Full Metal Jacket

For the type of ammunition, see Full metal jacket bullet.

Full Metal Jacket
File:Full Metal Jacket- 1987.jpg Theatrical release poster.
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Written by	Novel: Gustav Hasford Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick Michael Herr Gustav Hasford
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick Jan Harlan
Starring	Matthew Modine Adam Baldwin Vincent D'Onofrio R. Lee Ermey
Cinematography	Douglas Milsome
Edited by	Martin Hunter
Music by	Vivian Kubrick
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates	June 26, 1987
Running time	116 minutes
Countries	United States United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$17,000,000 (estimated)

Full Metal Jacket (1987) is an Academy Award-nominated Stanley Kubrick film based on the novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford. The title refers to the type of ammunition used by infantry riflemen. The film portrays the urban Vietnam War fought by the U.S. Marines.

A BADASS MOVIE!!!

Plot

Senior Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey), shows the harsh indoctrination of Marine recruits. The Vietnam War is in full swing, and his job is to produce trained killers who will not hesitate when the decisive moment arrives. The film's first section focuses on the physical and psychological mistreatment of recruit Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio), whom the drill instructor nick-names Gomer Pyle.

Hartman immediately pegs Pyle as a misfit. He is socially awkward, overweight and out of shape. He has trouble coping with the physical rigors of boot camp. He also does not adhere well to orders and procedures. Whether this is from carelessness, anxiety, or lack of intelligence is never made clear. His deficiencies seem to personally offend Hartman, and he punishes him as a kind of lesson to the others. Hartman ultimately appoints the protagonist Joker (Matthew Modine) as Pyle's mentor, stressing that Joker will set Pyle straight. Although Pyle eventually straightens up and becomes a more disciplined private on some fronts, during an inspection, Hartman discovers a contraband jelly doughnut in Pyle's foot locker, and decides to administer collective punishment for the platoon every time Pyle messes up. After numerous collective punishments, the platoon gives Pyle a blanket party, and even Joker reluctantly participates.

The next morning, Joker realizes that Pyle has become sullen and withdrawn; he begins to detach himself from the platoon as well as the rest of reality. His expert marksmanship impresses Hartman, but worries Joker, because Pyle converses with his rifle "Charlene". On completing their training, every one in 3092 platoon is assigned a Military Occupational Specialty, the most common being 0300-Infantry (one notable exception is Joker who is assigned to 4212-Basic Military Journalism). On the platoon's last night on Parris Island, Joker is slated firewatch duty, during which he discovers Pyle in the head (toilet in old Naval slang), loading his M14 rifle, "Charlene," with live ammunition. Frightened, Joker attempts to calm Pyle. Pyle's screaming rousts Hartman to them. He orders Pyle to put down the rifle and step away from it, Hartman is shot dead. Pyle then commits suicide while a stunned Joker watches.

The second part of the story occurs in Vietnam, in 1968. Joker is a Corporal and a Marine Combat Correspondent with Stars and Stripes, assigned to a Marine public affairs unit, with his new partner, a combat photographer known as Rafterman. The action is quiet where they are, as the "Grunts" are the ones who are in the "shit" (battlefield); until the Tet Offensive begins, and the Marine base is attacked. That night, Joker fights his first battle when the Viet Cong attempt to overrun the base. Next day, the PA staff learn about the situation from their superior. Joker is ordered to Phu Bai, a Marine forward operating base near the ancient Vietnamese city of Huế to cover the combat taking place in this region. Rafterman tags along looking for some "trigger time."

Joker links up with "Cowboy," his friend from boot camp, who is second in command of the Lusthog Squad, and accompanies Cowboy's squad attacking the city of Huế. A vicious battle breaks out, initially resulting in the death of Cowboy's platoon leader, which leaves a Marine nicknamed Crazy Earl as the new squad leader. Earl leads the Lusthog Squad through a ruined section of the city. One of the film's standout sequences shows the squad being interviewed individually by a television news crew and expressing their thoughts on the war.

