"Director's Chair: Stanley Kubrick"

HBO presents

August 6, 2000

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Peter Tonguette: Mr. Ermey, is it true that you came up with a good deal of your dialogue in "Full Metal Jacket"? And how much leverage would Kubrick typically allow for along these lines?

R. Lee Ermey: I believe I just pretty well answered that, but we will talk about it some more. I was also technical advisor of the show. I advised Stanley that the first half - the boot camp portion of "Full Metal Jacket" - was laced with fictitious crap, and he and I sat down and re-wrote the first half of the show. The way we did it was we would discuss a scene, then Stanley would then punch the button on his tape recorder. I would then stand up and become Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and I would go for as long as I could go. When I ran out of gas, I would stop and sit down. We would discuss the scene again. Once again the button would be pushed, I would stand up, and we would do more dialogue. We would do this sometimes 3 or 4 times. Then we would send the tape down to the production secretary, who would transcribe that and then send it back up to us. We would then take the juiciest of the line and incorporate those into the scene. That's how we came up with the dialogue. In some cases, I would come up with dialogue when we were filming. If something would occur to me during filming of anything, I would bring it up to Stanley. Stanley would either agree or disagree. He seldom disagreed, and we would incorporate that into the scene. That's the way the 'reach around' scene came about.

Brandon: Who was more difficult to work with, Kubrick or the Marine Corps?

R. Lee Ermey: Oh, boy! Well, to tell you the truth, neither was difficult to work with. They both demand perfection and 110 percent, but as far as difficulty, I never found any of it difficult. I, as well, consider myself a perfectionist, and if it's not perfect, we do it again. And if the director doesn't ask me to do it again and I'm not happy with it, I ask him if we can do it again, and we always do.

Arizguy23: Do you think the production of movies has advanced (with all the new technology and graphics) since the making of "Full Metal Jacket" in a positive way , or do you prefer the old way?

R. Lee Ermey: I prefer the old-fashioned way. I certainly enjoyed "Jurassic Park" - both films. I am amazed at what they can do with "Star Wars". I am amazed what modern technology has come up with, but I still like to sit down and watch a good old-fashioned movie. By the way, anybody that wants to communicate with me on a daily basis or has questions later on that they want to ask, I have a website. The address is www.rleeermey.com. I read all the email and it's quite a website. Folks should have a look at it.

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