There are pacing issues in the second half, but a lot of it is worth it in my opinion. I think the sniper situation alone is worth watching the second half.
But I would bet most people quote and think about the first 45 minutes 10x more often than the second.
FMJ was in high rotation all throughout my time in the Army. I’ve seen the movie more times than anyone should need to and seeing him as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was memorable each time. Much later, I realized that Ermey was the televangelist in Fletch Lives. He was great when he was playing a growling Marine but he was a good actor who could do other stuff too. Of course, I loved his role as Colonel Leslie “Hap” Hapablap as much as Garfield loved lasagna.
Also we get introduced to Animal Mother, played by Adam Baldwin in an early role, awesome scene where he and Joker have a shit-talking contest.
“You don’t ‘sir’ me! I *work *for a living!”
RIP, Sarge.
RIP
He didn’t always play a Marine, but he pretty much always played someone in authority. Mayor, Senator, Sherrif… he *oozed *authority.
I’m sorry, Authoritah!
I recommend Saving Silverman for fans of Ermey.
He played the father of Janitor on Scrubs. 74 is too young.
In honor of him, we shouldn’t eat any jelly doughnuts today.
I’m going to eat one while all of you do pushups as a consequence.
By internal SerenDipity[sup]TM[/sup]I queried this today.
Was any boot camp experience like what Ermey showed? Do they still do that? Did they ever?
He played a Captain in the Texas Rangers in the Tommy Lee Jones starring Man of The House.
Did we ever find out if he was House’s dad?
I always wondered what his ethnic background was; though it says he’s from Kansas, there’s something about him that always struck me as Italian or Greek. My Greek grandpa (90 years old and still a tough and very vocal bastard) has a similar look.
What strikes me about his barely-fictional role in FMJ was that he was a damned fine teacher. Yes, he used some techniques that a teacher wouldn’t ordinarily use… but he also had six weeks to teach his students things that lives would literally depend on. And there are also some more conventional teaching techniques hiding in there. Like, when he made Joker responsible for Pyle’s success, he was doing as much as he could to help Pyle… but he was also teaching Joker to become a leader, because he saw that potential in him.
Yeah his teaching was fundamentally sound, I gather that actual Marine boot camp was almost identical to how it was portrayed in the film, though I imagine that recruits shooting their drill instructors to death in the bathroom was probably not very common. I’ve heard that it actually used to be far more brutal than what’s portrayed in FMJ, up until a bunch of recruits drowned during a march through a flooded swamp. I’ve also heard that it isn’t as bad today with the profanity and hands-on beatings, but they’re just as demanding with the PT and mental tasks designed to rattle you, freak you out, and force you to concentrate.
I always wondered exactly what Pyle’s motivation was for the murder-suicide, and how plausible is is that a guy like him might actually do something like that. He doesn’t really seem particularly stupid or mentally unstable, just uncoordinated and fat, but the training changes that, as it is intended to, and by the end of the training he’s shown as being much better at everything than even Joker is; there’s a scene where Pyle rattles off the answers to questions very quickly and precisely while Joker stumbles over it. He takes to the marksmanship immediately and impresses Hartman seemingly on the first day that they have target practice.
So basically, the training worked. Hartman is proud of Pyle at the final scene where their names are all called out and assigned their jobs; he says “you made it”, acknowleding the successful transformation.
Is it that Pyle is angry/scared/frustrated that he’s going to be an infantryman and sent to Vietnam? Was he hoping to get a different job? Was it that he was finally hit by the reality of the fact that he was going to get sent to Vietnam and have to actually confront death; is that what made him crack?
I always sort of thought that is exactly what he meant by saying “I am in a world of shit” when Joker tells him to put away the rifle or he’ll be in a world of shit. Like, “I’m going to die in Vietnam, so fuck everything.”
I would assume that for the majority of people, the feeling of finishing Marine boot camp would be exhilarating and confidence-inspiring, even with the knowledge that you have to go to war, because they build up your confidence. My friend told me that when he first left MCRD for the first time, he “felt like he could do anything, like he could get hit by a truck and survive, that he could fuck any woman he wanted, that he was like Superman.” And that seems to match the recollections I’ve been told by others.
I guess Pyle was uniquely vulnerable to mental instability. Also it was in the script.
In his honor, the next time I fuck someone in the ass I WILL give them the courtesy of a reach around.
I always thought he would have been an interesting J Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man reboot. Ahh well. RIP
I’ve always wondered exactly what Pyle’s motivation was for enlisting*. His goofy grin in response to Hartman’s repertoire seemed to show that he thought he was signing on to be a soldier in a way that only little boys could possibly conceptualize. He very quickly got a wake-up call on that score at least.
[*I’m not sure if even Vietnam-era Marines were still all enlistees, or if the draft was opened up to them too at some point, WW II included.]