Thunder Road - 2016 Sundance Winner for Best Short Film

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Watch ‘Thunder Road,’ The One-Take Short That Won Sundance

From the start, writer, director and star Jim Cummings had always thought of his short “Thunder Road” as something he’d toss up on Vimeo and share with the world. There’s been some unexpected twists and turns for the filmmaker to get to that point.

As Cummings tells it, the film very unexpectedly got into Sundance, where it then won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film. Of course, this brought some heat to the short and Cummings, which meant attention was also paid to a major question from the film: If he’d secured the rights to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” which plays during a pivotal scene. After paying $7,000 for the rights to the song so it could travel the festival circuit, Cummings was faced with a $40,000 to 50,000 licensing fee to put his short online. This prompted Cummings to take his case to Springsteen in the form of an open letter he posted on the internet.

The letter worked, and as result you can watch the short now:

https://vimeo.com/unisonla/thunderroad

Indiewire