Springsteen

TELLURIDE, Colo.  — Jeremy Allen White asked all the questions any normal human being would ask when offered the chance to play Bruce Springsteen in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” In theaters Oct. 24, it’s a movie that examines a slice of the rock legend’s career when he was battling depression and creating 1982’s incomparable exploration of alienation “Nebraska,” a record he didn’t know he was making when he recorded the songs on a primitive four-track tape machine in a rented New Jersey home. It turned out to be his favorite of all his albums.

Most of those questions could be boiled down to: Why me? White didn’t know how to play the guitar. He loves to sing but would never call himself a singer. And while he has a relationship with an audience, particularly those who have white-knuckled their way through his Emmy-winning work as Carmy, the talented and troubled chef on “The Bear,” he says it’s a far cry from the bond Springsteen has forged with his fan base for the past 50-plus years.

“The relationship a musician has with fans is so intimate,” White, 34, tells me the morning after the movie had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. “You listen to him in the car, you go to see him live. He’s there in your ear and it’s just the two of you. You feel like you’re being spoken to. Bruce is so important to so many people. It was daunting. I didn’t want to disappoint.”

By the time we talked, though, White was well past any anxiety about disappointing, if only because he had the approval of the person who mattered the most: Springsteen himself.

“Jeremy tolerated me and I appreciated that,” Springsteen said at a festival Q&A, suggesting that his input on the movie was ongoing and significant — and also welcome. He noted that it was easy to sign off on director Scott Cooper’s vision for the movie, which, with its narrow focus on the deep dive of “Nebraska,” he called an “antibiopic.”

“And I’m old and I don’t give a f— what I do,” Springsteen added, laughing.

White and I are sitting in the sun outside his hotel, basking in the warmth the day after a steady rain. Wearing a battered Yankees cap, jeans, boots and a blue pullover, he’s sporting the casual uniform of the festival, if not the Boss himself. White asks if I mind if he lights an American Spirit. He reaches for his lighter. The premiere is over and his mood is light. We dive right in.

Jeremy Allen White in the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

(Macall Polay / 20th Century Studios)

Was there an immediate point of connection with Springsteen?
The more I talked with him, the more I learned. And at the point in his life we show in the movie, he was feeling so fraudulent. Not in his work, but as a human. He felt like he was being caught in a lie all the time. And I don’t want to speak for all actors, but I’ve certainly dealt with that kind of feeling.

It feels like there’s a line between your Springsteen and Carmy on “The Bear,” two men carrying generational trauma and emotional baggage they have no idea how to deal with. Do you see that?
For sure, you can draw that line. They’re cousins. And they’ve both got their art, something they feel confident about. What Bruce was feeling in his relationship with his father and the environment he grew up in, is he felt incredibly unsafe. And that made it difficult for him to trust people and form real connections. For a long time, the only connection he felt was in that three hours he spent on stage.

But then what do you do the rest of the time?
Absolutely. And I’m familiar with those feelings. But my home life as a child was more loving and supportive, so I had to do some creative work to find that tether to Bruce.

You mentioning Springsteen’s dad just popped a thought into my head. Is Carmy’s dad alive?
[Long exhale] We don’t know. That’s a decision that’s up to [showrunner] Chris [Storer].

It’s above your pay grade.
Well above.

You’re really good at playing men who have trouble articulating their feelings, which puts a lot of weight on your shoulders to convey an interior life through close-ups. Do you like that kind of acting?
I do. You have to have an understanding. The camera knows. If you’re just staring at a wall and you don’t have anything going on, the camera will know. The audience will, too.

You do also get to rock out and sing “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.” How did your vocal chords feel afterward?
I spent an afternoon singing “Born in the U.S.A.” and I got a migraine and I lost my voice. I saw Bruce afterward and he asked, “What’d you do today.” And I said [affecting a hoarse voice], “Uh, I recorded ‘Born in the U.S.A.’” And he smiles and says, “Sounds about right.”

Most of your singing is the “Nebraska” songs, these delicate acoustic songs about despairing characters who have lost hope. Putting across their stories in these songs feels like its own imposing challenge.
I was so focused on just sounding like Bruce and my coach, Eric [Vetro], asks, “What are you singing about? What’s the story? Where’s Bruce coming from? Is he singing from his perspective? Is about his childhood? Is he playing a character?” All these questions that, for an actor, should be right at the front of mind. Because I was so anxious about sounding like him, I found myself blocked by the real thing, which was: How can I just sing the song as honestly as possible?

