Posted on 09/21/2005 5:35:25 PM PDT by SandRat
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. (Sept. 21, 2005) -- It was in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 movie “Full Metal Jacket” that R. Lee Ermey portrayed Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, the quintessential Marine Corps drill instructor and for many Marines, a movie version of the nightmare they overcame in training. The movie is a staple on nearly every Marines shelf and has easily become the most quoted and re-enacted film in Corps history … for now.
In the coming months and into 2006, the film industry will again turn its focus to telling the Marine Corps story. On Nov. 4, "Jarhead” starring Jake Gyllenhall and Jaime Foxx is set to open nationwide, and in 2006 “Flags of our Fathers” directed by Clint Eastwood is scheduled to premiere.
Jarhead
“Jarhead” is a film adaptation of Anthony Swofford’s novel of the same name. After hitting bookstores in December 2003, the manuscript made its rounds through the Corps and was met with some controversy. The bitter memoir of a sniper in the Persian Gulf War is an unyielding examination of the terror of war and leads the young Marine depicted in the book to question everyone and everything, including the Marine Corps.
The film version of the book follows Gyllenhall (The Day After Tomorrow) through boot camp and into a war he doesn’t fully understand while fighting an enemy he can’t see. Foxx (Ray, Collateral) plays a hardcharger who leads his sniper platoon into battle. They’re also joined by Chris Cooper (American Beauty, The Patriot) and Peter Sarsgaard (Skeleton Key, Kinsey) in a star-filled cast that brings the movie an air of credibility.
After viewing the trailer, the film looks to be a cross between “Full Metal Jacket” and “Apocalypse Now.” Once word gets out about this movie, Marines in the Jacksonville area are sure to fill the theaters, so be prepared for long lines and sold out showings. To view the film’s trailer or for more information visit www.jarheadthemovie.com.
Flags of our Fathers
It’s the most famous photograph, perhaps in world history. Six men standing on the summit of Mt. Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima, raising the American flag. Six men whose lives would be forever changed by a one-four hundreth flash in time.
Author James Bradley, whose father, John Bradley, was one of the only survivors out of the six Marines and Sailors raising the flag, penned a novel that detailed the lives of the men who appeared in the photograph. His touching story weaves together legends of the old Corps and recounted the back story of an important time in Marine history.
The movie version of the book is being directed by Academy Award winning director Clint Eastwood and stars an ensemble cast headed by Paul Walker (The Fast and the Furious) and Ryan Phillippe (Cruel Intentions). The film, set in the Pacific theater during World War II, is sure to compete for film awards at the end of 2006.
No further information concerning this film is currently available as the film is still in the production phase.
Although no one is likely to order their recruits to “choke themselves” in either movie, each will attempt to carry on the strong tradition of quality Corps movies that started long ago with films like “The Sands of Iwo Jima” with John Wayne and continued with “Full Metal Jacket.” Hopefully each will find a way into Marines hearts and try and live up to the service members they seek to emulate.
Could some in Hollywood be working to force a change in how Hollywood portrays the Military?
Either that or someone finally got wise to the fact that they way the military was being portrayed was driving away a large part of their potential audience.
There is another USMC boot camp movie which is just being released after placing well in a couple of film festivals. It was filmed at MCRD San Diego, it's called "Ears Open- Eyeballs Click," which is DI-speak.
I think apocalypse now is a farcical piece of $hit, why would people be flocking to this movie?
Jake Gyllenhaal as a Marine? According to IMDB, both Leonardo DiCaprio and Toby Maguire vied for the lead.. My money is on Hollywierd screwing this movie up.
Semper Fi
"" R. Lee Ermey portrayed Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, the quintessential Marine Corps drill instructor and for many Marines"
recall that in this movie Ermey gets wasted by a freaked out recruit with an M-14
Why would Marines like to see this ?""
It was a really weak movie imho....""
Its not the whole movie per say that the Marines relate too.. Its the realistic portrayl of a DI that Ermery gave in that movie. It was the 2nd time he acted as a DI as he also did it in the movie "The Boys from Company C".
Ermery was once a DI during the Vietnamn era.
I once saw a documentry that descrivbed that origionally a actor was supposed to do the role of Hartman. But the director was not happy with the performance, Emery was hired as a consultant and offered to give a example on how a DI would speak and act. After he did the intial scene once.. He was offered the role of Hartman.
Heck.. I was a year and half out of Basic Military Training School of the USAF when the movie came out.. I enjoyed the basic training scenes emensly. They were especially appealing to the USAF Security Police airman.
Just for the record, Full Metal Jacket was originally a book, The Short Timers.
They probably won't. For a really good military movie, people could see "The Great Raid."
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"Jarhead" by Anthony Swofford
In this self-lacerating memoir, an ex-Marine sniper who fought in the Gulf yearns to escape from the myths of warfare and the sadism of military life.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Laura Miller
March 10, 2003 | The dirty secret about combat memoirs isn't that war is senseless or that heroes are often terrified or that the battlefield can turn even good men into dehumanized monsters or that everyone is bored except for the moments when they're scared shitless or even that there is a beast inside every last one of us. The secret is that these stories are all more or less the same, once you decide which of two categories they belong to: tales of valor and tales of squalor.
The tales of valor have enjoyed a resurgence of late, particularly those about World War II, but despite "Band of Brothers" and other enterprises of the late Stephen Ambrose, the second, bleaker type of war story is still ascendant. Its touchstones are Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" (a novel, but still) and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," books that strive to explain that, stupid as it is to fight wars, it is even stupider to glorify the fighting of them. And, more recently, war memoirs verge on disparaging themselves, so dark and roiling is the contempt to be found in them. Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead" is one of those books; you imagine him half-wishing, as he gets to the end of the book, that he could reach back and start erasing it from the beginning.
Swofford was a lance corporal in a United States Marine Corps scout/sniper platoon who saw combat in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the Gulf War. Specifically, he was fired upon by both the enemy and his own side, but didn't actually kill anyone himself. His war was short, and it only takes up the last third or so of this slender book. Of necessity, Swofford devotes more pages to his childhood and youth, his training in the U.S. and overseas, and the several months he spent stationed with his platoon in the Arabian desert waiting for the war to begin.
The first half of FMJ portraying boot camp, and especially the initial scenes where the DI collectively grabs them by their short-hairs and gets their attention was very realistic in most respects. I could close my eyes and just listen and I could vividly visualize my primary DI, SSgt Conticelli because I went through recruit training in about the same timeframe.
The idea of a recruit having an M14 was more of a throwback to the 50s and before when recruits were issued a rifle that they took with them from station to station.
Our M14s had no firing pin, to prevent any "accidents" of that nature.
You said it so well I won't waste my finger muscles.
SEMPER FI
It was the 2nd time he acted as a DI as he also did it in the movie "The Boys from Company C".
Have you checked your package?
They were especially appealing to the USAF Security Police airman.
Cops Rock! oink oink
Private Lawrence was no longer a recruit when he wasted Hartman and then himself.
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