A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Oliver Stone's 1986 Oscar-winning Platoon is, even after 32 years, one of the best movies about the Vietnam War. Based on Stone's true-life experiences as a young infantryman who served "in-country" with the 25th Infantry Division in 1967, Platoon began the trend of combat films about Vietnam ( Hamburger Hill, Charlie 84MoPic ) that spanned the late 1980s and paved the way for more realistic combat films about any war, including Saving Private Ryan . Platoon was, of course, well-acted, directed magnificently and photographed in such a way that viewers left the theater feeling as though they, too, had been "in the bush" for a combat tour of duty. Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, and Tom Berenger created indelible characters in their portrayals of Sgt. Elias, Pvt. Taylor, and Sgt. Barnes, the trinity upon which the tale of Stone's film is centered. But adding its own emotional firepower is the spare but effective score by composer Georges Deleru

(C) 2017 Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), Florentine Films, and PBS. (Photo Credit: PBS.org) On September 15, 2017, Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) released The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick – The Soundtrack, a 2-CD album that features 38 of the 120 music tracks used in the 10-part, 18-hour documentary that premiered two days later on the 300-member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Per the press release from UMe, the album complemented Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ The Vietnam War: The Original Score, which features 90 minutes’ worth of instrumental music composed for the most in-depth exploration of the Vietnam War yet filmed. According to the UMe public relations staff’s press release issued last August: Sarah Botstein, the senior producer on the film, said, "We are indebted to a great number of musicians, their families, agents, lawyers, technicians and others, all of whom came together to make it possible for our f