How Bruce Springsteen Stole the Title of His Hit Song From Paul Schrader

These days, when maverick director Paul Schrader talks about pop music, he’s usually praising Taylor Swift as “the light that gives meaning to our lives.” But back in the early ’80s, Schrader had the Boss on his mind. And in a new conversation with Deadline, Schrader reveals how an aborted movie project starring Bruce Springsteen led the pride of New Jersey to swipe from him.

According to the story, Schrader wanted to make a movie about blue collar rock and roll bands, something very much in line with his directorial debut Blue Collar, and thought of Springsteen as the lead. “There was a moment there when Bruce was being courted by the studios. Paramount had it, and they would have given anything to star him in a movie,” Schrader recalled. “I met with and gave the script to [Springsteen’s manager Jon] Landau, and he got back about a month later and said, ‘Bruce has been thinking about it and he’s not going to be in movies. He thinks it’s a trap and that he’ll end up like Elvis.'”

Schrader took the response at face value and went on to Japan to make his 1985 movie Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. But when he returned to the States, Schrader heard Springsteen’s new hit record and recognized its title as the same one he used for his bar band script: “Born in the U.S.A.”

While Schrader got a credit in the liner notes of the album, he didn’t get an explanation until later. “We met in Los Angeles and [Springsteen] said, look, I never did read your script,” Schrader told Deadline. “I was working on this song called ‘Vietnam‘ and I thought that was a bit too-on-the-nose. Your script was on the coffee table, and I kept walking past it every day. And finally it caught in my head and, I stole it.”

Like the voice of the working man that he is, Springsteen immediately tried to make things right with the director, offering to let him use the song whenever Schrader got around to making Born in the U.S.A. Instead, Schrader asked Springsteen for a new song for the film, and the Boss obliged, writing the tune “Light of Day.” And, sure enough, when Schrader finally produced the film, it came out under that tile, Light of Day.

Today, Schrader looks back at Light of Day, which finally saw the… movie theaters in 1987, with some disappointment, but not because of the song. Instead, he blames himself for casting Michael J. Fox and rocker Joan Jett as the leads (“Fox and Joan Jett were never meant to be in a movie together,” he admitted).

But he does not regret letting Springsteen have the song title without trouble. “I suppose there could have been some financial advantage for me, but I just didn’t want to be that kind of guy, who would milk Bruce’s head for X amount of dollars. And he didn’t ever forget it. This shows you that there is such a thing as karma, and that if you do the right thing, sometimes people remember,” he stated.

Turns out, some people remember better than others. Because when the upcoming Scott Cooper-directed movie Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere recreates the scene of Bruce (Jeremy Allen White) getting a script from Schrader, it has a map of Ohio drawn on the front. “I’d completely forgotten I’d done that,” he told Deadline. “I talked to Scott Cooper afterwards and asked him, where did you find the actual script? He said Bruce kept it all these years.”

Thus, there’s one more great credit in Schrader’s career, alongside credits for writing Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and directing First Reformed. Now we’ll just have to wait for the inevitable Taylor Swift biopic to see if he was also responsible for the title The Life of a Showgirl.