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September 17, 2006
Listen up! The Gunny's talking
The folks over at Galley Slaves had an opportunity to have lunch with R. Lee Ermey, who portrayed the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket.
Gunny Ermey is making the rounds, talking up a worthwhile charity, Unmet Needs, that provides for the families of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in dire financial straits as a result of their dad/husband being deployed overseas. An offshoot of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), it sounds like a worthy cause. You can find out more about it here.
During Victorino Matus' lunch with Ermey, he got an opportunity to hear from the man himself how he got the role of a lifetime.
"I was a technical adviser on the set," said Ermey, who in fact wanted the role for himself, despite director Stanley Kubrick already having someone else in mind for the part of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. And so Ermey waged a behind-the-scenes campaign of auditioning and interviewing until it came to Kubrick's attention. The director relented, gave Ermey a shot, and was easily won over. (Ermey does not reveal who was the original actor cast for the role.)
As for the dialogue, Ermey wrote most of it himself, "taking lines I used when I was a drill sergeant in San Diego and taking a few other lines from other drill sergeants as well." It was all written down ahead of time, he explains, except for the "reacharound" line. "I don't know where that came from," he admits sheepishly, "and it sort of threw me off, but Stanley liked it and kept it in."
Ermey had argued forcefully with Kubrick over the instances of Hartman striking a recruit. "That would never happen," he insists, except for the occasional subtle jab in the solar plexus.
Ermey has had quite a career since then (103 roles, according to IMDB), playing -- among other things -- the corrupt mayor in Mississippi Burning, and hosting the History Channel's Mail Call. But nothing he's done has surpassed his performance in Full Metal Jacket.
Posted by Mike Lief at September 17, 2006 10:03 AM
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