What song was the breakthrough?
“Mansion on the Hill.” Bruce listened to it and said, “You do sound like me. But it’s you singing the song.” And that gave me permission, not just in recording the music, but making a film where I could tell his story but not be afraid to bring myself to it.

Did you have a favorite song?
Probably “My Father’s House.” It seemed like a warning for me. There’s regret in it. What I heard is a song about a young man not wanting to regret that he didn’t reach out for his father, who he had a love and connection with earlier. There was an immediacy to it, which you then see with Bruce and his father in the film.

Did it make you want to call your dad?
I called him right after recording that song in Nashville. Like many fathers and sons, we have a loving relationship, but we’ve also gone through periods where things have been difficult and it was hard to communicate. Making this film and singing this song has given me another perspective. It also coincides with getting older and having children of my own.

I’m glad you made the call. You can’t have those conversations after a certain point.
That’s what I mean about the warning of that song.

You told me yesterday that you and Springsteen had a debate about “Reason to Believe.” What was the source of the disagreement?
It’s the last song on the album and Bruce says people confuse it as being hopeful. He says that’s not correct. The song is about a woman whose husband has left her and she stands at the end of the driveway every day, waiting for him to come home. And I hear that, and I think, “Oh, that’s real love. That’s romance. Someone’s gonna drive down that road at some point.”

Either that or this poor woman is just going to be walking up and down her driveway the rest of her life.
And no one’s gonna be there. It depends how your ear is on a song.

But you choose to believe.
I choose to walk to the end of the driveway. Absolutely.

Would you call yourself an optimist?
No. [Laughs] Not really.

“Nebraska” came out in 1982 and was informed by the idea that there was a growing divide between the wealthy and the poor and that what we think of as the American Dream was becoming more elusive. Where do you think the album sits more than four decades later?
People are angry. That’s what seems to define our country right now. Anger. And it doesn’t seem to be going away. The songs on “Nebraska” are still going to be speaking to us four decades from now. They’re timeless.

Jeremy Allen White in the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

(Macall Polay / 20th Century Studios)

Did your early dance background help you with the physicality of the role, the way he carries himself on stage or even just walking around?
For sure. Finding the way he holds his gravity was important. I put little lifts in the boots and that made my posture change, my legs a little longer. Wearing the pants up to here [he points to a spot above his hips], that gets your gravity in your belly button, where I’m crouched over all the time.

There’s a lot of scenes in diners where he’s sitting with one arm over the back of the booth …
… like he’s on his way out almost all the time. One foot in, one foot out.

Musician friends turned you on to “Nebraska” in your early 20s. What music were you listening to then?
My folks are a little older so I grew up listening to a lot of music that Bruce listened to — Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, the Beatles, the Stones, Aretha Franklin.

Your parents had a strong record collection.
Still do. And I grew up in in Brooklyn in the ’90s, so I got really heavy into hip-hop in my teenage years. I discovered Nas and Jay-Z and Big L and Wu-Tang. Tribe. De La Soul. And then I was around for an exciting time in the New York scene. I was young so I couldn’t really experience it, but the Strokes were coming out and LCD Soundsystem. I felt lucky to be close that stuff as it was happening.

The way you’re talking about all this, it feels like music is a fundamental part of your life.
Absolutely. I love that it’s always with you. I’ve taken a couple of cross-country trips, and I love putting on Motown. I go through periods where I listen to the same 20 songs for a couple of weeks. But then I’ve got thousands of “liked” songs. And the nice part about a long drive is you can shuffle that and it’s like you’re traveling in time. I love getting to visit past versions of myself through music.

Springsteen takes an eventful cross-country trip in the film. What’s your most memorable one?
I did one by myself when I was about 24. I thought I was going to give myself about two weeks to go from New York to L.A. The first week was great. I was enjoying my solitude, listening to a lot of music. Then when I hit Utah, I got incredibly lonely.

