Back a few years ago, I contacted someone who knew a lot about Springsteen, and who had written up a detailed article about the scrapped Jeff Stein version of "Dancing In The Dark," prior to Brian De Palma being brought on to direct, and this person had not heard of a longer version, and had never seen it. I've searched for the long, full version of the video in archives around the web, but have only ever been able to find the standard version, which begins by showing Springsteen's foot stomping on the stage, to the beat of the song.

"NINE-MINUTE CLIP"
Last week, while searching around through the archives of Billboard Magazine, I did land on this passage in the July 21, 1984 issue, in a "Music Monitor" article written by Faye Zuckerman, which describes De Palma as "hard at work" in St. Paul the week before "on a nine-minute clip for 'Dancing In The Dark.'"

In 2017, Courteney Cox described the intro portion of the Springsteen video to Sam Jones:

So it was shot in St. Paul, Minnesota. And actually, the story was going to be a … it was a bigger story than just what you saw in the video. They filmed this… it was me and two other girls, we were buying T-shirts, we were putting on make-up in the bathroom. It was like a whole little thing about, “Oh, my God, I’m so excited about this concert – I can’t wait, I can’t wait.” And we get there and then one of us gets picked out of the audience. So they filmed all this stuff, but they didn’t show that – they just showed, you know, that part [she means the famous dancing part].

Meanwhile, from the Deadline article by Glenn Garner:

A decade before Monica Geller came into our living rooms, Courteney Cox was just Bruce Springsteen‘s biggest fan.

The Friends alum threw it back to her appearance in Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 music video for ‘Dancing in the Dark’ as she jumped on a TikTok trend that asks parents how they danced during the decade.

“1980’s dancing…in the dark,” Cox captioned the video.

In the clip, she begins dancing to the 1984 synth-pop hit ‘Smalltown Boy’ by Bronski Beat, which is commonly used with the social trend.

Looking uncomfortable during her dance, Cox then strips off her hoodie to reveal the same Springsteen t-shirt she wore in the “Dancing in the Dark” video as the track changes and she recreates her dance.

Cox was 20 years old when she was selected by director Brian De Palma from a casting call for the video, which was filmed at the opening night of Springsteen’s Born in the USA Tour in Saint Paul, Minnesota and featured The Boss pulling her out of the crowd to dance on stage with him.

Cox, the youngest of four, was raised in Birmingham, Alabama, in an area she only now appreciates for its rolling hills and beautiful countryside. When she was 10, her parents divorced, and her father moved away. And as her older brother and two older sisters began moving out, she grew even closer with her mother, who became her best friend. “Man, she was a great mom,” says Cox, who shared all the gritty details of her teenage life with her mother. “I didn’t want to sneak and go behind her back. Whatever trouble I got into, I wanted her to know so we could have a really close relationship—because when your parents get divorced, you want that.”

Her father, Richard, installed swimming pools in Florida; Cox recalls that her mother, also named Courteney, answered phones at a psychiatric office and “worked at, like, a Stein Mart, and then I think she got fired because she wanted to play bridge or something.” She was simply not a career woman, Cox says. “There was no part of her that was a go-getter. She was a Southern, sweet, sweet woman. I’m the opposite of my mom in that way. I was always really a workaholic.”

At 13, Cox got a job selling candy to raise money for a foundation. In high school, she worked at a pool store. And at summer camp, she took to the stage, once playing Anna in The King and I. But Cox didn’t realize she could build a career as an actress until she got an agent in New York. There, she modeled, booked a commercial for Tampax, played a debutante named Bunny on As the World Turns and nabbed the part that launched her career.

It was 1984 when Cox was famously cast to be pulled onstage to dance with Bruce Springsteen during a live concert for his “Dancing in the Dark” video—which, in a small sign of her scream-queen career to come, was directed by Brian De Palma, who was behind the horror hit Carrie. There were tons of girls at the audition, recalls Cox, “stretching and…dancers! And I was like, ‘Ohhh, I’m not in the right place.’” When De Palma asked her to dance in his office, “I got so embarrassed,” she says, “because I love to dance, but, like, freestyle.” She was cast with two other girls—but only one would be getting onstage in Saint Paul, Minnesota, for the concert. The day or so before, she met the Boss for the first time with De Palma. “I remember they both had the flu, or had colds, and they weren’t feeling great,” she recalls. And when one of them said, ‘OK, so when Courteney goes up onstage,’ I went, ‘Oh, what?!’” And she’s remained on the world’s stage ever since.

Below is a transcript of the scene from the episode called Breakdown, as pictured in this post:

Jules: Oh, you got your yearbook.

Travis: Besides my senior photo, there’s like one picture of me, and it’s with Mr. Goolsbey, the creepy woodshop teacher.

Jules: [laughs] Why do you have your hands on his breasts?

Travis: Because I was pretending to push him into the bandsaw, but they cropped that part out.

Jules: Bummer for you, dude. What happened to Mr. I-don’t-care-about-high-school?

Travis: What was I supposed to say? I didn’t make any mark at all.

Jules: The only thing that matters is that you got through it. It’s not like I made some big splash in high school.

Travis: Really!? Because I got your yearbook…

Jules: [nervous laughter] Well, we don’t need to look through that, I mean, I’m barely in it.

Travis: [opening book] Look—inside cover, you as the prom queen.

Jules: Yeah, I got 98% of the vote, but, you know, whatever. And it’s only one thing. It doesn’t mean I was super cool.

Travis: Is this you dancing on stage with Bruce Springsteen?

Jules: Yeah, that was super cool. [she starts dancing like they did in the video]

Travis: [disgusted] Stop it.

Jules: [still dancing] I’m sorry. [she turns and dances out of the room]