense difficulty finding true and complete happiness, powerful stuff coming from an ultra-successful artist in a happy marriage with three apparently good kids. “We all have our broken pieces. . . . In this life, nobody gets away unhurt,” he opines. His vision of the mythological American male in the West is not John Wayne’s, and it’s not Sam Shepard’s or the Beach Boys’ either; in fact, in the title track, the narrator is a minor actor whose claim to fame is that he was shot by the macho Wayne at the end of a movie (“That one scene bought me a thousand drinks / Set me up and I’ll tell it for you, friend”). In the bright-sounding “Hello Sunshine,” Springsteen is not so much welcoming the sun but practically begging it to not go away. “Had enough of heartbreak and pain / Had a little sweet spot for the rain / For the rain and skies of gray / Hello sunshine, won’t you stay,” he sings, with more than a touch of desperation. As he noted on his 1988 Tunnel of Love Express tour, “It’s a dark ride,” but as always with Bruce, it’s another one worth taking.