JOE MARRA/NJ MOTION PICTURE AND TELEVISION COMMISSION
A scene from “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” being filmed at The Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford.
According to Jon Crowley, executive director of The New Jersey Motion Picture & Television Commission, the studio that made the biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” was “lobbying,” at one point, to do some filming outside of New Jersey.
“I think Pittsburgh was one of those places,” Crowley says. “And Bruce, to his credit, was like, ‘Nope, we’re not filming my story anywhere but in New Jersey.’ ”
“Deliver Me From Nowhere” — which will be released on Oct. 24, though some theaters will have early screenings on Oct. 23 — did, indeed, end up being filmed in Asbury Park, Freehold and many other locations throughout the state. The Meadowlands Arena, which is no longer used for actual concerts and sports events, was used to film scenes set in the L.A. Sports Arena and The Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati. Scenes depicting the Colts Neck house in which Springsteen wrote and recorded his Nebraska album were filmed in Mountain Lakes. A farm in Harding was used for a scene at The Archer County Fair in Texas, the Three Corners Liquor store in Orange became an Arizona convenience store, and so on.
I recently interviewed Crowley about “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” and more.
JOE MARRA/NJ MOTION PICTURE AND TELEVISION COMMISSION
Jon Crowley with Bruce Springsteen at The Meadowlands Arena.
Q: I want to talk about your work in general, but also focus on “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” which is of a lot of interest to my readers. I know they filmed in a lot of different cities in New Jersey. Is it unusual to be all over the state like that?
A: No, actually, I think more and more what’s happening is … one of the reasons they come here is because of this wide variety of different looks that we have. We’ve got all sorts of look-alike locations. Time is money, and so if you can get all the looks that the script is calling for in one place, that’s an incentive to come here.
So for instance, “A Complete Unknown,” the Bob Dylan biopic, was filmed entirely in New Jersey except for one day: They filmed in New York because they needed the exterior of The Chelsea Hotel. Otherwise, we doubled not only as Times Square, but also The Village. And we doubled as Virginia and Washington D.C., and even Rhode Island for the The Newport Festival.
It’s a huge asset: This wide variety of locations. You can literally go from a Queen Anne or a Victorian house and go one block over and you’re going to find a mid-century ranch, or you can go from a Mayberry U.S.A. sort of small town look, and within 20 minutes, you’re next to a big city. Mountains and snow and, 90 minutes later, you’re at the beach with an ocean. It’s one-stop shopping for us.
Q: I haven’t seen the movie yet, but obviously it’s got to depict Freehold and Asbury Park and the kind of arenas that Springsteen was playing at the time.
A: I grew up in Los Angeles, and I remember seeing shows at the L.A. Sports Arena, and I went to the set one day when they were at The Meadowlands Arena and walked in and, I felt like I was in a time warp, because all the extras are dressed … you know, it’s like it was the ’80s. And The Meadowlands really has a strong resemblance to the old L.A. Sport Arena. I really was transported to 1980-something Los Angeles, where Springsteen was doing a concert. It’s uncanny the way you can just hang a sign or a banner or put in a couple of pieces of greenery and all of a sudden you look like you could be a half-country away — with the way art directors are able to take our locations in New Jersey and dress them up to look like someplace completely different.
Trenton plays as Washington, D.C., all the time. When you drive down the streets of Trenton, you totally get it, with all the granite-sided buildings, the government buildings and the domes and the architecture. Jersey’s got it all.
NJ SPORTS & EXPOSITION AUTHORITY
An entrance to The Meadowlands Arena.
Q: I understand The Meadowlands was also was used as The Riverfront Arena in Cincinnati.
A: Right, that’s true. I think they turned the cameras a little bit and re-dressed the background and the extras and all of a sudden, you’re in Cincinnati. So you got a lot of miles for nothing. (laughs)
Q: I assume you live in New Jersey now?
A: I do. I grew up in L.A. and I was working in the television industry there for many, many years. I helped create and develop and executive-produced a show called “Impractical Jokers.” But I moved out East, and I’ve been here for, I don’t know, 15, 16, 17 years. It doesn’t make me born and raised, but I’ve been here enough, I think, that I can consider myself a true blue New Jerseyan.
Q: I’ve lived in New Jersey for most of my life. Since 2000, in Montclair.
A: Great filming location. Montclair gets used a lot. It’s one of the more popular filming locations in the state. There’s such great architecture, with all the homes. And the neighborhoods are beautiful. So filmmakers and art directors love Montclair.
Q: How active is The Meadowlands Arena as a filming place?
A: You know, when I started this position about a year and a half ago, I sort of had a question mark over my head. I was like, “How does an arena work as a shooting location?” And once you walk onto the location, you immediately get it. It’s soundproofed. There’s probably in excess of 20,000 square feet down on the old arena. There’s plenty of height to the ceiling for hanging lights as you’re filming a scene, plenty of space to build and construct a set if you want to, and there’s enough power for lighting gear, that you don’t have to worry about that. And your trucks … they can just drive down the ramp and deliver, right to the floor of the arena, cameras and lights and all the equipment that you need. Plenty of parking for a crew, great access to trains for public transportation. Then the old luxury boxes wind up being used for makeup and hair and other office space for the rest of the crew. So it is a fantastic location that gets used quite frequently.
