When the 2000 film 13 Days was in development there were assumptions at the movie studio that Kevin Costner would play the part of president John F Kennedy. However Costner felt he could give the audience a grittier perspective by playing the part of Special Assistant to the President Kenneth O’Donnell, a trusted aid to the Kennedys who, according to a television interview with Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara, actually played no advisory role in the crisis whatsoever.
In an earlier blog I featured a film-making technique wherein dialog is intentionally drowned out by the music score because the emotional tone of the scene is more important than the actual words being spoken.
Rent this movie, and watch the final scene where Kevin Costner’s character takes a moment to reflect on what was saved (*claimed under Fair Use):
Composer Trevor Jones’s brilliant orchestral score gets much louder than what Jack & Bobby Kennedy are discussing on the Oval Office patio. Great stuff.
Historian Ernest R. May has called the Cuban Missile Crisis ” probably the greatest international crisis in all of human experience.” Royalty free patriotic music like Jones’s score can be found at MusicRevolution.com.
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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with over 15,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of musicians mbielenberg@musicrevolution.com.
