A pivotal scene in the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson-led The Smashing Machine features the iconic Bruce Springsteen song from Born to Run, “Jungleland.”
It is played in the background of a heated argument between Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) and Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt). Director Benny Safdie brilliantly uses the fable of the Magic Rat and Barefoot Girl to enhance the scene. Clarence Clemons' iconic saxophone solo blares as the fight intensifies, and it reaches its crescendo as the song does.
“It's one of those things, by the way, [that] you feel is a Benny Safdie signature thing; how he incorporates music and the specificity behind it,” Johnson praised.
For Safdie, this is just how he digests music.
“I listen to music to understand what I'm feeling,” Safdie explained. “That's just what I do. And that's one of those sons where it's really just so intense and so special.”
He is “grateful” they were allowed to use Springsteen's iconic song in his movie. One line that stuck out to Safdie was, “[Man,] there's an opera out on the turnpike.”
“Everywhere you look, there is that level of drama and excitement,” Safdie explained. “And that's just everything that I kind of believe in movies and in characters and just life, you know?”
There is another line that Safdie loved from the last part of the song. It's when Springsteen sings, “No one [watches] when the ambulance [pulls] away.”
“It's just such a powerful song. There's so much meaning in the saxophone solo and the guitar,” Safdie said of Springsteen's “Jungleland.”
How Benny Safdie wrote Bruce Springsteen's “Jungleland” into The Smashing Machine
When he wrote the script, Safdie wrote in where the song's lyrics would come into the scene: “I knew that the two things had to be together.”
However, when editing the movie, he had an epiphany. Safdie realized how important it would be to use the whole song. This was because he wanted the characters' actions to follow the song, blurring the lines for audiences.
“It was in the edit that I realized I'm actually gonna play the whole song from the beginning all the way through 'cause I realized I needed the characters to also be listening to the music as well as the audience so that it kind of just blurred the line between the two and just brought you into the scene,” he said.
How Emily Blunt processed acting through the “painful” scene
When preparing for their roles, Johnson and Emily Blunt spoke with the real-life Mark Kerr and Dawn Staples. This helped, especially for Blunt, who revealed they filmed The Smashing Machine's “Jungleland” scene in one take. Staples even discussed the “Jungleland” fight in the movie, giving Blunt more insight into her mind.
“She [was] going through my mind a lot — was really dwelling in me the whole time, ” Blunt conceded. “And she was so vulnerable and open with their story and the entire spectrum of that story.
“She did, in one of our conversations, share with me what happened that night, and really, what you see is what happened,” Blunt continued. “I think that level of pain and drama and intensity that they experienced, we had to try to honor it as best we could.”
Blunt then revealed that she gets “nervous” before scenes like that because “you're just bracing for impact as to where you're gonna have to go, and you don't really know how much you're gonna get there.”
There is a “great unknown” that Blunt, Johnson, or Safdie knew. “You've gotta put your feet to the fire,” Blunt explained. “But I think [since] we were armed with all of this nuance that we had from Mark and Dawn, that really sailed us through.”
Benny Safdie's “spontaneous” set environment helped Blunt and Johnson out
She also praised Safdie for his environment on set. Blunt described it as “truly fiction,” and it “just vaporizes and it feels very real and very spontaneous.”
As an actor, this can be equally “exciting and unnerving.” Once you reach the heights of those emotions, “it's hard to come down,” Blunt said with a chuckle.
Blunt, Johnson, and Safdie sat on the bathroom floor for “like an hour” following the filming of the “Jungleland” fight. It was that intense for them. “We were just like sitting there crying together,” Safdie chimed in.
Once the tears were dried, Safdie told Blunt and Johnson that one take was enough. “Benny was like, ‘It's so painful to watch this, and you guys did it, and you guys accessed the hurt, and I'm hurt watching you, and we don't need to do it again,'” Blunt recalled.
The Smashing Machine will be released on Oct. 3.
