Wait, Nanny Oggis in the Marines 
? I wouldn’t have thought she’d fit the type.
That’s great. Bob Filner’s mother?
Warren Oates as Sgt Hulka in Stripes.
Ermey had to explain to Kubrick what a “reach around” was-reportedly got a good chuckle out of the usually taciturn director when he told him.
As someone who served in the British Army in the 60s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman brought back many memories. The drill sergeants over here are cut from exactly the same cloth as Hartman. They all seem to be brilliant natural comedians with stunningly funny lines. The only problem is that you’re not allowed to laugh! I can’t count the number of times I drew their unwelcome attention on the parade ground because I just couldn’t contain my laughter when some other poor bastard was being ripped apart.
The guy in the 50s who had the reputation of having the loudest bark in the British Army was Regimental Sergeant Major Britten. He made a number of movies in which he put that bark to good effect.
I think he’s saying that he’ll whip Pyle into such good shape that the cannibals will no longer be aroused at the prospect of eating Pyle’s currently fat-laden body.
Hartman would be nearly speechless in todays army. A lot of his insults/obscenities were gay slurs. I’ve read DI’s can’t even curse out a recruit anymore.
I’ve seen modern day boot camps on Discovery and Military channel. The DI’s are still very tough and the physical training brutal. They just don’t have Hartman’s gift of colorful language. 
I read an interview years ago and R Lee talked about being a DI. He said the DI’s looked at causality reports and found names they trained. It tore them up inside. That made them train recruits even harder and try to give them the skills to survive.
Did not know that, it seems strange then that Hartman would scream at Joker for not believing in the Virgin Mary.
He was testing Joker, no more and no less.
And don’t forget, while their hearts may belong to Jesus, their asses belong to the Corps.
Oh man, you’ve now ruined that line for me. It makes more sense of course, since the next line is about Chaplain Charlie. But I always imagined that the only break the recruits ever got during basic training was some crappy ass magic show by a guy who usually works birthday parties for eight year olds. A thousand Marines surrounding him while he pours milk into his sleeve and all that.
I love that line because it is sooooo sarcastic. I use it quite a bit - suitably cleaned up and inserting the other person’s current action for “fall down”
I always thought Hartman getting pissed at Joker for not believing in the Virgin Mary was more about Joker’s individualism rather than Hartman’s religious convictions.
Does anyone else only watch the first half of the movie anymore?
Sgt. Hulka!
I figured the test was to see if Joker would give an honest reply and face the consequences or lie and tell Hartmann what Hartmann apparantly weanted to hear. The honesty (or at least Joker admitting that he was in conflict) rather than just a robotic response is more valuable.
I’d have to see it again, I guess, to be sure.
Truth be told… I find the second half kind of boring, especially since the Vietnamese whore saying Me so horny, love you long timehas become such a cliché.
As an incidental note, I was in some colllege humanities course (I can’t recall what the course was about) a while back and the professor showed a documentary about Mohawks from the Montreal region that routinely send their young adults through Marine training as a rite of passage, the way they used to go into dangerous contruction trades before the jobs dried up. The other students were, I guess, all impressed by how harsh the basic training was at breaking individuals down and building them up again, etc., but I’ve been through stuff like that, so that part didn’t hold my interest - I was more curious about the Mohawk culture that demands this passage rather than the Marine culture that inflicts it.
I watched an inteview with Ermey about the portrayal of DIs in FMJ. BTW: very accurate. He was very heartfelt that with the lists of “their boys” dying in Vietnam, the DIs honestly felt they were doing what it took to keep the Marines alive. The scene he alluded to as an example was the left-side/right-side scene with Pvt. Pyle.
It really gives a different context to the movie.
It makes sense to strip the humanity off of someone you want to turn into a weapon, other than some rope climbs and push ups that’s what Basic is all about.
Odd then that Hartman would assign nicknames day one.
If God had wanted your ass up here, He would have miracled it up here!
[Quote=Bryan Eckers]
Truth be told… I find the second half kind of boring, especially since the Vietnamese whore saying Me so horny, love you long timehas become such a cliché.
[/quote]
Making Kubrick partly responsible for the career success of Luther Campbell and 2 Live Crew!
And old soldiers and Marines will of course say kids these days have it easy…
But for a very long time the DIs/Drill Sergeants/MTIs/etc. have not been allowed to personally assault the trainees and that got extended, decades ago now, to not aiming obscene or racial hate speech at the recruits.
And of course it’s also a matter of 40 more years of continuous honing of the art and science of “motivating” - Basic in all branches has made up for the loss of some of the crude-rude aspects with more cleverly (fiendishly? ) designed “stressing”. Though all the branches’ Basic were perceived to have “softened” during the first decade of the volunteer force, by the 90s there was a policy of re-toughening the process (for instance, the Marine “Crucible” capstone experience started in its current form in the 90s) that got further revised after the start of the Afghan/Iraq-2 wars with the feedback from the field.
There’s a series on the Dicsovery channel now called Surviving the Cut about the training to get into various elite units. There’s a lot of yelling and such, but not a lot of profanity (even the bleeped variety) and nothing I’d consider overtly sexist, racist or homophobic.
As for “assaulting the recruits” - it’s never malicious or pointless or in anger, but technically if you’re at the bottom of a pool and somebody yanks the mouthpiece away from you and grabs your air tanks and gives you a hard all-around shaking…
Ah.
Er, what is that?