Listening to Stanley Kubrick (13 page)

Although
Dr. Strangelove
did not have the same potential to sell soundtracks as did
Lolita
, music still formed part of the promotion of the film. Columbia released a 45 rpm record on Colpix with the A side as “Theme from Dr. Strangelove” and B side called “Love That Bomb.” The latter song, which does not appear in the film, is a comedic early-sixties doo-wop song. At about a minute and a half in length, it belongs to a genre known as the novelty record. The artist on the 45 is listed as Dr. Strangelove and the Fallouts. Colpix also planned to release a 45 of Vera Lynn’s version of “We’ll Meet Again” in conjunction with the film.
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The soundtrack album for
Dr. Strangelove
is actually a compilation album of songs from Colpix soundtracks. Notable on the album is a cue from Maurice Jarre’s score to
Lawrence of Arabia
. The only song from
Dr. Strangelove
on the album is the so-called “Theme from Dr. Strangelove,” which is Laurie Johnson’s arrangement of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” Missing from the album are “We’ll Meet Again,” “Try a Little Tenderness,” and the popular music that Captain Mandrake finds playing on a transistor radio (clueing him in that there is no actual nuclear emergency at hand).

Although the music in
Dr. Strangelove
is perhaps less integral than one might see in the later films like
2001
,
A Clockwork Orange
, and
The Shining
, interviewer Michel Ciment suggested that it was in
Dr. Strangelove
that Kubrick began to use “music as a cultural reference”;
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however, one could argue that this is something Kubrick did very skillfully in
Lolita
. In either case, Kubrick’s relationship with the music in his films was about to change greatly with
2001.
But more than twenty years after
Dr. Strangelove
, Kubrick would revisit the same kinds of cultural musical references as he did in the 1967 “nightmare comedy.” There is no Kubrick film that uses popular music as a cultural reference point more intelligently than 1987’s
Full Metal Jacket.

Full Metal Jacket

For his first project after the horror film
The Shining
, Kubrick once again drew upon a war story, this time set in a marine boot camp and then in Vietnam. Kubrick’s source material for this film was the 1979 novel
The Short-Timers
by Gustav Hasford. Screenwriter Michael Herr, who had written the Vietnam memoir
Dispatches
, also contributed personal anecdotes to the film. Kubrick follows a platoon of marines from the beginning of their training to their deployment into a war zone. Kubrick drew primarily on popular music for the soundtrack. Additional original underscore was provided by Kubrick’s daughter Vivian, writing under the pseudonym Abigail Mead.
Full Metal Jacket
was Kubrick’s first film in more than a decade to eschew classical or art music as part of the score. As Kubrick discovered in
Dr. Strangelove
, popular music can be very powerful in the two main ways it creates meaning for the viewer: “Through its musical features (rhythm, melody, lyrics, etc.) and through the connotations such songs may suggest to the viewer, who is supposed to share the culture that has produced them.”
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At the time of the film’s release, many of the viewers of
Full Metal Jacket
were old enough to remember both the war and the music Kubrick chose for his soundtrack.

Synopsis and Score Description for
Full Metal Jacket

The music for the film’s opening, a country song by Johnny Wright called “Hello, Vietnam,” sets the tenor of the film, much like Purcell’s
Funeral Music for Queen Mary
does in
A Clockwork Orange
and the
Dies Irae
does in
The Shining
. Kubrick shows the characters getting their heads shaved at the beginning of basic training. Kubrick chose not to have the sound of the razors at all on the soundtrack, preferring instead to have the music be the only sound. Each of the character’s expression is a little different from the others, some obviously upset about the loss of their hair (for some, a symbol of their individuality) and others seemingly indifferent. During the first part of the film, when the protagonist Private Joker attends boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, the aural landscape of the film consists of the booming voice of the senior drill instructor, played by real-life gunnery sergeant R. Lee Ermey, and orchestrated military cadences.

