Fans attending a London screening of The Promise: The Making Of Darkness On The Edge Of Town Saturday (10/29) got an unexpected bonus session when The Boss himself emerged to conduct a Q&A session after the film.  Bruce, his manager, Jon Landau, and Thom Zimny, the documentary's director, fielded questions from movie goers attending the BFI Southbank screening.  No surprise - most of the questions went to Springsteen, who told the audience that much of the credit for the fact the documentary could be made at all goes to a neighborhood kid who had dreams of being a film maker someday.  He showed up for a lot of the sessions and rehearsals with his camera and, Bruce said, was allowed to continue doing it because he kept out of the way so well he was '...easy to ignore.'  The fact he kept the footage under wraps when he could have sold it for a lot of money anytime during the last 30 years earned him the respect of Springsteen, who rewarded him by arranging for him to be well compensated for his loyalty.  Bruce described the process of making the album as a 'slog', owing in part to the fact the band was facing the almost impossible challenge of meeting  expectations in the aftermath of Born To Run, and had been forced into a prolonged layoff due to a legal row with his former manager.  He said the band set out to make '...a record of the times', and that during sessions that did not measure up he could sense it, telling the audience, 'If we didn't have something I could smell it in the air.' He closed by thanking Zimny for having managed to '...capture the narrative of that moment' in bringing the project to the screen.
NME.com

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