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Full Metal Jacket was Vincent D’Onofrio’s first movie and it not only opened the
door to a great career in film, but it also taught him a lot about acting for the screen.
He credits Kubrick’s direction for the way he’s acted on film throughout his career (WTF).
Because this was his first movie, D’Onofrio reached out to his acting coach Sharon Chatten
several times during the production (Pollack Interview). He would do this thing–I’m assuming
she taught him–where he would recite the ‘Three Blind Mice’ nursery rhyme in his head
while doing dialogue scenes as Pyle (Pollack Interview). He described it as a dark,
monotone, version playing in his head constantly (Pollack Interview).
Kubrick entrusted his actors to make the performance work and would have
them come up with how to play each scene. He was against any kind of showing off, usually saying
“Just do it right, it’s all you have to do. Don’t showboat, just fucking do it” (WTF).
Kubrick was also against any unnecessary camera moves, which he found
“pretentious,” opting instead to move the camera only to help tell the story (WTF).
Marc Maron: “Did he help you construct the character?”
Vincent D’Onofrio: “No.
Doesn’t talk about story, doesn’t talk about character, doesn’t talk about anything.”
Marc Maron: “He just tells you to stand over there?”
Vincent D’Onofrio: “No he just says, 'What are you gonna do?'”
Marc Maron: “Oh really?”
Vincent D’Onofrio: “Yeah. And then you do it, and then you do it again,
and he said 'You guys have to do it faster than that, or better than that.' And it’s like,
'Can you think of anything more interesting than that to do?' He’ll say things like that.
And so Matthew and I would go away and we’d come back with a scene, and
he’d go 'Ok I’m gonna put a camera here and put a camera here and instead of going over
there walk over there because that’s where the light’s gonna come from, and we’ll shoot.'”
Vincent D’Onofrio: “Eventually, slowly, with the scenes that we started out with he
started to get an idea of what I was doing, and he never complained about it. Right?”
Leon Vitali: “Mm-hm, mm-hm, yeah absolutely.”
Vincent D’Onofrio: “He just let me keep going,
so I said ‘Ok I’m not getting fired yet, this is awesome.”
But, as Private Pyle makes his transformation into a killer, a rift between acting styles would add
an extra element to some of Pyle’s most pivotal scenes. The monster in him would have to come out
and that’s where D’Onofrio would turn to some early cinema classics for inspiration.
This is the story of how monster movies and an on-set feud shaped Private Pyle’s madness.
Vincent D’Onofrio and Matthew Modine both got their start in theater,
but the two studied opposing acting styles. D’Onofrio studied the Lee Strasberg method
and Modine–who played Joker in the film–studied the Stella Adler method (FMJ Diary).
The difference in the Strasberg method and the Adler method boils down to where an actor’s
emotion is coming from. Strasberg felt that an actor should draw on their own experiences
and Adler felt an actor should draw on their imagination surrounding the “given
circumstances” of a scene (Adler Wiki). In his Full Metal Jacket Diary, Matthew Modine talks
about visiting D’Onofrio’s acting class based on Strasberg and finding it much different than
his class based on Adler. With Strasberg, actors tend to stay in character when the scene is over…
Leon Vitali: “You alright?”
...and, with Adler, actors “let it go” and return
to their normal selves when finishing a take (FMJ Diary).
Modine says that Strasberg and Adler are thought to be “absolute enemies” (FMJ Diary).
Despite being good friends, a tension began to grow between Modine and D’Onofrio. Shortly after
D’Onofrio’s knee injury, Modine was joking around with extras in between camera rehearsals. When the
sun was finally in the right spot, Kubrick told Modine to stop joking around and to “tense up”
because he was ready to shoot and the goofing off really seemed to frustrate D’Onofrio (FMJ Diary).
Well, they call me the Joker.
He confronted Modine about joking around all the time and threatened to kick his ass.
Well, I got a joke for you. I’m gonna tear you a new asshole.
All the extras thought that a fight might break out (FMJ Diary). Modine contemplated
hitting him with his rifle, but decided not to, because they would have to stop
shooting if one of them got injured (FMJ Diary). They stopped talking to each other.
