Kenny Ornberg: OK, so I was a farm kid. I moved up here to go to go to St. Thomas, the college of knowledge, and I became friends with a girl named Laurie MacArthur who worked for Jam. There was a Minneapolis office for Jam Company Seven here, and I think to this day, Jam has produced every single Bruce Springsteen concert that's been in Minneapolis. Anyway, I was friendly with her, and she knew that I had a really bad, terrible Bruce Springsteen problem. I mean, it's embarrassing if I think about all the money that I spent on bootlegs and import records. And this was obviously before the internet. But she was kind enough to give me second-row seats for that show, and that was more than enough for me.

But then she called me the day before the show, in the morning, and said, "Don't say anything to anyone. I need you down at the Civic Center" — it was Civic Center then obviously, not Xcel [Energy Center] — she said, "I need you at the backstage door at the Civic Center at one o'clock. Don't tell anyone." And this was a day before the show, and I thought it has to have something to do with Bruce Springsteen. So I followed her rules, and I was down there probably at 12:30, and there was about 30 of us, maybe 40 of us there.

Jill Riley: Like, "Why are we here? Do we get to meet him?"

Kenny Ornberg: Exactly. Yeah. Or maybe watch a rehearsal or something, soundcheck. And we got let in. And Brian De Palma, the director of, at that time, Carrie and Dressed to Kill and Scarface, those were his big movies at the time — and this could have been the first real big director, because MTV was brand-new then too. Was there, and he greeted us, and he said, "We're going to film a video for 'Dancing in the Dark.'" So that — I'm going to say there's 40 of us there. Ninety percent of that video was shot that afternoon, the day before, and then we were all told to wear the same clothes, and then we meet side stage and go to the exact same spots that we were in, and he did the song before an intermission, then took a break, and then came out after intermission and did the song again. And so you see the panoramic shots of the of the full stadium?

Jill Riley: Yeah.

Kenny Ornberg: That's less than 10 percent of that video. That video was shot almost entirely the day before with smoke machines and, you know, different camera angles, and we were there for between six and eight hours.

Jill Riley: That's incredible. And you know, another part of that story, I mean the memorable part of that story for anyone who watched that video on MTV because it was in heavy rotation, there was a, well, an actress that wasn't as well-known at the time, unless you watched soap operas in the afternoon or wherever, but this was before the days of Friends. But there was a, well, a famous Courteney Cox that was the star of that video — I mean, outside of Bruce Springsteen, starring in it — but she was the one that was pulled on stage to dance with The Boss. Can you talk about, you know, Courteney Cox, and what you remember of her in that video?

Kenny Ornberg: Yes, she — well, as I mentioned, we were there all day — and there weren't that many of us, so we got to know each other. She had said to me, "I don't know much about Bruce. Does he write his own songs?"

Jill Riley: What was your reaction?

Kenny Ornberg: Well, I was gobsmacked. I thought, oh my god. And then I found out that she and the two girls on each side of her, those three girls were models, and they were flown in for this. All the rest of us were all fans, and they got picked probably because of the way they looked. And I think she had done maybe a Mentos commercial or something prior to that. And so take after take, she was not as enthusiastic as Brian De Palma wanted her to be. So I would say maybe after a handful of takes, he yelled "Cut!" and kind of borderline chastised her for not being exuberant enough or excited enough to be up there dancing with The Boss. And then she picked it up a little bit.

"I will say," Ornberg continues, "and this is, if you are Bruce Springsteen fan, this, this will be good for you to hear — because it was tedious. You know, you hear stories about, 'Oh, it's not that glamorous on a movie set,' or, you know, 'It's hurry up and wait, and there's a lot of sitting around.' But it was certainly not boring, but it was a long day, and at the end of the day, after doing take after take after take, road crew wheeled out carts full of ice and beer and pop, and Bruce played the Detroit Medley, gave us like a little 20-minute concert to say thanks. And then he walked around and took pictures, like the one that you saw of me, and he was just the coolest. It was was pretty great."