March of the Astronauts

(I'll get back to the love triangle in a future entry)

In 1983 there was a movie entitled The Right Stuff about the men who became America's first astronauts. In that movie, there is a scene in which the first seven he-men astronauts are shown walking together in slow motion while Bill Conti's music plays a triumphant march-like theme. We see our heroes, on which America has heaped our dreams of glory in winning the space race against the Communist Soviets.

It appears, however, that Conti's music isn't exactly original. The theme, according to Robert Greenberg, comes from the first movement of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. (I've heard both, the resemblance can't be coincidence).

How ironic; this music that celebrates America's astronauts was actually written by a Russian, homosexual pedaphile.