Re-’Born’ in July

Universal is going to great lengths--an extra half-million dollars worth, sources tell us--to give an authentic look to the climactic 1976 Democratic Convention sequence in producer-director Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July.” Late last month, Stone assembled Tom Cruise--starring as anti-Vietnam War activist Ron Kovic--and 6,000 extras to re-shoot the sequence at the Forum in Inglewood.

The footage, which has Kovic delivering a conciliatory address to the convention, was originally shot in Dallas last January with a crowd of only 600, due to budget limitations, a source said. When Universal executives viewed a rough cut, they reportedly wanted “bigger and better.”

Makeup artists went to work on Cruise, re-creating his Kovic look--mustache and thinning hair. Stone, who co-wrote the script with Kovic, finished the re-filming in one day.

The film is due Dec. 22.