The very first scene of the film, after the haircuts, is the introduction of the gunnery sergeant. There is no exposition before this, and we are thrust into boot camp without any ado. The gunnery sergeant sings cadences and the platoon echoes him. After a few scenes of training, drums take over the cadence and the training continues. The drum attacks are sharp, making them sound at times more like gunshots than drums. The men of the platoon are able to move with the rhythm of the cadence, but one marine named Leonard—although he is called “Private Pyle” in reference to Gomer Pyle—cannot seem to get into the rhythm of it; he is falling behind. For scenes of Private Joker teaching Private Pyle, there are percussive cadences with distant-sounding brass. On the shooting range, sounds of gunshots overtake music on the soundtrack.

The soundtrack’s first ominous cue from Mead comes when Private Pyle is beaten by the rest of his platoon. Music of this type will return when Pyle has a mental breakdown. Similar cues appear when the platoon is in Vietnam. The intimation of this repetition suggests that the war begins for this platoon when they must turn against one of their own for the good of the many. Other musical moments include the platoon singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus at Christmas, and graduation, which features a band version of the Marine Corps Theme Song (played by the Goldman Band).

On the last night of basic training, Private Joker takes fire watch, and an ominous cue called “Leonard” plays. It features percussive sounds played at irregular intervals and an unpredictable melodic line. Underneath, there is what sounds like breathing, almost like the sound of a respirator in a hospital. The music is tense and uneasy. Joker finds Private Pyle in the head, loading the magazine for his rifle. When the gunnery sergeant comes in, the distant and indistinct melody gets louder. Pyle shoots the sergeant and then sits on a toilet and shoots himself in the mouth.

Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” provides the transition from the first part of the film—ending with Private Pyle’s murder-suicide—to Vietnam. It begins as a prostitute walks toward Joker. This could be her theme song, this woman with an attitude, but more likely the boots belong to these soldiers who are walking through Vietnam, who, in effect, walk “over the inhabitants of the country.”
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While the song plays, Joker haggles with the woman over her price. The song fades out to the sound of a helicopter and a change of scene. The Dixie Cups’ “Chapel of Love” plays on the holiday of Tet, accompanying a scene in the barracks. In both of these scenes, the music could be playing on-screen. It’s quiet under the dialogue and “Chapel of Love” fades out when the soldiers leave the barracks to fight. “Chapel of Love” seems an ironic choice since the song discusses innocent love and commitment, while on-screen a marine looks at a magazine with nude pictures. The song continues playing as the men discuss the condition of those who see battle. Some original underscore, a cue called “Ruins,” follows Joker and fellow journalist Rafterman to a mass grave.

Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs’ “Wooly Bully” accompanies the scene in which Joker meets up with Cowboy’s platoon (Cowboy was one of Joker’s friends at Parris Island). As the platoon moves through the country, again, the music seems to rise out of the sound effects of war. In this case, it is overtaken by the gunshots of battle. “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen accompanies images of journalists filming footage of soldiers in battle and of a helicopter being filled with wounded soldiers. As the platoon searches for a sniper in the film’s denouement, Mead’s musical cue “Ruins” creaks and wheezes. Again, there is no recognizable melody, only repeated sounds. Like the war itself, it is unpredictable and unsettling. A different cue, “Sniper,” is more melodic and distant and plays underneath the discussion of what to do with a dying sniper, who turns out to be a young woman. She begs to be shot, the music gaining volume and intensity with her pleas. The cue quiets down at Joker’s single gunshot.

At the end of the film, Private Joker and the surviving members of the squad march to the Perfume River singing their own version of the “Mickey Mouse Club” theme song as a kind of cadence. It is a song that seems at odds with the bombed out and burning landscape.
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Joker’s voiceover, however, explains the cheerfulness of the song, the elation after the near-death experience with the sniper. Joker says, “I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece. In short: I’m in a world of shit. Yes. But I am alive, and I am not afraid.” The soldiers singing together is a distant echo of the end of
Paths of Glory
, but in both cases it’s a restoration of the men’s humanity, a shared experience that seems to pull them back from the brink of inhumanity, cruelty, and the horrors of war. Again they “are more like children, frightened and happy to be alive, than like killing machines.”
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The final credits are accompanied by the Rolling Stones’ song “Paint It Black.”

