There’s a story that Bruce Springsteen tells before “The River,” played live in 1985 at the LA Coliseum. The story centers around his fraught relationship with his dad. He talks about the fights they used to have, and how he’d have to work up the nerve to go home to face him. He recalls how his father used to tell him that he couldn’t wait until the Army got him – they’d make a man out of him.

Bruce eventually got his draft notice for Vietnam and took his physical, which he failed. When he got home and told his father what happened, his father simply said – despite all his talk of masculinity and war – “That’s good.”

This is a great encapsulation of Springsteen’s relationship to his father, which colors much of his music and the literature surrounding him, as well as Scott Cooper’s new f

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