I Do the Runnin’ ‘Til the Runnin’s Done
Posted on | October 1, 2006
Three-and-a-half miles on the treadmill. Five hundred calories. Not bad for a quiet Sunday morning!
All while watching Full Metal Jacket on DVD, up to the “guest of honor” scene. I’m finding the mindless cruelty harder and harder to watch, but overall, it’s a brilliant flick, and Lee Ermey’s gunn’y sergeant is astonishing, even after many viewings:
- Former US Marine Corps Drill Instructor R. Lee Ermey was not originally hired to play Gunnery Sgt. Hartman but as a consultant for the Marine Corps boot camp portion of the film. He performed a demonstration on videotape in which he yelled obscene insults and abuse for 15 minutes without stopping, repeating himself or even flinching - despite being continuously pelted with tennis balls and oranges. Stanley Kubrick was so impressed that he cast Ermey as Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann.
- Stanley Kubrick hired Tim Colceri to play the Drill Instructor Gunnery Sgt. Hartman after discarding his original idea of casting Bill McKinney in the role. Colceri never got to play the role, as Kubrick decided to use former D.I. R. Lee Ermey, who had been hired as a technical adviser, instead. Colceri was bitter but accepted Kubrick’s consolation prize of a small role as a helicopter doorgunner.
- R. Lee Ermey was involved in a jeep accident during the making of the movie. At 1:00 a.m. one night he skidded off the road, breaking all the ribs on his left side. He refused to pass out, and kept flashing his car lights until a motorist stopped. In some scenes you’ll notice that he does not move his left arm at all.
- R. Lee Ermey personally supervised the recreation of the Parris Island set.
- Much, if not all, of R. Lee Ermey’s dialogue during the Parris Island sequence was improvised. While filming the opening scene, where he disciplines Pvt. Cowboy, he says Cowboy is the type of guy who would have sex with another guy “and not even have the goddamned common courtesy to give him a reach-around”. Stanley Kubrick immediately yelled cut and went over to Ermey’ and asked, “What the hell is a reach-around?” Ermey politely explained what it meant. Kubrick laughed and re-shot the scene, telling Ermey to keep the line.
- The videotape demonstration was not the only factor which got R. Lee Ermey the role as the drill instructor. Ermey went to Stanley Kubrick and asked for the part, as the actors on the set were, in his opinion, not up to snuff. When Kubrick declined, Ermey barked an order for Kubrick to stand up when he was spoken to, and the director instinctively obeyed. That sealed the matter, and Ermey won the part as Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann.
- R. Lee Ermey hardly blinks at all in any scene.
I could go on, but Ermey is starting to sound like Internet neophenomenon Chuck Norris (or the previous incarnation, Saturday Night Live’s Bill Brasky). I’ll leave you instead with a YouTube clip of Ermey’s entrance in the first episode of the short-lived TV series Space: Above and Beyond, in which he plays a highly motivational Marine sergeant major. Without the profanity, he is just as intimidating, but the broad performances around him turn the scene into pure comedy.