What is so striking about the original underscore is how seamlessly it blends with the diegetic sounds of the scenes and rises up out of nowhere, like the enemy. The cues may appear at first to be sounds on-screen, but then take on structure that reveals them to be musical. When the cues are over, they can then retreat into the background again. The utilization of musical “noise” over traditional or orchestral music suits the subject matter quite well. If, as in
Paths of Glory
, melody is humanity, Mead has captured the inhumanity of war.

The commercially available soundtrack for
Full Metal Jacket
begins with R. Lee Ermey’s cadences set to a drumbeat with some help from guitar. This five-minute track was arranged by Abigail Mead (Vivian Kubrick) and Nigel Goulding and was released as a single called “Full Metal Jacket.” The soundtrack contains almost all of the popular songs from the film, including “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” and “Wooly Bully,” but the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” does not appear on the soundtrack. Mead’s cues from the film appear on the album’s second half (the B side, when it was issued on vinyl) and were performed on a Fairlight Series III synthesizer.
Full Metal Jacket
was Kubrick’s penultimate film, and it was his last powerful meditation on the nature of war.

Notes

1. Thomas M. Pryor, Hollywood Dossier,
New York Times
, February 22, 1959.

2. James Naremore,
On Kubrick
(London: British Film Institute, 2007), 17.

3. Michel Ciment,
Kubrick: The Definitive Edition
, trans. Gilbert Adair (New York: Faber and Faber, 1999), 151.

4. Interview with Gene D. Phillips, in
Stanley Kubrick Interviews
, ed. Gene D. Phillips, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 145.

5. Sanya Shoilevska Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993), 62.

6. Roger Hickman,
Reel Music: Exploring 100 Years of Film Music
(New York: Norton, 2006), 200.

7. For a complete filmography of all of North’s credits, see Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 219–224.

8. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 71.

9. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 133.

10. Gene D. Phillips and Rodney Hill, “Gerald Fried,” in
Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick
(New York: Checkmark Books, 2002), 267.

11. “Spartacus Music Notes,” revised January 21, 1960, Stanley Kubrick Archive, University of the Arts London.

12. “Music Sweeteners and New Cues,” June 1, 1960, Stanley Kubrick Archive, University of the Arts London.

13. Vincent LoBrutto,
Stanley Kubrick: A Biography
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), 175.

14. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 131.

15. Norman Kagan,
The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 79.

16. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 134.

17. Ernest Newman, in his detailed text
The Wagner Operas
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), systematically lists and names every identifiable leitmotif in Wagner’s ten major operas.

18. Mervyn Cooke,
A History of Film Music
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 81.

19. Theodor Adorno and Hans Eisler,
Composing for the Films
(London: Athlone Press, 1994), 4–6.

20. One of the rarest instruments was the ondioline, a touch-sensitive electronic keyboard instrument invented in 1941 by Georges Jenny. It could play many different timbres, everything from traditional instruments like the violin, trumpet, and bassoon to instruments like the ukulele, the so-called Arabian flute, and the mandolin. The ondioline also had a setting called “Theater Organ” and one called “Burlesque Effect.” Pianist Jean-Jacques Perrey recorded a demonstration record for Jenny in the 1950s.

21. Quoted in Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 132. The Novachord was a synthesizer developed by Hammond (famous for their organs). Hammond unveiled the instrument at the 1939 World’s Fair. It was difficult to use and fell out of favor, but its odd timbres were used in the scores for science fiction films in the 1950s.

22. Bernd Schultheis, “Expanse of Possibilities: Stanley Kubrick’s Soundtracks in Notes,”
Stanley Kubrick Catalogue
, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 2007), 268.