R. Lee Ermey

The character actor R. Lee Ermey passed away in April. He was a former military man who made a career in Hollywood as a technical advisor and character actor. Despite his notoriety as both a Marine and a Hollywood personality, he fell into both more or less on accident. As a teenager in Washington state, he had multiple run-ins with the law and was arrested twice for criminal mischief by the time he was 17 years old. The second time around, the judge offered him a choice – jail or the military. Ermey picked the Marines and enlisted in 1961, serving as aviation support, a drill instructor, and as a staff sergeant in Viet Nam for 14 months. A few years after being medically discharged, Ermey attended the University of Manila in the Philippines on the G.I. bill, and while there, he got a small role in Francis Ford Coppola’s dark Viet Nam masterpiece, Apocalypse Now. Ermey also served as Coppola’s technical advisor and began a career as both an effective character actor who could evince tough, rigid authority better than almost anyone and as a former professional soldier who could translate the military world for Hollywood.

Ermey appeared in about 60 films over the course of his career as well as being featured in commercials and tv shows. While a wide, nuanced range was not necessarily his strong suit, he did work across a wide variety of projects. He acted in Texas Chainsaw Massacre films and did voicework for the Toy Story trilogy and Spongebob Squarepants. 

But no role he had was more impactful or memorable than his portrayal of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s Viet Nam fever dream, Full Metal Jacket. Released in 1987, the film is considered to be one of the filmmaker’s best. That is not to say that it’s a pleasant experience – because it’s not. Watching Full Metal Jacket is like taking a bath in nightmare juice. And then drowning in it. But that’s kind of the point of a film about Viet Nam.

The story is in two parts – the first focusing on the training of new recruits at Parris Island, South Carolina and the second following some of those same Marines in-country. Ermey’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is the new recruits’ abrasive, unbending, unforgiving drill instructor at Parris Island. Every cliché we’ve come to expect from drill sergeant characters basically originated with him except, rather than coming across as trite, here, they are terrifying traits that make Ermey’s performance unpredictable, darkly hilarious, and intimidating to say the least. In trying to whip his new recruits into shape, Hartman zeroes in on Private Leonard Lawrence, who he quickly renames Gomer Pyle. Pyle is chubby and a little slow in more ways than one, regularly falling short of what Hartman sees as combat readiness. His verbal and physical assaults on Pyle escalate until Hartman sees they aren’t doing the trick. So instead he switches tactics, and every time Pyle screws up, everybody in the squad gets punished except him. It gets worse from there until things come to a horrifying, bloody end the night before the platoon is scheduled to ship out for active duty. Hartman confronting a now broken and unhinged Pyle in the moonlit barracks bathroom is a movie moment that still haunts me over thirty years later.

In an unheard of move for the meticulous and controlling Kubrick, Ermey was allowed to rewrite and improvise his own lines on set. Also, Kubrick generally only required three or four takes from him for each scene. Undoubtedly, his willingness to let Ermey ad-lib and keep his performance fresh is a big part of why that performance is still so visceral.

Accidental as his career was at first, Ermey went on to work on many other worthy projects. But if you ever want to see his greatest work, unpleasant as it is, check out Full Metal Jacket.