Basil Poledouris(1945-2006)

Basil Poledouris was born on August 21, 1945 in Kansas City. He started taking piano lessons when he was 7 years old. Eventually, he went on to become a student at USC, where he studied the arts of directing, cinematography, editing, sound and, of course, music. It was also at USC he met John Milius and Randal Kleiser, both acclaimed directors with whom he would work in the future. Even though Basil had already composed music to John Milius' much talked about Villit vuodet (1978), his real breakthrough came in 1982 when he composed the score to Milius' epic fantasy movie, Conan Barbaari (1982). The powerful themes that Basil created for this movie opened the eyes of the movie industry, as well as the public, and it is arguably one of the best soundtracks of the 80s. Basil went on to make soundtracks for such movies as: RoboCop (1987) (the second Paul Verhoeven movie of many for which he has composed, the first being 1985's Lihaa ja verta (1985)), Vaarojen maa (1989) (for which he won an Emmy), Jäähyväiset kuninkaalle (1989), Punaisen Lokakuun metsästys (1990), Free Willy - Pelastakaa Willy (1993), in Paul Verhoeven's Starship troopers - Universumin sotilaat (1997) with Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards and Kurjat (1998).