Did the landscapes get to you?
Maybe. I had a certain amount of anonymity, which I enjoy on a road trip. You don’t know anybody in these towns and that allows you to be whoever you want to be, passing through. I remember getting to Utah and just being desperate to see somebody who knew who I was. And I got a flat in St. George, Utah. It was a disaster. My phone had died. I didn’t have a spare. I was out on the side of the road trying to borrow somebody’s phone. I took that as a sign. After I got it repaired, I raced to have dinner with a friend, because I felt this this crazy loneliness.

Springsteen says everyone has their “genesis moment,” an experience that charts your path. His was watching Elvis Presley perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956. What’s your genesis moment?
I had been dancing on stage but I didn’t act until I was 14 when I got up in front of a group in middle school. I had this great teacher, John McEneny, and he was having us do this improvisational exercise — two characters, one speaking, one quiet. And my friend, Yael, was playing a mother and I was playing her child who didn’t know how to speak yet. So I wasn’t speaking, like so much of my work [Laughs].

It’s Carmy’s genesis moment too.
Yes. And I remember feeling a presence. I had a hard time focusing as a child, a hard time being present. Still do. But I remember even in silence feeling so at ease and present. And of course I remember the eyes. And even without me doing anything or speaking, I felt attention, people waiting to see what I would do next. And I went, “Whoa.” I felt at peace. I felt present and people were interested. And I thought, “Let me follow this a little bit and see where we can go.”

There’s a scene in the movie, taken from real life, where Springsteen is flipping through the channels one night and stumbles upon Terrence Malick’s “Badlands,” a movie that ultimately influences “Nebraska.” With streaming, we don’t really have those serendipitous discoveries any more. Have you ever had a moment like that?
I can’t think of one. But “Badlands” was a favorite of my parents and they showed it to me when I was 13 or 14. Martin Sheen was cool as hell in that role, and I was so impressed with his commitment to that character. And Sissy Spacek conveys so much with so few words.

And like “Nebraska,” “Badlands” was difficult to make. There was a lot of pushback against Malick and what he was trying to do.
There was a lot of confusion going on. They weren’t on the same page. Like with Bruce, it took a lot of diligence on Terrence Malick’s part to realize his vision. It’s so beautiful when you hear about the process of making a film is so difficult, and then something so beautiful and perfect comes out.

Where do you like to see movies in L.A.?
I love the New Beverly. I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the Egyptian not long ago. The Aero, if I’m on the Westside. I miss the Cinerama Dome and the Arclight. New movies, probably the Sunset 5. My favorite thing is go to a movie on a Tuesday at like one in the afternoon. You’re there by yourself. I like seeing movies by myself. Some people get out of a movie and like to start talking about it. I like getting out of a movie and being quiet for awhile.

Did you see “Weapons”? That was my favorite movie theater experience this summer.
I loved “Weapons.” And obviously, it’s a great horror film and funny at times and that ending is just crazy. But also I found myself very emotionally affected. To me the horror of the movie was about, from the child’s perspective, looking at all these adults who were totally incapable, whether it was due to addiction or narcissism.

Bringing this full circle, I’m watching this movie about kids feeling unsafe and I thought of the times in Bruce’s upbringing where he felt a similar way and how that made it so difficult to grow up and be trusting. That he ultimately got to that place is so beautiful. I hope people come away from watching this movie feeling that and, if they’re in a place that’s not so good, maybe thinking that connection can still be possible.

In recent years, film festivals haven’t felt all that festive. Audiences have dwindled, streaming has upended viewing habits and the pandemic and Hollywood strikes have rattled the industry, leaving even the most glamorous events to fight for their place on the cultural calendar.

Then there’s Telluride. For more than a half-century, the tiny mountain gathering has thrived as a kind of anti-festival: no red carpets, no prizes, no tuxedos, just movies. Perched 8,750 feet up in a box canyon in the Colorado Rockies, it’s reachable only by twisting roads or a white-knuckle drop into one of the nation’s highest airports. Festival passes are pricey and limited in number, which makes Telluride feel at once intimate and exclusive. With its mix of industry insiders and devoted film lovers, that isolation and tight-knit atmosphere have become part of Telluride’s mystique, and the promise of early Oscar buzz keeps filmmakers, stars and cinephiles making the pilgrimage. Since 2009, only five best picture winners have skipped Telluride on their way to the top prize.

