Lord, the house lookin' like a rummage sale, yeah

May 23, 2022 9:14 AM

Is there an actual count of how many movie scenes about the Vietnam War use the song Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival?

The joke/stereotype is that there are a million movies about the Vietnam War and they all use the song Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

In my extensive research* I can only find one movie, Forest Gump, that uses this song during a scene set in the Vietnam War.

Google tells me that the song has been used in movies 19 times total, but most of these films are not actually about Vietnam.

Have we been lied to? Is this an example of a thing a comedian said once and everyone took it as fact?

I am looking for a true count of how many films use this song in a scene that takes place during the Vietnam War.

To qualify, the movie must:

• Be a drama/fictional film, not a documentary.
• Take place, or have a scene that takes place, during America's involvement in the Vietnam war.
• Not be a scene from Family Guy where they use this trope.

Guys I really have to know this it's very important because I've been thinking about it for about 20 minutes so far.

*Ten minutes of googling.

posted by bondcliff to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

The IMDB listing for John Fogerty as a soundtrack contributor shows "Fortunate Son" having been used at least 67 times. You could click into all of those and determine how many are Vietnam-related.

You might also check out this Pitchfork article: How Creedence Clearwater Revival Became the Soundtrack to Every Vietnam Movie.

This pullquote seems on the money:

...during the ’80s and early ’90s, music supervisors increasingly latched onto Creedence for two underlying reasons: legally, the music was readily obtainable, because Fogerty had signed away distribution and publishing rights to Fantasy Records (a decision he’d later regret). And culturally, the band’s roots-rock hooks functioned as a nostalgic shorthand, immediately situating scenes in the late ’60s or early ’70s. (Plenty of non-Vietnam-related films set in that era use Creedence songs for this purpose too, including Rudy, My Girl, and Remember the Titans, to name a few.)

Most Creedence songs contain no direct reference to the war (though “Run Through the Jungle” is frequently misinterpreted as such), but they do evoke a period when the war dominated American life.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:26 AM on May 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

(Not an answer to your question but a divergence into mondegreens - I always heard the line you quoted as “Roman cell”, i.e. extremely spare and unfurnished.)
posted by sesquipedalia at 9:43 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have a fairly vague memory of watching Channel One in school in the mid-90s, and they did a Vietnam War series that used, among other songs, both "Fortunate Son" and "All Along the Watchtower" as accompaniment.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:52 AM on May 23, 2022

For what it's worth, I have always heard that same trope but with the song "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield. The wikipedia page for that song says "[t]he song is a staple of period piece films about 1960s America and the Vietnam War, such as Forrest Gump, and often used as a common shorthand to quickly establish the atmosphere of 1960s counterculture movement and protests."

Here's the song in Forrest Gump. And here it is in Tropic Thunder. And here it is in Lord of War.
posted by AgentRocket at 10:08 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

While the TVTropes page for CCR does note that "if there's an Establishing Shot Montage of The Vietnam War anywhere, odds are 50% "Fortunate Son" will be the music it's set to", sadly (surprisingly?) they don't do a count themselves. It only earns a few lines as a Standard Snippet (under Recent Works), but it does deserve its own page.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 11:12 AM on May 23, 2022

For what it's worth, I have always heard that same trope but with the song "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield.

To my recollection, For What It's Worth is more likely to accompany photo montages of protests, while Fortunate Son is more directly Vietnam-related (for some reason I'm imagining somebody ziplining down from a helicopter)
posted by panama joe at 11:20 AM on May 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

While 'Time of the Season' is generally used to soundtrack hippies dancing in circles.
posted by box at 11:21 AM on May 23, 2022

"for some reason I'm imagining somebody ziplining down from a helicopter"

The scene in Forrest Gump in which "Fortunate Son" appears includes Forrest and Bubba exiting a helicopter.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:56 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: While the TVTropes page for CCR does note that "if there's an Establishing Shot Montage of The Vietnam War anywhere, odds are 50% "Fortunate Son" will be the music it's set to", sadly (surprisingly?) they don't do a count themselves.

This is my point! Everywhere I go I hear "every Vietnam movie uses Fortunate Son" but so far I think I have a count of TWO movies. Even in this thread you see "I have a vague memory..." without actual proof. That Pitchfork article linked above says "...every Vietnam movie" and while it's geared towards CCR in general, they list only two that use Fortunate Son.

My theory is that this has been used maybe twice in Vietnam movies but it has reached urban legend status. Like when people say "Yeah, that happened to a friend of my friends..." when it never actually happened at all.

Wake up, Sheeple, I'm going to blow the lid off of this whole conspiracy.
posted by bondcliff at 11:59 AM on May 23, 2022 [11 favorites]

I have a fairly vague memory of watching Channel One in school in the mid-90s, and they did a Vietnam War series that used, among other songs, both "Fortunate Son" and "All Along the Watchtower" as accompaniment.
I think The Simpsons did this too -, for a news segment with Kent Brockman. I can't remember all those vaguely similar sounds songs from their intros alone.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:09 PM on May 23, 2022