“FBI: Most Wanted” was there for quite a while. “The Walking Dead” also set up shop there. And we used it in May: The Film Commission sort of hatched an idea, and then we turned to The Screen Alliance of New Jersey, and they wound up producing the event and doing a fantastic job with something that we called The NJ Film Expo, which was a great way for us to showcase the studios and networks: this fantastic, ever-expanding infrastructure that we have in the state. Quick camera rentals, set construction, lights and grip equipment: Anything that you need for production, we have it. That was sort of the tagline for the event: “Whatever your production needs, New Jersey’s got you covered.”
Q: I know they use it also sometimes, not necessarily to film, but to rehearse an arena tour. To just go in for a week and get a tour ready before you have actual crowds.
A: Very true.
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
Q: For filming … one of the cool things about it, I guess, is that if you’re filming a historical piece — and “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is really a historical piece — it looks like an old arena. If you filmed at a more modern arena, you’d have to work hard to make it look like a ’70s or ’80s arena.
A: Oh, yeah, 100 percent. The newer arenas have a similar feel and look to them. There’s a handful of design firms that are really experienced in building those facilities. So there’s a similar look. And it was the same thing in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s for baseball, basketball, football … any of those arenas were designed probably by the same two, three, four different design firms.
Q: Could you tell me more about what the Film Commission does, and why, in general?
A: A big part of why we do what we do on the Film Commission side is because we’re putting people to work with all these productions that are coming in, and we’re getting that qualified spend all through the state. In 2023, the qualified spend in New Jersey was $592 million from various TV and films that came through New Jersey. Last year, the qualified spend was $837 million, so that was a 41 percent increase. And if you look at the other Top 10 domestic production hubs around the United States: Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Georgia, Los Angeles … all of them were down with the exception of New York, which was stagnant. Even Toronto was down. New Jersey was the only production hub that was up. That means that we went from, in 2023, I think, 17,000 crew hires, to … we jumped all the way up to 30,000 crew hires in 2024. So that’s why we do it, is we try to get that money.
And when we talk about all the towns where “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” filmed, I think they spent, like, $41.8 million throughout the state, and they’re in places like Asbury and Freehold, and Newark, and East Rutherford, and Bayonne, and Denville, Rockaway Borough, Rahway. So they were all over the place, which is what you want. When they land in the town, they’re not bringing groceries with them. They’re not bringing rental cars or hotel rooms, or hardware to build sets or paint sets. They’re acquiring all that here in New Jersey, which means that spend is getting spent in the local economy.
Q: Can you tell me what the term “qualified spend” means?
A: Registered to do business: that these vendors, these suppliers, these rental companies … that they’re registered to do business here in New Jersey. So you could come onto the Film Commission website and you can go to what we call The NJ 411, which is the production services directory. Say you’re looking for a caterer, or a hardware store next to where you’re going to be filming. You can find that on there, and there’s a button you click on, and that’ll tell you immediately if a business is current in their registration with the state, to do business in the state. So that’s what you need to be able to apply those costs that might be incurred for production, that you can use for your tax certification.
You know, the industry left West Orange and Fort Lee, back at the turn of the last century, because of taxes: because of a licensing fee that was being charged by Thomas Edison to use his cameras and his projectors and what have you. The early movie moguls decided they didn’t want to pay Edison that fee, so they ran as far away as they could, and when they hit the Pacific Ocean, that’s when Hollywood was created. I like to say what’s happening now is the tax incentives are opening the door to bringing production back.
The legislators in Trenton, along with the governor, are strong supporters. There’s good bipartisan support for film and TV, because the legislators and the governor realized that it’s a real spark for crew hires and for getting that spend, throughout the state. And then you match that with, as we were talking about earlier, our wide variety of locations and our look-alike locations, on top of the fact that we have the largest experienced workforce outside L.A. and New York.
So it’s part of our job on the Commission side to go knock on the doors of the studios and networks and let them know we’re not some small town when it comes to production. We know what we’re doing. We’ve got the crews and the infrastructure to support whatever sort of production they want to bring here. We’re very established. So that’s why I think Hollywood is starting to discover that it makes a lot of sense to bring your TV or film to New Jersey. I always say, like, “Why would you say no? Why would you say no to New Jersey when you know we’ve got everything you need?”
Q: Especially when a story is really rooted here, as it is in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
A: By the way, there was a period of time when the studio was lobbying to film elsewhere in the country. I think Pittsburgh was one of those places. And Bruce, to his credit, was like, “Nope, we’re not filming my story anywhere but in New Jersey.” So we’ve got Bruce to thank for that.
Click HERE to read Stephen Whitty’s review of “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
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