“It’s so hard to get to Telluride — you don’t end up here by accident,” festival director Julie Huntsinger says by phone. “We’ve always felt it’s incumbent on us to show either brand-new things or extraordinary things that make your time worth it. You know how cats will bring you a mouse? I always feel like I’m bringing you a mouse or a bird, and I just hope you’ll like it.”

Rolling out over Labor Day weekend, the 52nd Telluride Film Festival will supply a slate of fresh offerings, including a handful of world premieres. Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” drops Jeremy Allen White into the boots of the Boss, tracing the creation of his stark 1982 album, “Nebraska.” Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” unites Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in a haunting portrait of grief. Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” finds Colin Farrell wandering Macau as a gambler chasing luck and redemption. And Daniel Roher’s “Tuner” gives Dustin Hoffman a rare return to the screen in a crime thriller about a piano tuner who discovers his ear is just as effective on safes as on Steinways.

Also in the mix are a number of films coming from Cannes and Venice: Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” and Richard Linklater with a double bill, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” proof that Telluride remains a haven for auteurs.

At last year’s Telluride, politics dominated the conversation on- and off-screen. Hot-button issues, from abortion access to climate change to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ran through the program, while guests such as Hillary Clinton, James Carville and special prosecutor Jack Smith joined the usual roster of actors and filmmakers. Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” a searing portrait of Donald Trump’s early years, was one of the buzziest titles.

This year the lineup is broader, though politics still runs through it. Ivy Meeropol’s “Ask E. Jean” follows writer E. Jean Carroll through her legal battles with Trump, while Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” uses a 1970s-set thriller to revisit Brazil’s military dictatorship, with Wagner Moura (“Narcos”) as a professor on the run. “This year is pretty political too,” Huntsinger insists. “There are a couple of films that, if you’re paying attention, have important things to say. I just hope everybody feels a little braver after a lot of the things we show.”

German-born director Edward Berger, who brought his papal thriller “Conclave” to last year’s edition, returns with a strikingly different film in “Ballad of a Small Player.”

“I would defy anyone to stack up his films and say they’re by the same filmmaker,” Huntsinger says. “This is a beautiful, very dreamlike, nonlinear exercise in spirituality and introspection. ‘Conclave’ felt disciplined — not that this film is undisciplined but it exists on a totally different plane.”

Zhao, who won the directing Oscar for 2020’s “Nomadland,” has adapted “Hamnet” from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel about the death of Shakespeare’s only son in what Huntsinger describes as one of the festival’s most emotionally powerful selections.

“Chloé is a person of immense depth,” Huntsinger says. “She has such a deep feel for human beings. This is a sad, mournful but beautiful meditation on loss. People should be prepared to cathartically cry. There isn’t a false note in it.”

Another festival favorite, Lanthimos makes his third trip to Telluride with “Bugonia,” a darkly comic sci-fi satire that reunites him with Emma Stone following their earlier collaborations on “The Favourite” and “Poor Things.” A remake of the 2003 Korean cult film “Save the Green Planet!,” it follows a conspiracy-minded beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who kidnaps a powerful pharma executive (Stone) he believes is an alien bent on destroying Earth.

“Be prepared to get your a— kicked,” Huntsinger says. “Emma is outstanding, and we should never take her for granted, but Jesse Plemons steals the show. He next-levels it in this one.”

Baumbach also marks his return to Telluride with the dramedy “Jay Kelly,” which centers on an actor (George Clooney) and his longtime manager (Adam Sandler) as they journey across Europe, looking back on the choices and relationships that have shaped their lives. Huntsinger likens the film to a cinematic negroni: “It’s substantial but also fun, with an almost summery feel. It’s about where you’re headed after a certain stage in life, told without heavy-handedness.”

The filmmaker and screenwriter, who previously brought “Margot at the Wedding,” “Frances Ha” and “Marriage Story” to the festival, will be honored this year with a Silver Medallion. He shares the award with Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whose drama “It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Ethan Hawke, represented in the lineup with Linklater’s “Blue Moon” and his own documentary about country singer Merle Haggard, “Highway 99: A Double Album.”

Few films in the lineup will be more closely watched than Cooper’s Springsteen biopic, with Emmy-winning “The Bear” star White channeling the Boss during the making of one of his most uncompromising albums. “Jeremy delivers in the same way that Timothée Chalamet did in [the Bob Dylan biopic] ‘A Complete Unknown,’ where you just think, Jesus, what can’t this kid do?” Huntsinger says. “Scott’s a great filmmaker, and the movie delivers on its promise.”

