Bruce Springsteen will appear on Turner Classic Movies November 2nd to “guest program” the network by picking two of his favorite movies and discussing them with host Ben Mankiewicz. First up is the 1956 John Ford/John Wayne classic Western The Searchers. It will air at 3:30 pm EST. It will be followed by Elia Kazan’s 1957’s masterpiece A Face in the Crowd at 5:45 pm EST.
The interview segments were shot at Springsteen’s home studio in New Jersey and we have two exclusive clips from them right here. In the first one, Springsteen talks about how his songs are similar to movies. “I write in character,” he says. “And to write like that you need to gather so much cinematic detail, constantly filling the songs with images, images, images, geography, little character traits, things very similar to script writing, really.”
In the second one, he explains how the 1973 Terrence Malick movie Badlands and the 1955 thriller The Night of the Hunter influenced his songwriting on Nebraska. “The thing they have in common is they’re both twisted fairytales,” he says. “Even the score in Badlands had, I believe, glockenspiel — was very fairytale-ish. I took that sound picture and made a record to of it.”
Springsteen has been busy over the past week promoting his new concert film Western Stars, which he co-directed with his long-time collaborator Thom Zimny. He has performed in public only a handful of times this year, but on November 4th he’ll make his annual appearance at the Stand Up For Heroes veterans benefit at the the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden.
On December 9th, he’ll perform alongside Sting, John Mellencamp, Eurythmics, Ricky Martin, Shaggy and James Taylor at the 30th anniversary Rainforest Foundation Benefit at New York’s Beacon Theater.