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Posted on 09/01/2025 4:32:59 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In 1981, a 21-year-old actor with no film credits to his name drunkenly told his girlfriend’s musician brother that he wanted to adapt one of his songs into a movie.
Normally, this kind of thing would barely cause a ripple in the universe, as few ambitious projects pitched after “15 to 17 Heinekens” ever become a reality. However, in this case, the young actor was Sean Penn, and the musician was Bruce Springsteen, and the movie did indeed come to the big screen nearly a decade later.
This unique story of two icons agreeing to collaborate came about when Penn was living with his girlfriend Pamela in the lead-up to the release of Taps, his feature film debut. It just so happened that Pamela’s older brother was Springsteen, already one of the biggest rock acts in America thanks to his barnstorming 1970s albums Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, and he owned the California apartment his sister and Penn called home.
At the time, Springsteen was working on an introspective new album recorded entirely by himself in his bedroom with a four-track recorder. Without the backup of the E-Street Band for the first time, Springsteen was intent on creating a haunting folk album inspired by the works of Flannery O’Connor. He spun acoustic tales of ordinary working-class Americans and dark tracks told from the perspective of outlaws and criminals. The album would be called Nebraska, and over the years, its reputation was cemented as one of the greatest records of all time.
Long before the album was released, though, Springsteen sent a few rough recordings to his sister to see what she thought of his new direction. As soon as she hit play on ‘Highway Patrolman’, her boyfriend stopped dead in his tracks. At that point, Penn joked he was less of an aspiring actor than a “homeless guitar player”, but from the first second he heard Springsteen’s tale of police officer Joe Roberts and his criminal brother Frankie, he began seeing a movie in his head.
So, that very evening, Penn imbibed a whole lot of Dutch courage and called Springsteen to ask him if he could turn ‘Highway Patrolman’ into a movie. ‘The Boss’, who was startled awake by the call and supposedly didn’t care too much for Penn, listened to his tipsy pitch and decided to throw the youngster a bone. “I was just a kid, so it was safe for him to say yes,” Penn told Rolling Stone in 2009. “He was like, ‘OK, Sean, sure.’ Probably thinking, ‘I’ll never be hearing about this again.’”
Throughout the rest of the ‘80s, Penn and Springsteen’s careers continued their inexorable rises. Penn became one of his era’s most intense, charismatic, and dangerous actors, with starring roles in movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, At Close Range, and Colours. Springsteen made Born in the USA in ‘84, to this day one of the best-selling albums of all time, then retreated from fame slightly with Tunnel of Love in ‘87, which saw him record alone again, much like on Nebraska.
However, despite becoming such an in-demand star, Penn never forgot about ‘Highway Patrolman’, and he worked with various writers throughout the decade in an attempt to turn the song into a screenplay. Finally, though, while starring in We’re No Angels in ‘89, he decided if he wanted something done right, he’d have to do it himself. He banged out his own screenplay entitled The Indian Runner in only a month, with no idea how he’d get financing for the film, nor whether Springsteen would remember their little agreement and sign over the rights to Joe and Frank Roberts’ story.
Thankfully, ‘The Boss’ kept his word, although he did insist on a stipulation in his contract allowing him to take his name off the film if he didn’t like it. To his delight, though, the young actor, once engaged to his sister for a brief time, made a film he found profound and deeply moving. It fit his song perfectly, so he happily allowed the opening credits to read, “Inspired by the Bruce Springsteen song, ‘Highway Patrolman’”.
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When I started to read this I was thinking more of his song Badlands and the Martin Sheen movie Badlands loosely based on Charles Starkweather.
Nebraska was the last Springsteen album I ever bought.
Conclusions could be drawn, here.
😬
Taps was a good movie and showed immediately just how 🦇💩 crazy Tom Cruise is and would ever be.
I was at a military college when Taps came out.
We all had a good chuckle at that story.
Oh wait, wrong Tom Cruise movie. Anyway, that was before he was a Scientographer.
“... a drunken Sean Pean”
A “dog bites man” description if there ever were one.
i am sam?
Lol.. so true.
That had to make your officers a bit twitchy.
😬
He’s always given me the heebies.
No idea why.
Ignorant commies hang out together. Who knew.
It’s available on Prime. I put it on my watch list. I’ve long wanted a copy of the OED, but it’s terribly expensive.
Is the OED still available in a print version? Some years ago, an archival quality print addition was being offered, along with a continuing subscription to the annual supplements. That tempted me, but it was a very large commitment of already overcommitted shelf space. I already scratched that itch with the National Historical Society’s reprint of the Civil War OR’s, and to do it again, I’d need a bigger house.
There is an online subscription, but I have free access through my public library. Many libraries make it available, as do many schools. Go down and renew your library card, skirting the drag queen story hour in the children’s reading room, and inquire.
Nebraska the album sucked then and now. I don’t know why it is getting praise. It sucks.
Sean Penn is a garbage actor that and Communist that I wouldn’t watch for pay.
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