Arts of War on the Web

One of the highlights of Vietnam Veterans of America’s last National Leadership Conference, in July 2008 in Greenville, South Carolina, was the screening of the stirring documentary The Way We Get By presented by the filmmakers, Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet.

The film, which will have its national broadcast premier on Wednesday, November 11 (Veterans Day) at 9:00 p.m. on PBS’s always-excellent documentary series POV, looks at three people in Bangor, Maine, (Bill Knight, Joan Gaudet, and Jerry Mundy, below) who greet American troops flying to and from Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Since its showing in Greenville the film has received rave reviews and won many film festival awards. You can see a streaming video trailer, an interview with the filmmakers, as well as a list of related websites, organizations and books, lesson plans, and discussion guides at http://www.pbs.org/pov/waywegetby/ and www.pbs.org/pov

The Way We Get By will be available for sale on DVD at www.thewaywegetbymovie.com beginning Nov. 3. The price is $19.99.

The enlightening documentary, A Village Called Versailles, which has appeared on PBS and is being show theatrically in several cities this fall, is now available on DVD. This award-winning doc tells several stories, all of which have to do with the eastern New Orleans community of Versailles, which is home to thousands of Vietnamese families—refugees who came here following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, and their children and grandchildren.

Versailles is named for the modest Versailles Gardens apartment complex where the first refugees settled in the late seventies. This thriving virtually all-Vietnamese community, about 20 miles east of the French Quarter, is anchored by Our Lady of Vietnam Catholic church, and had been a community that few people knew about. Until Hurricane Katrina, that is, when the area was flooded out and its residents were forced to flee (some to the same refugee camp in Arkansas where the were sent when they arrived here).

The community hit the local spotlight, though, months later when the city of New Orleans decided to dump mountains of debris in a landfill right next door. The documentary, ably produced and directed by S. Leo Chiang, focuses on how the community rallied against the landfill, and, in the process, came into the limelight.

Oliver (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, et al.) Stone is at work on his latest film, a sequel to his first post-Platoon movie, Wall Street, which came out late in 1987. That movie, in which Michael Douglas starred as the unscrupulous wheeler-dealer Gordon Gekko, won critical and popular acclaim, and a Best Actor Oscar for Douglas. Charlie Sheen, who had the lead in Platoon, starred opposite Douglas as a young, hungry stockbroker.

Douglas will reprise his role in the new movie, which Stone says will try to capture the greedy Wall Street culture prior to the most recent economic unpleasantness, as the first film did with that mid-eighties Wall Street milieu.

“When Gekko comes out of prison in the beginning of this movie, he essentially has to redefine himself, redefine his character,” Stone said in a Sept. 9 The New York Times interview. “He’s looking for that second chance.” The on-line component of the NYT article includes a video of Stone talking about the films.

Standing O Productions, a new theater company in Severna Park, Maryland, will be present its version of the Vietnam War play Tracers Nov. 13-22. The play, first put together by a group of Vietnam veterans in Los Angeles in 1980, is a collage of interrelated scenes that follows the lives of a group of grunts as they move from basic training, on to combat in Vietnam, and to their homecoming.

For more info on dates, times and ticket prices, go to www.standingoproductions.org or call 410-647-8412

To learn more about the background of the play, check out the excellent 1985 New York Times article that ran when the play opened at the Public Theater.

Citrus College in Glendora, California, is now offering its entire Boots to Books curriculum, which is aimed at helping young, returning veteran college students, to any college or university for a moderate charge, which goes to help support the College’s veterans program and organization. For more information go to the Boots to Books website:

The Citrus College program is run by Bruce O. Solheim, an Army veteran and history professor who has taught the history of the war on the collegiate level for fourteen years. Solheim also serves as the College’s Volunteer Veterans Coordinator.

Peg Mullen, an unassuming Iowa farm wife and mother who became a passionate national antiwar activist following the death of her son Michael in 1970 in Vietnam, died Oct. 2. She was 92 years old.

Michael Mullen’s death from friendly fire and his mother’s reaction to it was the subject of the best-selling 1976 book, Friendly Fire, by C.D.B. Bryan, as well as a memorable 1979 TV movie in which Carol Burnett played Peg Mullen.

Here’s my review of Mrs. Mullen’s 1995 memoir, Unfriendly Fire, which appeared in the August-September 1995 VVA Veteran:

The term “friendly fire” has never been the same since the publication of C.D.B. Bryan’s 1976 book of the same name. That book–and the riveting 1979 TV movie starring Carol Burnett–told the painful story of the aftermath of the death of Michael Mullen, an Americal Division infantryman who was killed in his sleep in February 1970 by an errant American artillery round. The book and movie focused on Michael Mullen’s mother, Peg, of Waterloo, Iowa and her wrenching personal and political reactions to her son’s tragic death.

Peg Mullen tells her version of the story in Unfriendly Fire: A Mother’s Memoir (University of Iowa, 156 pp., $22.95, hardcover; $12.95, paper), a very moving, unique contribution to the literature of the Vietnam experience. This readable, short book opens a window on what Peg Mullen aptly calls “the forgotten people in the Vietnam War,” the families of those who were killed. The chapter titled “Your Son is Dead”–in which Peg Mullen recounts the events of February 21, 1970, when she and her husband were notified of their son’s death–is beautifully (and heartbreakingly) written.

“A Day in the Life of an American Soldier in Vietnam,” a photograph and artifact exhibit, went on display last week as part of the ongoing 20th Anniversary celebration of the Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University. The exhibit will be up until mid December at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Building on the Texas Tech University campus.

The exhibit illuminates the elements of a typical day in the life of a U.S. soldier during the Vietnam War thought some 25 black and white photographs and a selected number of artifacts. The exhibit is self guided, free, and open to the public, Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m until 5:00 p.m.

A top-quality multi-media (photos, audio and words) page on The New York Times’ nytimes.com called “Veterans’ Voices” came on line on October 1. Produced by Derrick Henry and Catrin Einhorn, it features the voices of men who served with Alpha Troop of the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam in 1969-70, talking about their experiences during and after the war.

Take a look at
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/01/20091001-vietnam-audio.html?hp