The squad is called up for patrol again, this time north of the Perfume River (which divides the city of Huế), where enemy forces are believed to be hiding. Crazy Earl comes across a stuffed rabbit and picks it up. The toy is a booby trap, and the ensuing blast kills Earl and leaves Cowboy the reluctant squad leader. The squad quickly becomes lost in the ruined city, and a sniper wounds two of their comrades, Doc Jay and Eightball, with the intention of drawing more of them in. As the squad moves up to try to locate the hidden position, the sniper kills Cowboy too. With his Marines by his side, Cowboy dies in Joker's arms. Using smoke to conceal their advance, the squad closes in and Animal Mother assumes control of the remaining Marines. As they fan out through the likely building, Joker finds the sniper. At the critical moment his rifle jams and the sniper, a young Vietnamese girl, opens fire, pinning Joker behind a column, making it impossible for him to escape or shoot back. Rafterman arrives and shoots the sniper, saving Joker. As Joker, Rafterman, Animal Mother, and the rest of the remaining Marines gather around the girl she begins to pray, then begs the Marines to kill her. Joker and Animal Mother argue over this request, leaving her to suffer and die slowly. Ultimately, Animal Mother allows a mercy killing, but only if the combat-deprived Joker performs it. He finishes her off after a long pause. The film concludes with the Marines' ironic rendition of the song Mickey Mouse Club as they march into the night.

Cast and characters

• Matthew Modine as Private / Sergeant James T. "Joker" Davis, the protagonist-narrator who claims to have joined the Corps to see combat and to be the first one on his block with a confirmed kill. He witnesses Pyle's insanity occur in boot camp, but ostensibly becomes a squared away Marine. He later is an independent-minded combat correspondent accompanying the Lusthog Squad to report combat from the field.
• Adam Baldwin as "Animal Mother": The nihilistic M-60 machine gunner of the Lusthog Squad, Animal Mother is contemptuous of any authority but his own, ruling by intimidation. At first, he is contemptuous and scornful of Joker as a REMF (rear-echelon mother fucker) Marine. Animal Mother believes victory should be the only object of war. In The Short Timers, he is a New Yorker who went to war instead of jail.
• Dorian Harewood as "Eightball": The Black man of the Lusthog squad, insensitive about his ethnicity (e.g. 'Put a nigger behind the trigger'), and Animal Mother's pal. The woman sniper kills him.
• Kevyn Major Howard as "Rafterman": Rafterman is a combat photographer with the Stars and Stripes office with Joker. He requests permission to accompany Joker into Huế.
• Arliss Howard as the Texan Private / Sergeant "Cowboy" Evans who goes through boot camp with Joker. He becomes a rifleman, and later encounters Joker in Vietnam, having become a rifle squad leader. In The Short Timers, Joker kills Cowboy, in sacrifice, after being severely wounded by a sniper expecting to trick the squad to rescue so he may shoot them all. In Full Metal Jacket, he quickly dies of a sucking chest wound, while in Joker's arms, surrounded by the remainder of his platoon.
• Ed O'Ross as Lieutenant Walter J. "Touchdown" Schinowski: The platoon leader of the Lusthog squad's platoon, He was a college football player at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He is killed in an ambush outside of Hue City.
• John Terry as Lieutenant Lockhart: The PIO officer-in-chief and Joker's assignment editor. He has combat-reporting experience, but uses his officer rank to avoid returning, on account of the danger and the bugs, rationalizing that his journalistic duties keep him where he belongs, "In the rear with the gear".
• Kieron Jecchinis as "Crazy Earl": The squad leader, he is forced to assume platoon command when Platoon Leader Lt. Touchdown is killed. A booby-trapped toy kills him. As in the novel he carries a BB gun, which is visible just before he dies.
• Jon Stafford as Doc Jay: A Navy corpsman attached to the Lusthog squad; he is shot and killed by the sniper while attempting to drag Eightball to safety.