The music thread continues with Morgan Neville’s documentary “Man on the Run,” drawn from never-before-seen home movies Paul McCartney shot in the early 1970s, not long after the Beatles’ split. The footage shows McCartney retreating to Scotland with his family and offers what Huntsinger describes as a revelatory glimpse at a less-mythologized moment. “You also understand there wasn’t a villain in the Beatles breakup,” Huntsinger says. “It’s an expansion on history that’s really needed.”

Elsewhere in the documentary lineup, Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras returns with “Cover-Up” (co-directed by Mark Obenhaus), an exploration of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s career that builds on her politically charged films like “Citizenfour” and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”

For all its flannel-and-jeans ethos, Telluride isn’t immune to the economics of 2025. Lodging and travel costs have soared, amplifying concerns that the showcase has become a festival largely for the well-off. Huntsinger concedes the expense but points out pass prices haven’t budged in more than 15 years as she works to keep it accessible.

“I was concerned for a while because our audience was aging, but we’ve really worked on making sure that younger people and people on fixed incomes can come,” she says. “I can see the difference — it’s not just people of means. And I promise you, I’ll keep fighting for that. I hope the lodging people will realize they got a little out of hand and start lowering prices too.”

For all the turbulence and doomsaying that has rattled Hollywood in recent years, Telluride has managed to hold fast to its identity.

“The devotion people have to this weekend makes me think there’s hope,” Huntsinger says. “They’re not coming here for anything but film-loving. To hear people say, ‘I would not miss this for the world’ makes me really proud and hopeful. After everything we’ve all been through, I think we still have reason to keep doing this crazy little picnic.”

“How the f— does this baby know if she loves her father?” asked River Gallo one day at Walmart, back in 2010, when they saw an infant sucking on a pacifier emblazoned with the words “I love my daddy.”

“That started the ball rolling about my own issues with my father and with this compulsory love that we have with our families, specifically with our parents, specifically in this instance with my father, her father, our fathers, and with masculinity in general,” says a radiant Gallo during a recent video interview.

The spontaneous moment of introspection planted the seed for what became a 10-minute performance piece while studying acting at NYU — then their USC thesis-turned-short film “Ponyboi,” released in 2017, which Gallo wrote, starred in, and co-directed with Sadé Clacken Joseph. That project ultimately evolved into “Ponyboi” the feature, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024, became the first film produced under Fox Entertainment Studios’ indie label, Tideline, and was released June 27 in theaters across the United States.

A consummate multihyphenate, Gallo again wrote the screenplay, served as producer and stars as the titular character: an intersex, Latine sex worker in New Jersey who is desperate to escape their pimp (played by Dylan O’Brien) and the world of crime and violence that surrounds them.

Flashbacks to Ponyboi’s childhood, made difficult due to the medical procedures forced on them and the temperament of their classically macho Latino father, fill in the viewer on the protagonist’s past. Meanwhile, dreamy sequences with a handsome, cowboy hat-wearing stranger named Bruce (Murray Bartlett), an idealized embodiment of a positive masculinity, construct a rich world both visually and thematically in Ponyboi’s present.

“[At] face value, ‘Ponyboi’ can seem like, ‘Oh, it’s just a person-on-the-run kind of movie,’ but upon a closer look, it’s about someone finding freedom in the acceptance of their past and the possibility that, through transcending their own beliefs about themselves, perhaps their future could be a little brighter,” Gallo explains.

Gallo is the child of Salvadoran immigrants who escaped their country’s civil war in 1980 and lived undocumented in the U.S. Gallo grew up in New Jersey and showed interest in acting from an early age. It was a strict teacher’s unexpected encouragement, after Gallo appeared in a musical during their sophomore year of high school, that convinced them to pursue a life in art.

“My biology teacher, Mrs. Lagatol, came to see my musical, and the next day I was waiting for her to say something to me, and she didn’t say anything,” Gallo recalls. “Then she gave me back a test, and on the test was a little Post-it that said: ‘If you had been the only one on stage, it would’ve been worth the price of admission. Bravo.’”

Gallo still keeps that Post-it note framed.

Though their parents were supportive, Gallo admits feeling frustration in recent years that their family has not fully understood the magnitude of what they’ve accomplished as a marginalized person in entertainment: an intersex individual and a first-generation Latine.

