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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Gunnery Sgt Speaks! R. Lee Ermey On Kubrick, Cruise, Kissing Menfolk

Radar, the magazine that would not die, has fighting spirit Q&A with Marine-turned-actor R. Lee Ermey, who bitchslapped some sense (and a little psychosis) into the recruits of FULL METAL JACKET. He’ll be playing yet another wacko authority figure in the sequel to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, which opens this weekend.
I’m never sure if the hard-driving Ermey, who hosts a military doc show on The Discovery Channel, is putting us on, or not. But in the Radar interview, he says that director Stanley Kubrick rang him up during the making of EYES WIDE SHUT to say he’d been bossed around by stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and that the movie would turn out to be a “piece of shit

What did Kubrick mean by this? Ermey’s answer dispels any notion of Kubrick as overbearing control freak. “He was kind of a shy little timid guy,” says Ermey. “He wasn’t real forceful. That’s why he didn’t appreciate working with big, high-powered actors. They would have their way with him, he would lose control, and his movie would turn to shit.”

Read it all–nobody gives good quote like a Marine.

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4 Responses to “Gunnery Sgt Speaks! R. Lee Ermey On Kubrick, Cruise, Kissing Menfolk”

  1. Mark Shane says:

    Lee Ermey must be full of sh*t. In an interview for Todd Field’s IN THE BEDROOM, Field was quoted as saying that initially he’d been interested in Lee Ermey for the role that he ultimtely cast with Tom Wilkinson. But Field said that when he asked Kubrick what he thought of Ermey, that Kubrick said, “DON’T DO IT.”
    Field went on to recount that he was left with the impression that Kubrick felt Ermey had some very serious emotional, and possibly personal issues that made Ermey unreliable as an actor. Field did not go into any detail about what those issues were.

  2. Good God! I can’t imagine Ermey playing the lead role in IN THE BEDROOM, and not just because Tom Wilkinson is such a subtle and sensitive actor who wins your sympathy even when he’s supposed to be playing a “bad guy” (as in THE PATRIOT).
    Ermey’s performance in FULL METAL JACKET has become the standard by which all hardcore sargeants are judged. If he’s ever had a chance to show his hidden depths as an actor or a person, I haven’t had a chance to see those films or read those interviews.

  3. Mike Henry says:

    What is Gunney R. Lee Remey email address?

  4. Justine_FilmFatale says:

    Here’s the website for his show, MAIL CALL on the History Channel…there’s an email and snail mail info on there.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon