Random Behind-The-Scenes Stories From The Making Of 'Full Metal Jacket' (13 items)

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  (#7) The Beckton Gasworks Set Was Reportedly A Toxic Environmental Disaster  

  The meticulous Kubrick spent several months making the abandoned Beckton gasworks in England, which was located on the Thames River, look like the war-torn city of Hue, Vietnam. The director and his crew blew up buildings on the property and tore down others. The gasworks had previously been scheduled for demolition. 

  Kubrick based the aesthetics of Hue on an old picture he had of the city from 1969. The movie's battle scenes took place at Beckton. Kubrick said of the demolition process:

  We had a demolition team in there for a week blowing up buildings, and the art director spent about six weeks with a guy with a wrecking ball and chain, knocking holes in the corners of things and really getting interesting ruins - which no amount of money would have allowed you to build.

  Modine wrote in his diary that the Beckton gasworks was not a safe place to film and called the set an "environmental disaster." The asbestos and poisonous vapors were reportedly toxic enough to make people sick.

  Kubrick was just happy to find what he thought was an ideal location.

  "It looks absolutely perfect, I think," the director said of the Beckton set. "There might be some other place in the world like it, but I'd hate to have to look for it. I think even if we had gone to Hue, we couldn't have created that look. I know we couldn't have."
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  (#5) Typical Of Kubrick, The Film Went 21 Weeks Over Schedule

  Kubrick had a reputation for being an obsessive perfectionist. He often made actors do scenes over and over again - often dozens of times, sometimes over 100 times - in order to achieve his creative vision.

  He once made Sydney Pollack do hundreds of takes during an Eyes Wide Shut scene in which the actor simply had to walk across the room and answer the door. For the same film, Kubrick made Tom Cruise walk through a door 95 different times. 

  The production for Full Metal Jacket was only supposed to be 18 weeks. The filming instead lasted for 39 weeks. 

  Modine talked about what it was like to be on the set for such a prolonged period of time:

  I described it as Gilligan’s Island. The ship set sail on what was supposed to be a three-hour tour and they end up trapped on this island. In our case, it was another of shooting, another day, another day. You begin to wonder what you have to do to complete this?
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  (#9) Production Was Shut Down For Three Months After Ermey Broke His Ribs In A Car Accident

  Right in the middle of shooting Full Metal Jacket, Ermey suffered severe injuries from an automobile accident. According to Kubrick, the actor's car skidded off the road at 1 o'clock in the morning. 

  The director talked about how the Vietnam veteran managed to survive:

  He broke all his ribs on one side, just tremendous injuries, and he probably would have died, except he was conscious and kept flashing his lights. A motorist stopped. It was in a place called Epping Forest, where the police are always finding bodies. Not the sort of place you get out of your car at 1:30 in the morning and go see why someone's flashing their lights.  

  The cast and crew were forced to shut down production entirely for three months. Ermey was out of commission for over four months.
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  (#1) Ermey’s Audition Tape Involved Screaming Insults While Being Pelted With Oranges And Tennis Balls

  How exactly did Ermey go about convincing Kubrick to cast him as Hartman? The veteran's plan required an old-fashioned switcheroo that had worked twice before in Apocalypse Now and The Boys in Company C. 

  Ermey worked his way onto Kubrick's set as a technical director. He then went about convincing Kubrick that he should actually be cast as the drill sergeant in the movie, despite the role already being claimed by Tim Colceri.

  The veteran made an audition tape that depicted him as the abusive drill sergeant, yelling insults as tennis balls and oranges flew at his head. 

  Kubrick heard these tapes and replaced Colceri, who had just spent weeks learning the 28 pages of difficult dialogue. Colceri did get a smaller part in the movie as the helicopter gunner who yelled out, "Get some," while brutally gunning down Vietnamese noncombatants.

  Ermey rehearsed the same way he earned the part. The actor had Kubrick's assistant Leon Vitali throw tennis balls at him while he prepared for his scenes.

  "I had to catch the ball and throw it back to Leon as fast as possible and say the lines as fast as possible," Ermey revealed. "If I were to slur a word, drop a word, or slow down, I had to start over. I had to do it 20 times without a mistake. Leon was my drill instructor."
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  (#10) The Actors Threatened A Mutiny 

  Modine's Full Metal Jacket Diary gives readers true insight on what occurred on a day-to-day basis on the set of the famed Vietnam epic. The summary of the actor's accounts was that it was a pretty "miserable" experience for most of the cast and crew.

  Kubrick's hyper-meticulous nature, infamous propensity to require multiple takes, and lack of a consistent shooting schedule led to universal hardship. At one point, the actors were so upset with Kubrick's regular violation of union rules, like working overtime, that they threatened a mutiny.
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  (#13) Kubrick Flew In 200 Palm Trees From Spain To Help Him Create Vietnam In England

  Kubrick didn't really believe he needed to travel to make a movie. For one thing, he did not like to fly. Beginning in the early 1960s, the American expatriate made all of his movies in England, where he lived.

  Not one frame of Full Metal Jacket was filmed in Vietnam - or anywhere near it. The film was made entirely in England. All Kubrick had to do was figure out how to make the UK look like Vietnam.

  Vietnam has a tropical and humid climate. It is home to 113 different species of palm trees. The detail-oriented Kubrick needed to have authentic-looking palms in the movie. In order to create the lush tropical forests of the Southeast Asian region, Kubrick flew in around 200 actual palms trees from Spain. He also brought in 100,000 plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong.

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