The thing is as you watched the Gunny, you just knew in your bones he was NOT acting. It was too real for that to be acting. Hollywood types wouldn’t be able to write dialogue like that and an actor wouldn’t have been able to deliver it like that......if he wasn’t a real DI.....if he hadn’t lived it which the Gunny obviously had. You just knew he had barked all those same lines into recruits’ faces for real. Welcome to the USMC.
The thing is as you watched the Gunny, you just knew in your bones he was NOT acting.
Actually, you’re right. A lot of his lines were ad-libbed.
4) R. Lee Ermey, who played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, was originally only a consultant on the film, but pursued the part, and was allowed to ad-lib.
His inability to face McKinney meant that Kubrick needed someone to play the fearsome drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. The director originally cast a relative unknown, former Marine Tim Colceri, in the part. But the film’s technical consultant, R. Lee Ermey, had his eyes on the role. Ermey was a former Marine Sergeant who had served as a drill instructor before doing two tours of duty in Vietnam, and then making his acting debut in 1978’s “The Boys In Company ‘C.’” He then served as a technical advisor on both “Apocalypse Now” and “An Officer And A Gentleman,” appearing in a cameo in the former, and helping Louis Gossett Jr. win an Oscar for playing another Gunnery Sergeant in the latter. To begin with, Ermey was set to only be an advisor on “Full Metal Jacket,” but filmed his own audition tape, improvising insults while being pelted with oranges and tennis balls. His unfazed fury convinced Kubrick that he had the right man, and the rest was history. Ermey was allowed to improvise his profane insults (having to explain to the director what a ‘reach-around’ was at one point), with as much of 50% of the actor’s dialogue being ad-libbed, which was quite unusual for the meticulous Kubrick. Colceri, as consolation, was given the small but memorable role as the door gunner of the helicopter, while Ermey went on to a long career as a character actor, including essentially reprising his “Full Metal Jacket” role in films as diverse as “The Frighteners” and “Toy Story.”