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Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay he co-wrote with Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford. The film is based on Hasford's 1979 autobiographical novel The Short-Timers. It stars Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood, and Arliss Howard.
Directed by Stanley Kubrick · Shot by Stanley Kubrick, Douglas Milsome · Cut by Martin Hunter · Music by Vivian Kubrick · 116 min
How it was made
- Kubrick cast R. Lee Ermey, who had been hired only as a technical advisor, after Ermey improvised insulting dialogue against a group of Royal Marine extras to demonstrate how a drill instructor breaks down recruits; Kubrick then folded a 250-page transcript of Ermey's ad-libbed rants into the script, estimating Ermey wrote half of Hartman's dialogue.
- To keep actor Matthew Modine's reactions to Ermey genuine, Ermey rehearsed his insult lines separately while Kubrick's assistant Leon Vitali threw tennis balls and oranges at him that he had to catch and hurl back without breaking pace, requiring 20 error-free run-throughs.
- For the Huế battle scenes, Kubrick and production designer Anton Furst found a condemned area owned by British Gas at Beckton Gas Works near London, had buildings demolished with a wrecking ball over two months, and dressed the site with 200 palm trees shipped from Spain and 100,000 plastic tropical plants imported from Hong Kong.
- Kubrick had a plastic replica jungle shipped in from California for the film but rejected it on sight, saying 'I don't like it. Get rid of it,' and used real dressing instead.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Stanley Kubrick
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