File:Full-metal-jacket-901.jpg

The psychopathic Private Pyle.

• Vincent D'Onofrio as Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence: An obese, clumsy, slow-witted recruit who is the focus of Hartman's abuse for being incompetent and fat, making him the platoon scapegoat. After a blanket party from the rest of the platoon for failing almost everything and earning them collective punishments, he turns psychotic and talks to his rifle, "Charlene", yet he becomes the most disciplined Marine. In The Short Timers, Leonard Pratt is a skinny, awkward Alabama boy who shoots Gerheim, then himself, in front of everyone in the bunkhouse section of the barracks. In Full Metal Jacket, he shoots Hartman while in the bathrooms, and then himself in front of Joker. The humiliating nickname, Gomer Pyle originates from a likable, but dim character from the American television program the Andy Griffith Show who eventually enlists in the USMC.
• R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: the stereotypical Parris Island drill instructor who abuses his recruits to transform them into Marines. In The Short Timers, the character's name is "Gerheim" and potbellied; he is a Second World War veteran of the Battle of Iwo Jima.
• Tom Colceri as The Doorgunner, the Loadmaster and machine gunner of the USMC H-34 Choctaw helicopter transporting Joker and Rafterman to the Tet Offensive front. Inflight, he shoots at civilians, while enthusiastically repeating Get some!, boasting "157 dead Gooks killed". When Joker asks if that includes women and children, he admits it stating, "Sometimes." Joker then asks, "How can you kill women and children?" to which The Doorgunner replies jokingly, "Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much!...Ha, ha, ha,...Ain't war hell?!" This scene is adapted from Michael Herr's 1977 book Dispatches.
• Papillon Soo Soo as Da Nang Hooker: A prostitute who approaches Joker and Rafterman at a street corner during the first scene in Vietnam. She is memorable for the sales-pitch phrases: Me love you long time, me sooo horny and Me sucky sucky, in exchange for fifteen dollars.

Production

Stanley Kubrick contacted Michael Herr, author of the Vietnam War memoir, Dispatches, in Spring of 1980 to discuss working on a film about the Holocaust but eventually discarded that in favor of a film about the Vietnam War. They met in England and the director told him that he wanted to do a war film but he had yet to find a story to adapt. Kubrick discovered Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers while reading the Virginia Kirkus Review and Herr received it in bound galleys and thought that it was a masterpiece. In 1982, Kubrick read the novel twice and afterwards thought that it "was a unique, absolutely wonderful book" and decided, along with Herr, that it would be the basis for his next film. According to the filmmaker, he was drawn to the book's dialogue that was "almost poetic in its carved-out, stark quality." In 1983, he began researching for this film, watching past footage and documentaries, reading Vietnamese newspapers on microfilm from the Library of Congress, and studied hundreds of photographs from the era. Initially, Herr was not interested in revisiting his Vietnam War experiences and Kubrick spent three years persuading him in what the author describes as "a single phone call lasting three years, with interruptions."

Screenplay

In 1985, Kubrick contacted Hasford to work on the screenplay with him and Herr, often talking to Hasford on the phone three to four times a week for hours at a time. Kubrick had already written a detailed treatment. The two men got together at Kubrick's home every day, breaking down the treatment into scenes. From that, Herr wrote the first draft. The filmmaker was worried that the title of the book would be misread by audiences as referring to people who only did half a day's work and changed it to Full Metal Jacket after discovering the phrase while going through a gun catalogue. After the first draft was completed, Kubrick would phone in his orders and Hasford and Herr would mail in their submissions. Kubrick would read and then edit them with the process starting over. Neither Hasford nor Herr knew how much they contributed to the screenplay and this led to a dispute over the final credits. Hasford remembers, "We were like guys on an assembly line in the car factory. I was putting on one widget and Michael was putting on another widget and Stanley was the only one who knew that this was going to end up being a car." Herr says that the director was not interested in making an anti-war film but that "he wanted to show what war is like."

