Bruce Springsteen, Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler and the Golden Globes

If you were watching last night's Golden Globe Awards, you may have noticed two men who looked like they'd crashed the wrong party. One had long hair, a chain wallet, and shades. The other, a long, hard look of a cobra. One wore a moustache and goatee; the other, a small soul patch. The combined facial hair, come to think of it, would result in a menacing mug.

Despite the tough guy appearances, though, Mickey Rourke and Bruce Springsteen are two of the more gentle souls you'll find roaming the lanscape of music and film. Rourke's struggles are well-documented; a promising career held back by numerous addictions. An industry that had given up on him. Forays into bizarre pursuits like boxing which served to only lower him in the esteem of the public eye.

Yet the dude don't give up. Buoyed by an enthusiastic agent (deservedly thanked during Rourke's speech last night), Rourke's career started to lift, and like a Springsteen-penned character, he began to walk the long road back to redemption. Rourke stars in The Wrestler, a Darren Aronofsky film that tells the tale of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, an aging wrestler desperate to reconnect with an estranged daughter and to let love, and not pain, guide his life.

It's a theme Springsteen has explored on albums such as The Rising, Tunnel Of Love and Devils & Dust, among others, and which is why Rourke found himself writing to his old pal Bruce, asking if he'd be interested in contributing any music. According to this Ain't It Cool interview with Aronofsky, Bruce read the script, liked it, and called Aronofsky and Rourke to say he'd be interested. So Rourke and Aronofsky attended one of Springsteen's summer shows at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, Aronfsky writes:

And then we went back stage after the show, and the next thing I know I'm standing in the Giants locker room with The Boss and Mickey. Mickey introduces us and then he says, "I know you've got business to talk over; I'm going to leave you." So suddenly I'm in the Giants locker room alone with Bruce Springsteen after just seeing him rock out 80,000 people. And I literally got stage fright for the first time in my life. [laughs] He grabbed his guitar and motioned for me to sit down. So I sat down, and I didn't know what to say. And slowly but surely my chin started going lower and lower toward my body. I was like, "Oh my God, I'm having stage fright in front of Bruce Springsteen."

So we just started talking, and he was a very, very cool guy. And he said, "Yeah, I wrote down a few things, and he pulled out a spiral notebook and played the song, and it was amazing, just amazing.

And how much did Bruce charge for the song? Nothing - it was on the house. (Similarly, according to Rourke, Axl Rose charged nothing for Sweet Child O' Mine to be used in the film.) And this wasn't Springsteen's first Golden Globe for Best Original Song; in 1994, Bruce (and his light-stepping, drum machine beat) took home the prize for the haunting and ethereal Streets Of Philadelphia. Given the prolific nature of late-era Springsteen (his second E Street album in a year and a half, Working On A Dream, with The Wrestler as an added bonus track, is out on the 27th), it'd be no surprise to see more new Bruce tunes up on the silver screen. He need not wait fifteen years for his next award.

Watch Mickey Rourke discuss Bruce's involvement in The Wrestler here. View the trailer for The Wrestler here. Purchase the song on iTunes here.