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SUBJECT: NOTES: Parris Island scenes were shot at a real military training camp in Bassingbourne. The barracks set was built at Enfield. Becton, an abandoned 1930s gasworks town by the Thames was used as the Vietnam city of Hue. Of creating this "set" where the film's climax takes place, Kubrick has said: "We worked from still photographs of Hue in 1968. And we found an area that had the same 1930's functionalist architecture. Now, not every bit of it was right, but some of the buildings were absolute carbon copies of the outer industrial areas of Hue...We had demolition guys in there for a week, laying charges...Then we had a wrecking ball there for two months, with the art director telling the operator which hole to knock in which building... I don't think anybody's ever had a set like that...To make that kind of three-dimensional rubble, you'd have to have everything done by plasterers, modeled, and you couldn't build that if you spent $80 million and had five years to do it. You couldn't duplicate, oh, all those twisted bits of reinforcement. And to make rubble, you'd have to go find some real rubble and copy it...no one can make up a rock. I found that out in Paths of Glory. We had to copy rocks, but every rock also has an inherent logic you're not aware of until you see a fake rock. Every detail looks right, but something's wrong. So we had real rubble. We brought in palm trees from Spain and a hundred thousand plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong...All in all, a tremendous set dressing and rubble job." --20 Lee Ermy a former Parris Island drill instructor originally hired as technical advisor was given the part of Sgt. Hartman after Kubrick observed the way he handled actors during casting session improvisations. Most of the outrageous insults he hurls at recruits were Ermy's own creations.
Cinematographer John Alcott, who began his association with Kubrick as far back as 2001, opted to not join the crew on this film. The position was filled by Douglas Milsome who had shot the second unit footage for The Shining, as well as starting as a focus puller on Barry Lyndon. Of Kubrick's notorious reputation for high numbers of takes, Milsome said: "The many takes are not just repetitions of the same thing, they are often building upon a theme or idea that can mature and develop into something quite extraordinary. The whole structure of the scene can actually change during the operation of filming it...The large number of takes are used mainly to get something out of the actors that they're not willing to provide right away...There were occasions on Full Metal Jacket where we went a few more than 25 or 30 takes, but we usually didn't average more than 10 to 15 takes." --21 TRIVIA: Poster slogans: Anthony Michael Hall was originally cast as Joker in Full Metal Jacket. Matthew Modine eventually got the part.
CREDITS: --20--Rolling Stone, 1987 --21--American Cinematographer, September 1987, Full Metal Jacket: Cynic's Choice |
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