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Cast

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford (based on his novel "The Short-Timers")

Articles

Trigger Happy
By Jebediah Reed | Radaronline 10/06

Radar: It's hard to think of another actor so defined by a single role as you have been by Gunnery Sgt. Hartman.

R. Lee Ermey: It was film number five for me, and as far as I was concerned when I was making it, it was the one that was gonna put me on top of the heap. When you have that attitude and motivation, you get the job done with a lot of class.

One of many memorable lines is when you call your recruits "unorganized grab-asstic pieces of amphibian shit." That's almost like a line of surrealist poetry. Where'd it come from?

I wrote almost everything I said in that movie. It's just the way a drill instructor talks. I had Drill instructors in boot camp, and I was also a drill instructor for three years-that's how I would talk to recruits. I have to admit, though, that one of my more famous lines didn't come from anything I heard in the military: "I bet you're the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamnned common courtesy to give him a reach-around." I forgot my lines one day and it just came out of the sky. God sent it down to me.
That's what made Stanley Kubrick. If anyone had any idea, he wanted to hear it. If you saw Full Metal Jacket as it was written, you would understand what I'm saying.

Did you and Kubrick become close while shooting Full Metal Jacket?

Very close. Stanley called me up all the time. He'd call at three o'clock in the morning and say, "Oh, it's 10 o'clock over here." [Laughs] "Yeah, well, it's three o-fucking-clock in the morning here, Stanley. Oh well." He called me about two weeks before he died, as a matter of fact. We had a long conversation about Eyes Wide Shut. He told me it was a piece of shit and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to have him for lunch. He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him-exactly the words he used. He was kind of a shy little timid guy. He wasn't real forceful. That's why he didn't appreciate working with big, high-powered actors. They would have their way with him, he would lose control, and his movie would turn to shit.

One academic critic suggested that Sgt. Hartman had lost himself in his persona, that he couldn't distinguish his essential self from his role as a Marine drill sergeant, and that's what made him a monster.

That movie is pretty much how the military was. You have to be tough. You can't treat new recruits with kid gloves and baby 'em and coddle 'em. But one thing we didn't show in Full Metal Jacket is what happens after the platoon graduates: The DI relaxes and has a nice chat with them before he sends them off.

The same critic described Hartman's barracks as a "homoerotic paradise." Do you consider that insightful commentary?

It is! There's nothing but men in those barracks. It's nothing but id. And the marines are the only branch of the service that still doesn't train men and women together. We train men to kill and win wars, and we train women to support those men.

Media Mentions

47 total

News

"The Kubrick Look": Full Metal Jacket at the Miami Beach Cinematheque with special guest actor Gary Landon Mills ("Donlan" in the film) Who will share his stories and slideshow about working with Kubrick. 12/1/06

11/27/06

The real Brian Atene was tracked down, but refused to do interviews and claimed he hadn't seen the video because his computer's sound card didn't work. Then he appeared in a new video this week explaining the problem was he made 2 videos back then. The one on the Internet is a joke and he never sent that one in. If it is true, which I doubt, where is the real one!?

11/20/06

Brian Atene inspired others to impersonate and mock him in homemade videos pretending to be him. The most known is a fat man with a red goatie.

10/06

A 1983 audition tape by a 20 year old actor named Brian Atene born 8/16/63 appeared on YouTube. His hammy, arrogant, self-produced screen test for Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket caught on with bloggers and made a minor celebrity out of the unknown failed actor. It starts, "Good Day, Mr. Kubrick." He claims that he's the most beautiful one in the lot, he's like a young Alec Guinness, Kubrick isn't even the best director out there, the director of the Seahawk is, he should be directing 2010 like millions of Sci-Fi fans want. His favorite color is green, he's a Trekkie and he performs a piece from The Outsiders which is over the top. "I'm not gonna walk again, not even on crutches, the doctors say I broke my back, you wanna know something, I scared, I scared. It ain't enough, 20 years ain't enough. I ain't gonna cry, I ain't gonna cry man, greasers do not cry. I wouldn't mind it so much, but there ain't so many things I ain't done, so many places I ain't been. It ain't enough. 20 years on the street makes you see a lot, but not the sites you want to see. 20 years on the street you learn a lot, but not the stuff you want to learn, the wrong stuff. I ain't gonna walk again. I tell you something Pony Boy, I'm gonna miss you, I could never decide if your eyes were green or grey. You know something Pony Boy I wouldn't have notices clouds in the sky before if it wasn't for you reminding me. Seems like they weren't there before. You go when you are a kid."
The real scene with Ralph Macchio he's in a hospital in tubes and sad, unlike Brian.

Pictures

Kubrick Collection 2 DVD front

Quotes

"I was around him every day. We all thought he was going to be sort of maniacal - and he would be, at like 4 o'clock in the afternoon, at the bewitching hour, the magic hour, you know, when the light was where he wanted it. But he'd rather talk about baseball or chess." Jon Stafford said of Kubrick

"Doggone it, writers in Hollywood can't write for Marines. We needed a Marine to take charge and get the job done properly. Every boot camp scene in films will be compared to Full Metal Jacket. No one can beat it. I dare anyone to beat 'Full Metal Jacket.'" R. Lee Ermey 5/21/06

Taglines

In Vietnam the Wind Doesn't Blow it Sucks

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