Road Diary<\/em> is a Hulu original, so 99% of its viewers will watch it at home; I was lucky enough to see it in a large venue at the Toronto International Film Festival, and to enjoy its energetic, electrifying concert performance footage and ace sound (deep, layered, like you\u2019re in the crowd, rather than the too-clean soundboard recordings of too many concert movies). But it will also play nicely on the home screen, where viewers can still key on on the show\u2019s real moments of emotion, spontaneous and otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s basically a procedural, documenting the making and execution of the band\u2019s 2023 world tour\u2014their first in six years, thanks to that pesky global pandemic, which followed a scheduled (but briefer) hiatus. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot longer break than I planned,\u201d Springsteen says, as he walks us through the steps of getting the show up on its feet. First there are rehearsals, in a black box theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, where he accomplishes two key goals: first, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to shake the cobwebs off your band,\u201d and second, he has to put together a set list that will tell the story he wants to tell, one that \u201cwill let the audience know who I am, at this point in my work life.\u201d For the three-hour show, he has to select 28 songs, culled from a fifty-plus year career (including three albums they\u2019ve never played live), striking the right balance between the hits and the most meaningful of his new songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If that sounds dull to you, a rock music fan, Road Diary<\/em> might not be your brand of vodka. If, on the other hand, it sounds like the kind of micro-focused, logistics-laden documentary that you love, you\u2019re in for a treat. Zimny\u2019s primary interest here is in the various moving parts of putting \u201ca real rock show\u2019 together, which is not magic or showmanship but hard damn work; he wants to explore the emotional, intellectual, and physical labor of being a musician, within a group where some of these guys have been playing together for literally half a century.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not a Springsteen bio-doc; it is, wisely, about the band, their dynamics, and their process. Sure, we get some great old video footage and war stories from the road (\u201cIn the early days\u201d is an oft-used refrain). But he\u2019s more set on digging out what made them so special, so unique to that time and place, and how their current iteration finds itself chasing the ghosts of their old shows, and their old selves. There is history in every city (a bandmate recalls them hitting a venue where Bruce opened for Chicago and \u201cgot booed off the stage\u201d); there is a void onstage where the late band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici once stood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond all of that, Zimny captures and catalogs the nuts and bolts of putting up a rock show, of creating that experience of, in one back-up singer\u2019s words, a \u201ctrain that has no brakes.\u201d Springsteen lays out how it\u2019s assembled, and how they tweak it on the road; \u201csomething changes in a song when you play it in front of a live audience,\u201d he explains. We see him after the shows, and he looks tired\u2014understandably. But he also looks satisfied, which is heartwarming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zimny has directed several of Springsteen\u2019s previous documentary projects, as well as such authorized bio-docs as Sly <\/em>and The Beach Boys<\/em>. His proximity to his subjects often feels compromising, like rough edges and tough patches have been sanded off and erased, and while Springsteen is not the official co-director here (as he was on Western Skies<\/em>), he\u2019s credited as producer and writer, penning his narration, as opposed to spouting it in interviews. Some of the visual strategies for the concert footage get monotonous (there are so<\/em> many slow zooms), and the presentation is a tad disorganized; it feels as though the director couldn\u2019t decide between using the set list and the movements of the tour as the organizing structure, so he kinda half-heartedly does both, for alternating stretches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But fans\u2014of Springsteen, and of rock music in general\u2014will find much to chew on in Road Diary<\/em>, particularly in its more thoughtful stretches. There\u2019s something truly poignant in his explanation of how everything he does now is imbued with a sense of mortality, and, as he puts it, \u201can expanding vision of life itself.\u201d That\u2019s grand talk, but appropriate to the art and tradition he attempts to honor, of going on stage and \u201cplaying for all the stakes rock and roll has to offer.\u201d As he says, \u201cAfter 50 years on the road, it\u2019s too late to stop now\u2026 It\u2019s my job.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n “<\/em>Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Ban<\/em>d” streams Friday on Hulu<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/road-diary2-1024x683.jpg\")
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