Arts of War on the Web

Welcome to “Arts of War,” Vietnam Veterans of America’s up-to-the-minute compendium of information, news and reviews about the arts—movies, television, stage plays, musicals, music, dance, popular and fine arts, and more—that deal with Vietnam veterans and the Vietnam War.

This web page replaces the “Arts of War” column that ran in Vietnam Veterans of America’s national magazine, The VVA Veteran, from 1986-2009. That popular column was written by The VVA Veteran’s arts editor, Marc Leepson, who continues that work on this web site.

We encourage feedback. Please email your comments, questions, and suggestions to mleepson@vva.org

Khe Sanh, 1968

You can get a look at the synopsis of the script for an as-yet unproduced film called A Grunt’s Tale at the moviebytes.com web site. The script, written by by Justine Cowan and based on a true story, centers on an African-American housekeeper for a white suburban family who helps a Marine Vietnam veteran deal with his emotional readjustment after surviving the Siege of Khe Sanh and coming home.

Cowan concieved the idea for the script after interviewing Khe Sanh veterans at their 2007 reunion. “It  been my life’s dream to see it made into a film,” Cowan told us. “It is script is a tribute to Vietnam veterans and I want to see it made.”

To contact Cowan, email juscowan19191@aol.com

“Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea” is the title of the first large exhibit of ancient Vietnamese Art in this country. It opened Feb. 2 at the Asia Society in New York City, and will be on view until May 2. The exhibit contains about 110 objects, from the first millennium BC through the 17th century. The objects are on loan from ten Vietnamese museums. This exhibit is the work of curator Nancy Tingley, who began work on this pioneering effort when she visited Vietnam in 1988. It marks the first time these works have been shown in the United States and the first time that many of them have traveled outside of Vietnam.

Objects in the exhibition include ritual bronzes, terracotta burial wares, fine gold jewelry, large-scale Hindu and Buddhist sculptures and ornaments made of jade, lapis lazuli, crystal and carnelian. The exhibit is divided into four sections, which illuminate the different roles of trade and cultural exchange in the early cultures of Dong Son in the north and Sa Huynh in central and southern Vietnam; the trading cities of Fu Nan; the polities of Champa; and the port city of Hoi An.

The Asia Society is located at 25 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), in New York City. The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. General admission is $10, seniors $7, students $5. There is free admission Friday evenings from 6:00 to 9:00.

For more info go to the Asia Society web site.

You read it here first: if you have even the slightest interest in World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps, American history, or–even more importantly–top quality TV drama, you will be glued to your TV sets for ten consecutive Sunday nights at 9:00 beginning March 14, when HBO runs the first episode of The Pacific/

Produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, this series promises to be on a par with HBO’s famed Band of Brothers series. That is, it will be superbly written, terrifically acted, beautifully filmed, and as realistic as war action gets on film.

That last part will be due primarily to our friend Dale Dye, the former Marine captain who wrote the book on high-grade movie military technical advising since he created the mini-boot camp for actors for Oliver Stone’s Platoon. Dye spent a full year on sets in Australia making sure the movie got it all right. Dye and his crew did “everything in our power to give audiences an insight to the thoughts, emotions and passions of men who faced a brutal, tenacious and unfamiliar enemy in the Pacific campaigns of World War II,” Dye said recently.

You can get a heads up on just about every aspect of the film at the web site HBO has set up to publicize the $200 million series, which depicts the war in the Pacific as fought by the men of the 1st Marine Division from the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor to the return of troops home after final victory over Japan.

Richard Curry, the former Vietnam War Navy corpsman whose novel, Fatal Light, is among the best literary treatments of the war, will be taking part in a series of workshops called “Veterans Tell Their Stories” March 12-13 at Marshall University in Huntington in Currey’s home state of West Virginia

Currey, along with Iraq War veteran and short-story writer James Mathews, will read from his work, do a round table discussion, and conduct workshops. Although the target audience is veterans of all eras, the event is open to all, and is free.

For more information, or to register in advance for a workshop, call 304-696-6637 or email vankirk@marshall.edu

Maya Lin, who designed the national Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall), was among the honorees last night, February 25, at the White House National Medal of Arts ceremonies. Lin received a 2009 National Medal of the Arts for “her profound work as an architect, artist, and environmentalist,” the official citation said. “Her vision for the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial emblemizes her deep understanding of the ways in which we respond to the world around us.”

The other awards winners included Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood, Rita Moreno, Jessye Norman, Elie Weisel, and Robert Caro, the historian who has written (and continues to write) a multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson.

The arts and the humanities “appeal to a certain yearning that’s shared by all of us,” President Obama said before awarding the medals, “a yearning for truth and for beauty, for connection and the simple pleasure of a good story.”

Sarah Wells, a student at Loughborough University in England, is writing a dissertation on the impact the media had on the Vietnam War. She is looking for input from American Vietnam veterans who, she says, “experienced the brutality of the war first hand,” and have opinions on how the news media represented the war and veterans.

If you’d like to help, email: sarahwells1@hotmail.com

And tell her you read about it here, at VVA’s Arts of War on the web page.

Time goes quickly when you’re in the upper middle age brackets, so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War classic, The Things They Carried. This simply but powerfully and evocatively written book of five linked short stories was an instant critical and popular success, remains in print and has been required reading for college and high school students since the late ’80s.

To commemorate the event, O’Brien, the former Vietnam War infantryman, will do a year-long series of readings and talks on the book. The first one will be held March 16 in Berkeley, California.

For more info on the book, on O’Brien and on his other work, along with a list of the events, go to the  Tim O’Brien homepage, a long-time labor of love put together by Marilyn Knapp Litt.

Military Times magazine staff writer C. Mark Brinkley has come up with a list of the ten best Hollywood war movies, in reaction to the fact that the American Film Institute’s list of 100 best movies has a dearth of such films.

The list, called “The Military Times top 10 American war movies that should have made the AFI’s Top 100,” includes only one Vietnam War film, Stanley Kubrick’s masterful Full Metal Jacket (featuring the amazing Lee Ermey as the drill sergeant from hell–above, center).

Here it is:

10. A Bridge Too Far (1977)

9. The Dirty Dozen (1967)

8. The Great Escape (1963)

7. Top Gun (1986)

6. Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

5. The Caine Mutiny (1954)

4. Glory (1989)

3. Black Hawk Down (2001)

2. Patton (1970)

1. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Brinkley calls FMJ “the best war movie of the past 20 years, if not all time,” and notes that “it didn’t even crack the [AFI] Top 400 ballot.”

The list is on line, and is interactive, so you can add your comments. My two cents: I’d take out Top Gun and The Great Escape, and add include Platoon and Apocalypse Now, both of which did make the original AFI Top 100 list.