Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July (1989): Movie Trailer and a 19-Minute Recording of the Highlights of John Williams’ Original Score

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

When I saw Born on the Fourth of July in 1989, although I had seen the wildly overrated propaganda movie Platoon (1986), and knew Oliver Stone was a communist, and Stone’s mockery of the patriotism of the working-class inhabitants of Massapequa, Long Island, was obvious, I still thought this picture was one of the greatest masterpieces I’d ever seen. I have yet to view it a second time, and so I have no idea how well it will hold up to repeat viewings, which is the acid test of a masterpiece.

However, I have heard John Williams’ original score many times. My girlfriend at the time bought me the recording for Chanukah, along with a bunch of other movie scores. I played it many time before a Central American “man with a van” stole all of my music when he moved me in 1994, and in recent years, I’ve played it many times on youtube. Williams’ score holds up as a masterpiece of movie music.

Here’s how I think this score came about. Stone had become obsessed with the despairing “Adagio for Strings,” composed by a young Samuel Barber, which he used extensively in Platoon, especially at the end. He must have told Williams to do something like Barber, and something Coplandesque. And so, Williams did.

The score opens with a lone, martial trumpet, signifying the death of warriors, then goes to Barber, and then, at 3:02, segues to the Coplandesque theme. At 3:19-3:23, you’ll hear what my mom has called—probably thinking of “Appalachian Spring”—Copland’s “wild sweetness.”

That’s not to say that Williams ripped off Copland. Aaron Copland has inspired more great, original American movie music than any other composer.

For the rest of this recording, the different themes I identified above flow in an out of each other.

Note that while Aaron Copland’s music was in the American grain, and much of it was patriotic, Copland was himself a communist, with a small “c.” Thus, while writing a Coplandesque theme for a communist movie may go against the spirit of the man’s music, it unfortunately does not go against the spirit of the man.
 

Trailer for Oliver Stone's film, Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
 



Uploaded on Jun 14, 2008 by WorleyClarence.
 

Best of "Born on the Fourth of July" Soundtrack
 



Published on Apr 27, 2014 by Lucky 70 Music.

The best of John Williams' Oscar nominee "Born on the Fourth of July."