At some point, Kubrick wanted to meet Hasford in person but Herr advised against this, describing The Short-Timers author as a "scary man." Kubrick insisted and they all met at Kubrick's house in England for dinner. It did not go well and Hasford was subsequently shut-out of the production.

Casting

Through Warner Brothers, Kubrick advertised a national search in the United States. The director used video tape to audition actors. He received over 3,000 video tapes. His staff screened all of the tapes and eliminated the unacceptable ones. This left 800 tapes for Kubrick to personally review.

Former U.S. Marine Drill Instructor R. Lee Ermey was originally hired as a technical adviser and asked Kubrick if he could audition for the role of Hartman but the director told him that he wasn't vicious enough to play the character. Ermey made a videotape of himself improvising insulting dialogue while being pelted with oranges and tennis balls, that he did with a group of British soldiers who auditioned for the film with the scene where the recruits first meet Hartman. Ermey, in spite of the distractions, rattled off an unbroken string of insults for 15 minutes, nor did he ever flinch, duck, or repeat himself while being hit with the oranges or tennis balls. Upon viewing it Kubrick gave him the role, realizing that Ermey "was a genius for this part," and estimates that Ermey came up with 150 pages of insults, much of it being improvised on the spot. According to the director, 50% of Ermey's dialogue, the insults, were written by the former drill instructor.

Locations

The film was photographed in England, in Cambridgeshire, on the Norfolk Broads and Beckton, in Newham, East London. A former RAF and then British Army base, Bassingbourn Barracks, doubled as the Parris Island Marine boot camp. The disused Beckton Gasworks portrayed the ruined city of Huế. Kubrick worked from still photographs of Huế taken in 1968 and found an area owned by British Gas that closely resembled it and was scheduled to be demolished. To achieve this look, Kubrick had buildings blown up and the film's art director used a wrecking ball to knock specific holes in certain buildings over the course of two months. Originally, Kubrick had a plastic replica jungle flown in from California but once he looked at it was reported to have said, "I don't like it. Get rid of it." The open country is Cliffe marshes, also on the Thames, with 200 imported Spanish palm trees and 100,000 plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong.

Principal photography

Kubrick acquired four M41 tanks from a Belgian army colonel who was a fan, historically correct Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw helicopters which were actually Westland wessex and painted Marine green, and he obtained a selection of rifles, M79 grenade launchers and M60 machine guns from a licensed weapons dealer.

According to Matthew Modine, it was a tough shoot as he had to have his head shaved once a week and was yelled at by Ermey for ten hours a day while shooting the Parris Island scenes.

At one point during filming, Ermey had a car accident and broke all of his ribs on one side and was out for four and half months. Cowboy's death scene shows a building in the background that resembles the famous alien monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick said the resemblance is an "extraordinary accident."

During filming, Hasford contemplated legal action over the writing credit. Originally, Hasford was supposed to receive an "additional dialogue" credit but he wanted full credit. The writer took two friends and snuck onto the set dressed as extras only to be mistaken by a crew member for Herr.

Music

For the period music, Kubrick went through Billboard's list of Top 100 Hits for each year from 1962-1968 and tried many songs but "sometimes the dynamic range of the music was too great, and we couldn't work in dialogue." The music included in the film is as follows:

• Hello Vietnam - Performed by Johnnie Wright
• These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Performed by Nancy Sinatra
• Wooly Bully - Performed by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs
• Surfin' Bird - Performed by The Trashmen
• The Marines Hymn - Performed by The Goldman Band
• Chapel of Love - Performed by The Dixie Cups
• Mickey Mouse Club Television Theme
• Paint It, Black - Performed by The Rolling Stones

The sequence that includes "Surfin Bird" was included in UGO's Top 11 Uses of Classic Rock in Cinema

External links

• Full Metal Jacket at IMDb
• Full Metal Jacket script at the Internet Movie Script Database
• Full Metal Jacket at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford - original text