Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Blogsters' Guild

CanMag

CHUD

Daily Stab

Defamer

The Evil Beet

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Gone Hollywood

Gorillamask

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Love Bacon

Other crap

Reality Avoidance

Screenjunkies

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Quotes

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: How tall are you private?

Private: Sir, five foot nine, sir!

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Five foot nine, I didn't know they stacked shit that high!

See more...

Mistakes

In the scene where 8-ball gets shot, in the shot which shows the platoon ducking near a wall with Cowboy, Joker and Animal Mother in the front, there are two weapon related errors. Cowboy's M-16 has a nickel (silver colored) firing assembly and Joker's M-16 has an A2 type pistol grip. The A2 types were introduced somewhere around the 80s, and nickel plated assemblies are rarely used (and were invented after Vietnam, too). The nickel assembly is visible at the beginning of the shot, and you can see the A2 grip when Joker is changing magazines (while Cowboy shouts cease fire). See more...

Picture

Movie Mistakes blog

Bookmark

Mistakes

Trivia

Pictures

Quotes

Easter Eggs

Corrections

Questions

Submit
Entry Ermey was convinced that the scenes in boot camp wouldn't be believable unless the actors were actually frightened of him. So the other actors in the film only saw him as the Gunny Hartman character. He never spoke, ate, or fraternized with any of them unless it was during a scene. Much to Ermey's pleasure, the fear you see on the screen is real. Many times in the shooting the actors would become so flustered by Ermey that they would blow their lines. Ermey recalls that he's seen the other actors in the film around Hollywood from time to time, and they still won't speak to him.
votemap vote up vote down
Entry R. Lee Ermey actually wrote all of Gunny Hartman's dialog himself. Ermey was involved in a serious car accident right before shooting, so Kubrick invited Ermey to come stay at his house in England to recover. While recovering Ermey read the script over and over, and he remarked that the Drill Instructor's dialog that was in the script was obviously the work of a screenwriter with a cliche imagination who obviously had no idea what boot camp was really like. So Kubrick allowed Ermey to re-write all of the dialog himself.
votemap vote up vote down
Entry Anthony Michael Hall was originally set to play Pvt. Joker, but was fired two weeks into filming for objecting to Stanley Kubrick's perfectionist style of directing. He was replaced by Matthew Modine.
votemap vote up vote down
Entry Many of the extras in the boot camp scenes were actually serving members in the British Territorial Army. They were chosen because it was assumed that they would be familiar with drill. However the English drill practices were so different from the American Marine corps practices that R. Lee Ermey himself had to re-train the British troops to march in Marine Fashion. Ermey said it was twice as much work trying to re-train them than it would have been just training raw recruits.
votemap vote up vote down
Entry In some scenes, you can see that R. Lee Ermey does not move one of his arms. That's because he got in a car accident that broke several of his ribs. Being the strong person that he was, he forced himself to not pass out and wait for help to arrive.
votemap vote up vote down
Entry According to Ermey, during the shooting of the scene in the head where Pyle kills Hartman, Ermey walked in wearing his Drill Instructor Smokey cover. Kubrick immediately called a cut, and said that it didn't make any sense for a Drill Instructor to still be wearing his Smokey in the middle of the night, while he's in his underwear. Ermey had to inform Kubrick that a D.I. always has his smokey on, as it's his symbol of authority. Anyone who's ever been in the marines knows that the D.I's Smokey is basically part of their head. The only time you actually see Hartman without his Smokey is when he's dead.
votemap vote up vote down
Entry The Vietnam scenes were shot in England. Kubrick had full-grown palm trees planted for those scenes.
votemap vote up vote down
Entry Adam Baldwin plays a marine nicknamed Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket. The movie is set in Vietnam. He also plays a character in the X-files named Knowle Rohrer who was a genetically engineered super soldier who served with Robert Patrick's character in the marines in Vietnam. The same actor plays two characters who fought in Vietnam. It's an amusing coincidence and the producers of the X-files might have picked Adam Baldwin for that role after thinking of him in Full Metal Jacket.
Submitted by Grumpy Scot votemap vote up vote down
Entry R. Lee Ermey was given his role after an audition where he had to continually bark like a drill instructor for 15 minutes. While this doesn't sound too hard, he wasn't allowed to flinch... and he was being pelted by fruit.
votemap vote up vote down

You may also like: Forrest Gump | Saving Private Ryan | A Few Good Men | Apocalypse Now | Platoon