“Not to toot my own horn, but for a graduate of any film program, getting your first feature to Sundance is the biggest deal in the world,” says Gallo. “There hasn’t been a person like me to do what I’m doing. There’s no precedent or pioneer in my specific identities.”

This desire for a more informed validation is even stronger in relation to their father.

“I don’t think my dad has seen any of my films. My mom has; she was at the premiere at Sundance, which was really beautiful, and so was my sister,” Gallo says. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad never sees my movies. That’s hard, but he’s supportive in other ways.”

Halfway through our conversation, Gallo realizes they are wearing a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. That’s no coincidence, since “The Boss,” a fellow New Jerseyan, influenced multiple aspects of “Ponyboi.” As they wrote the screenplay for the short version, Gallo was also reading Springsteen’s autobiography, “Born to Run,” and that seeped into their work.

“I remember taking a trip to the Jersey Shore that summer and then looking up at the Stone Pony, the venue where [Springsteen] had his first big performance, and just being like, ‘Stone pony, stone pony, pony, pony, pony boy, ponyboi. That’s a good name.’ And then that was just what I decided to name the character”

For Gallo, the emblematic American singer-songwriter represents “the idea of being working class,” which Gallo thinks “transcends political ideology.” As a child of immigrants, Springsteen’s work speaks to Gallo profoundly.

“My dad, who is more dark-skinned than me, was an electrician, and he was a union guy who experienced all this racism in New York unions,” Gallo says. “There’s so much of what I see in Bruce Springsteen in my father and also just in how Bruce Springsteen describes his relationship with his dad, who was also a man who couldn’t express his emotions.”

For the feature, Gallo enlisted Esteban Arango, a Colombian-born, L.A.-based filmmaker whose debut feature, “Blast Beat,” premiered at Sundance in 2020.

But while Gallo believes Arango understood the nuances of the narrative, it admittedly pained them to relinquish the director’s chair. But it was a necessary sacrifice in order to focus on the performance and move the project along.

“It was difficult because I went to school for directing,” Gallo explains. “But I just don’t think the movie would’ve happened on this timeline if I had wanted to direct it. It would’ve taken much longer, and we needed the film at this moment in time.”

Arango brought his own “abrasive” edge to the narrative. “I felt the story needed more darkness,” the director explains via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “The hypermasculine world of New Jersey is constantly trying to oppress and reject Ponyboi, because they have a much softer, feminine energy they want to project.”

The contrast between the tenderness of Ponyboi’s interiority and the harshness of their reality is what Arango focused on.

Though Arango hesitated to take on the film, given that he is not queer, his personal history as an immigrant functioned as an entry point into this tale of shifting, complex identities. Still, throughout the entire process, Arango was clear that, first and foremost, “Ponyboi” was a story centering intersex people — and all those who don’t fit into the rigid gender binary.

“Their plight should be our plight, because they are at the forefront of what it means to be free,” he says. “When somebody attacks them or doesn’t understand why they present themselves as they are, it’s really an attack on all of us, and it’s a reflection of our misunderstanding of ourselves.”

Back in 2023, Gallo was one of three subjects in Julie Cohen’s incisive documentary “Every Body,” about the intersex experience, including the ways the medical industry performs unnecessary procedures in order to “normalize” intersex people.

Gallo confesses that for a long time they thought being intersex was something they would never feel comfortable talking about — something they even would take “to the grave,” as they put it.

“There’s no other way that I can explain the fact that now I’ve made so much work reflecting on my identity other than it being an act of God,” Gallo says. “Because I just had the feeling that the world needed it now, and also that I needed it now. I’m glad that ‘Ponyboi’ taught me about the agency that I have over my art and myself and my life.”

Anti-trans legislation, Gallo explains, includes loopholes enabling doctors to “normalize” intersex bodies and continue the medically unnecessary, and at times nonconsensual surgeries on intersex youth. “The intersex narrative in [trans legislation] is invisible and not spoken about enough,” they say. “These are also anti-intersex bills.”

To fully understand Gallo as a person and an artist, one should watch both “Every Body” and “Ponyboi.” The doc shows the bones of what made Gallo who they are without symbols, just the raw facts of how their intersex identity shaped them. “Ponyboi,” on the other hand, exposes their interior life with the poetry that the cinematic medium allows for.

