The VVA Veteran

The staff of The VVA Veteran honors and remembers those who lost their lives in service to America every day of the year--and especially today, Memorial Day.

Coming on Memorial Day, Monday, May 25, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern: Episode 48 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews the actor, director, and screenwriter Paul Sanchez, whose film and TV credits include “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Cast Away,” and “Navy SEALs,” and Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” in which he played Doc, the medic. They’ll talk about “Platoon” and “Platoon: Brothers in Arms,” the 2018 documentary Paul wrote, directed, co-produced, and appeared in that tells the story of the making of the Academy-Award-winning 1986 Vietnam War film through the eyes its actors, including Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, John C. McGinley, and Keith David.

The big Hollywood producer Steve Starkey's new coffee-table book, "On the Set of Forrest Gump", is--as the title suggests--an inside, street-level Hollywood look at how the famed film was made. Starkey, who produced the movie, includes dozens of stills that have never been in print in this book, including of the startlingly realistic Vietnam War battles scenes of the much-admired Tom Hanks movie that went on to receive six Academy Awards. Here's Arts Editor Marc Leepson's review just posted on Books in Review II: https://vvabooks.wordpress.com/2026/05/04/on-the-set-of-forrest-gump-by-steve-starkey/