How a YouTube employee landed a role in the Bruce Springsteen biopic

Late last year, Mike Chiavaro began showing up to work with what he describes as “gigantic sideburns.” It was an unusual look for the manager of YouTube’s Music Content Operations, who generally keeps his face fuzz tidy. Colleagues in the office noticed: “I told people I’d lost a bet,” he says with a laugh. Little did they know Mike had actually won something big.

Shortly before sprouting his new side whiskers, Mike received a surprise phone call from a casting director for the Bruce Springsteen biopic, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” in U.S. cinemas this week. She was looking for someone to play E Street Band bassist Garry Tallent, and Mike, a lifelong bassist who’s performed with artists like Richard Marx and Derek Trucks, came highly recommended.

He’d need to shoot for four weeks over three months, she told him. The sideburns were a must, as was an NDA—though he was able to tell his manager. Mike knew hits like “Dancing in the Dark” well, thanks to his time in a wedding band and a life spent a stone’s throw from New Jersey, where Springsteen grew up. “I’d been listening to and playing Bruce’s music my whole life,” Mike says. “This was like a dream.”

He put in the preparation, practicing Springsteen hits in every spare waking moment and listening to them while the family watched TV. He even picked up a 1979 Music Man black bass—the same make, model, and color used by Tallent—for filming. “It turned out Bruce and the entire band would lend us the actual instruments they were using at the time,” he says. “But it’s nice to have it.”

He first met “The Boss” himself at an early rehearsal. After watching the movie’s E Street Band play for the first time, the rock legend gave them feedback and cheered everyone on. “That was a real confidence boost,” Mike says. Throughout the shoot, Springsteen was a constant, friendly presence.

His most intense day came while filming “Born in the USA.” “The director wanted it to be the sequence that people remembered when they walked out of the movie,” Mike says. “They shot the whole song 40-50 times with one camera that moved between band members.” Mike and the drummer (Brian Chase from the band, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs) played so hard their hands bled. “We’d have to wipe the blood off the instruments between takes,” he says.

With the sideburns long gone, Mike is making plans to see it multiple times with various friends and family. And he’s ready for an encore. “Would I do this kind of thing again?” he asks. “Hell yeah.”