However, what happens with “Ponyboi” now isn’t as important to Gallo as the fact that the movie exists as a testament of their totality as a creative force.

“Love my movie, hate my movie, I don’t care, because my movie healed something deep inside of me that I was waiting a lifetime to be healed from,” Gallo states fervently. “Intersex people are still invisible in this culture, but I can at least say that I don’t feel invisible to myself anymore. And it was all worth it for that.”

President Trump is very much still hung up on the star power that boosted former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

In a pair of posts shared to his Truth Social platform Sunday night and Monday morning, Trump criticized several celebrities who publicly endorsed Harris in her months-long bid. Among the stars fueling the former “Apprentice” host’s ire were Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Bono. In his caps-lock-laden tirades, Trump accused the Harris camp of illegally paying Springsteen, Beyoncé and other stars to appear at campaign events and throw their support behind the Biden-era VP.

“I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” Trump wrote on Sunday, before accusing Harris and her team of paying for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”

Beyoncé, Springsteen and the other stars singled out by Trump each touted their support for Harris during various stops on her campaign trail. The “Alien Superstar” singer backed Harris when the candidate stopped by the pop star’s home state of Texas in late October. The Boss campaigned for Harris in Georgia that same week.

Trump shared his first post, which also accused Harris of artificially beefing up “her sparse crowds” and criticized “these unpatriotic ‘entertainers,’” Sunday at around 10:30 p.m. Clearly, he could not shake off his gripes after a night’s rest because on Monday morning, he doubled down.

Monday at 6:11 a.m., Trump further slammed Beyoncé, citing unidentified “news reports” that alleged the Grammy winner was paid $11 million to endorse his opponent: “AN ILLEGAL ELECTION SCAM AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL.” A representative for Beyoncé did not immediately respond on Monday to The Times’ request for comment.

He said the stars he named, “AND, PERHAPS, MANY OTHERS, HAVE A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO!!!”

Trump — who has the backing of musicians including Kid Rock and Billy Ray Cyrus — last week also aimed at Taylor Swift, suggesting in a Truth Social post on Friday that the “Cruel Summer” singer’s popularity has declined since he declared “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” in September 2024. Swift publicly endorsed Harris for president.

The president railed against the music stars after his four-day visit to the Middle East. . When he returned to Washington on Friday, Trump also shared his opinions on “Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen,” who criticized the “incompetent and treasonous administration” during a May 14 concert in Manchester, England. “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!” he added.

The “Born in the USA” rocker fired back at Trump on Saturday. “In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said.

A transcript of Springsteen’s full monologue, an introduction to “My City of Ruins,” can be found on his website.

The beef is building between Bruce Springsteen and President Trump.

The Boss did not back down on his fiery rhetoric against Trump on the third night of his “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour in Manchester, England, on Saturday — a day after Trump lashed out against the legendary singer on Truth Social, calling him an “obnoxious jerk,” a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker,” and writing that he should “keep his mouth shut.”

Springsteen didn’t oblige. In a resolute three-minute speech from the Co-op Live venue, Springsteen thanked his cheering audience for indulging him in a speech about the state of America: “Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore.”

He then repeated many of the lines that he used during a previous Manchester show — the same words that upset Trump to begin with, including the administration defunding American universities, the rolling back of civil rights legislation and siding with dictators, “against those who are struggling for their freedoms.”

Trump’s Truth Social post contained what appeared to be a threat, writing of Springsteen, “We’ll see how it goes for him,” when he gets back to the country. This did not dissuade the “Born in the USA” singer.

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“In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.”

In a steady voice, he listed the many concerns of those who oppose Trump, his enablers and his policies.

“They are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers as prisoners. That’s happening now. The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government,” Springsteen said as the crowd applauded and yelled its support. “They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”

He finished on a positive note.

“The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with a great people, and we will survive this moment. Well, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ ”

Springsteen has long been a vocal critic of Trump, and campaigned for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Trump is known for his angry diatribes against celebrities who criticize him, including Taylor Swift and Robert DeNiro.

Bruce Springsteen accused the Trump administration of persecuting dissenters during a concert in the UK, an apparent reference to the recent arrests of pro-Palestinian activists. The musician also condemned the US government for “abandoning allies and siding with dictators.”