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Sorry to hear that. He was good in Missisippi Burning too and just about everything i saw him in.
I have on several occasions used mr Ermey's immortal line
What is your major malfunction, numb nuts??!"
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Posted: |
Apr 16, 2018 - 5:30 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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The Vietnam War drama THE BOYS IN COMPANY C is set in 1967, when five young men undergo boot camp training before being shipped out to Vietnam. Once they get there, the experience proves worse than they could have imagined. Director Sidney J. Furie cast several second generation actors to portray the young Marines in the film, including Andrew Stevens, son of actress Stella Stevens; James Whitmore, Jr., son of actor James Whitmore; and Michael Lembeck, son of actor Harvey Lembeck. When former Marine drill sergeant, Lee Ermey, was hired to put the cast through intensive military training, Furie was impressed and cast the wounded Vietnam War veteran as drill instructor “Sergeant Loyce.” Thus, Ermey, who was actually a Marine Corps Drill Instructor from 1965-68, made his film debut at age 34. Jaime Mendoza-Nava's score for the film did not get a release.
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I wonder what that tombstone is going to read...
Better let him through the pearly gates, St. Peter, lest you want an ear full.
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Posted: |
Apr 17, 2018 - 12:02 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In what is probably his most famous role, Lee Ermey received co-star billing with the likes of Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, and Vincent D'Onofrio in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Vietnam War drama FULL METAL JACKET. Various stories have been told as to how Ermey got the role. In one, Ermey went to Kubrick and asked for the part, stating that in his opinion, the actors on the set were 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. Ermey got the role.
Another story says that after being hired as a technical advisor, former drill sergeant Ermey was videotaped interviewing a group of British Territorial Army paratroopers who were being considered to portray Marines. Impressed by Ermey’s insults and intimidation tactics, Kubrick cast him as “Gunnery. Sgt. Hartman” and transcribed some of his best lines to be included in the script.
Yet a third variation is told by director John Boorman. According to Boorman, Stanley Kubrick wanted to cast Bill McKinney in the role of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman. However, Kubrick was so unsettled after viewing McKinney's performance as a mountain man in DELIVERANCE (1972) that he declined to meet with him, saying he was simply too frightened at the idea of being in McKinney's presence. Kubrick then hired Tim Colceri to play Hartman. Colceri never got to play the role, as Ermey 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. Kubrick was so impressed that he cast Ermey as Hartman. Colceri was bitter but accepted Kubrick's consolation prize of a small role as a helicopter door-gunner.
It is a common misconception that much, if not all, of Ermey's dialogue during the Parris Island sequence was improvised. In several interviews, Ermey himself has stated that he worked closely with Kubrick to help mold the script so that it was more believable, all while retaining certain dialogue crucial to Kubrick's vision. While filming the opening scene, where he disciplines "Pvt. Cowboy" (Arliss Howard), 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". 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.
To make Hartman's actions and the recruits' reactions as convincing as possible, Modine, D'Onofrio, and the other actors playing recruits never met Ermey prior to filming. Kubrick also saw to it that Ermey didn't fraternize with the other actors between takes. To make his character seem more intense, Ermey hardly blinks at all in any scene.
Ermey's performances were so faultless that Kubrick only needed two to three takes to get his scenes filmed, which was extremely rare for a Kubrick film. The only instance where Ermey had to film more than two to three takes was in the "Jelly Doughnut Scene," which he claimed was filmed in 37 takes, to the point his voice kept disappearing from time to time.
While location scouting for the film, Stanley Kubrick was driving his wife's new SUV around the countryside with cinematographer Douglas Milsome and Lee Ermey as passengers. At one point Kubrick noticed a potential location out his window, and became so distracted describing to Milsome how he wanted the location used in the film that he crashed the car into a six foot deep ditch, rolling the SUV onto its side. Undeterred, Kubrick continued talking about the location uninterrupted as the three uninjured men climbed out of the car and walked back home.
Unfortunately, Ermey was not so lucky when he was later involved in a jeep accident during the making of the film. 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. Kubrick claimed in an interview that it took four and a half months before Ermey could return to work, so production simply had to be suspended since he was involved in all the remaining scenes. Even so, in some scenes, it is noticeable that Ermey does not move his left arm at all.
Despite his acting duties, Ermey also is still credited as technical advisor, and he personally supervised the creation of the Parris Island set. Regarding his character' s brutal discipline of the recruits, Ermey once said in an interview that a Marine drill instructor would never physically slap, choke or punch a recruit (at least not openly), even back in his day as a young Marine.
In the book upon which the film is based (The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford), "Sergeant Gerheim" (as the character was called) isn't nearly as vulgar as Hartman, but calls people into his office or the showers to beat them in private. He encourages other punishments -some worse- or orders the other recruits to perform them. Lee Ermey once recalled that story and pointed out that any DI who ever tried something like that would never have been able to command respect among his recruits again.
Ermey claimed that a scene was cut in which Hartman breaks character and warmly expresses pride toward the recruits for having completed their training.
FULL METAL JACKET was the first film scored by Stanley Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian, who is credited onscreen under the pseudonym “Abigail Mead.” Kubrick gave her the job after she asked to compose music for the film’s trailer. The film's score, along with a half dozen songs, was released by Warner Bros. Records.
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Posted: |
Apr 17, 2018 - 1:24 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In MISSISSIPPI BURNING, two FBI agents (Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe), with wildly different styles, arrive in Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of some civil rights activists. R. Lee Ermey plays "Mayor Tilman," who is close friends with the bigoted "Sheriff Stuckey" (Gailard Sartain).
The film's story was based on the 1964 killings of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in Neshoba County, MS, but veered from the real-life account with two main fictional conceits. While the film portrayed “Mrs. Pell” (Frances McDormand) as the key informant who was seduced by FBI “Agent Rupert Anderson” (Hackman), in reality the FBI spent nearly three years and $30,000 to pay off not one, but two Klan informants, whose prison sentences were lessened through plea bargains. Also a departure from the true story, MISSISSIPPI BURNING depicted “Agent Monk” (Badja Djola) as an African American “specialist” who was brought in to intimidate Mayor Tilman into confessing his knowledge of the crime. However, the FBI did not employ African American agents in 1964, and although screenwriter Chris Gerolmo originally wrote the character as a Mafia hit man, director Alan Parker changed his race “as a metaphor for…the assertion of black anger.”
Trevor Jones' score for the film was released on an Antilles Records CD, which also included some dialogue and sound effects. An isolated score track appeared on the 2015 Twilight Time Blu-ray release of the film.
R. Lee Ermey as "Mayor Tilman" in MISSISSIPPI BURNING
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My dad was a US Marine and said the Parris Island sequence in Full Metal Jacket was completely realistic -- at least until Pvt. Pyle's murder of the Drill Instructor, and subsequent suicide (my dad found it highly unlikely a recruit in boot camp would be able to get his hands on live ammunition).
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