Vietnam War monument dedicated at Nixon Library

By City News Service By City News Service

Hollywood’s biggestbudget films, according to the report. Researchers found that 60% of the films directed by white men had budgets of $30 million or more, while 56% of theatrical films directed by white women had budgets of less than $20 million.

“The pandemic has normalized diversity on screen, not just in theaters but at home,” report co-author Michael Tran, a UCLA doctoral candidate, said in a statement. “Audiences tuned in. If Hollywood reverses course on diversity in the theaters, they’ll lose audiences to streaming and to international offerings.”

According to the report, six of the top 10 theatrical films in 2022 had audiences that were at least 50% minority moviegoers.

“Hollywood has to look itself in the mirror and identify the concrete practices that actually work to move the needle on the industry’s diversity problem,” Darnell Hunt, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost, and co- founder of the report, said in a statement. “Diversity should not be considered a luxury but a necessity. Audiences of color are the bedrock of Hollywood and key to the bottom line as research shows once again that audiences prefer diverse casts.”

The report found that theatrical films released last year with casts that were between 31% and 40% minority had the highest median global box office receipts, while films with casts that were less than 11% minority “were the poorest performers.”

Amonument commissioned by the Richard Nixon Foundation memorializing all members of the U.S. armed forces in the Vietnam War was dedicated Wednesday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

The 6-foot-2-inch, 500-pound bronze monument with a traditional patina depicts a Marine running through the jungles of Vietnam in 1971-72 when Nixon was president. The Marine is carrying an M16 A1 rifle with a birdcage tip and wearing a twolayered helmet with bug juice, a rolled-up long-sleeve shirt, bandoleer with ammunition pouches, trousers, mud-covered jungle boots, and has a towel around his neck.

The monument also depicts three canteens, a backpack, flack jacket, hand grenades with holders, over-the-shoulder gun belt and pockets full of other supplies.

A Marine was chosen to be depicted because of the library’s proximity to Camp Pendleton and the prevalence of the Marine community in Southern California, said Joe Lopez, the Nixon Foundation’s vice president of marketing and communications.

The research and creative process for designing the Vietnam Veterans Monument started in August when the Nixon Foundation formed a committee of Vietnam veterans, a Gold Star family member from the war, Ron Pekar, the monument’s artist, and members of the Nixon Foundation senior staff, according to Lopez.

Committee members visited the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia and the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot Museum in San Diego for research and design, Lopez said.

Pekar also made the Traveler statue at USC and “The Handoff” sculpture at the Rose Bowl.

More than 150 Vietnam veterans attended the 11 a.m. ceremony and were greeted by Robert Wilkie, the secretary of Veterans Affairs from 2018-21, and received the national official Vietnam veteran lapel pin, Lopez said.

The ceremony coincided with National Vietnam War Veterans Day and came on the 50th anniversary of the day the last U.S. combat troops departed Vietnam.