They even used Stanley’s daughter Vivian as an intermediary (FMJ Diary).
Marge, tell Bart I just want to drink a nice glass of syrup like I do every morning.
Tell him yourself. You’re ignoring Lisa, not Bart.
Then it was time to film the montage of Joker helping Pyle
learn how to be a soldier. Throughout this entire montage,
Modine and D’Onofrio hated each other’s guts. And because of how Kubrick worked,
he had Modine and D’Onofrio come up with what they would do in many of these segments. Kubrick
wanted some ideas for things that Joker could help Pyle with. During their training with Lee Ermey,
they had been taking apart M-16s and putting them back together, so they did that (Commentary). They
also improvised the part where Joker helps Pyle over the obstacle (Commentary). Kubrick sat on a
camera crane and they would just riff until Kubrick said, “yeah, do that” (Commentary).
To prepare for these segments, Modine read Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
about two ranch workers–one who is big and strong, but mentally disabled, and another who takes care
of him (FMJ Diary). What’s interesting is that Keir Dullea said that he was thinking about
Of Mice and Men when he performed the scene of disconnecting HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrick came up with the bed sheet folding and typed up a few lines.
He also came up with the rifle spinning bit, but that was all improvised (Commentary).
Everybody hates me now.
Even you.
For this part, D’Onofrio and Modine improvised the lines while rehearsing
and then Kubrick typed it up and they shot it as written (Commentary).
During this time, Modine wrote in his diary that he wondered if the rift between them
was because of where D’Onofrio would have to go with the character
or maybe that it might be too much pressure, but the rift got so bad
that Modine bought a speed bag and D’Onofrio bought a weight set to train for an eventual
fistfight between them (FMJ Diary). And then, it was time to shoot the blanket party scene.
As a retaliation for constantly being punished for Pyle’s mistakes,
the recruits wrap bars of soap in rags and beat Pyle while he is being held down.
D’Onofrio would listen to Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry
in between takes (Commentary). The ‘soap’ in the rags during the shot
were pieces of styrofoam or a rag wrapped in another rag (Commentary, FMJ Diary).
Modine hated shooting this scene because he actually wanted to fight with D’Onofrio,
but in this situation, D’Onofrio couldn’t fight back (FMJ Diary). Modine wrote that
he also had a similar experience long ago when playing football and the coach would
punish the whole team for his mistakes–the other players would spit on him (FMJ Diary).
This shot was the most takes that D’Onofrio ever did in the film–they
ended up doing it eleven times (Pollack Interview).
It was also the first time that Kubrick actually told D’Onofrio that he really liked the way a
scene turned out (Commentary). In an essay, Georg Seesslen notes that this is a major
turning point for Joker because, even though he hesitates, he participates in the brutality and
it stops the audience from thinking that he will be the moral center of the film (Seesslen, 213).
This is the breaking point for Pyle. Before this, it could have gone another way, but everyone,
including the closest person he has to a friend and ally, has given up on him.
What do we do for a living, ladies?
Kill! Kill! Kill!
Kubrick brilliantly puts Pyle’s transition under the action of the recruits chanting
‘Kill’ in unison, which is then followed by a lecture where Gunnery Sergeant Hartman
talks about the immense damage that a ‘motivated’ Marine with a rifle is capable of.
Do any of you people know where these individuals learned how to shoot?
Private Joker.
Sir, in the Marines, sir!
When they shot this, it was a really hot day and everyone would put wet towels on their heads
in between takes (Commentary). This is where we see Pyle do the famous
“Kubrick Stare.” Kubrick told D’Onofrio that he wanted him to do something that looked very
“inward” (Commentary). D’Onofrio thought of it as someone who was “unaware of their surroundings”
with a feeling of being worthless and in a bad place (Commentary). He described how Kubrick
would direct the “Kubrick Stare.” To begin, he would have to get the look right–Kubrick
would then say, “can you put your head down a little bit and look up more?” (Commentary).
Vincent D’Onofrio: “First I would have to get there, and he would say ‘Put your head down
some more.’ He goes, ‘Are you ready?’ And I’d say yes. He’d go, ‘Action Vincent’–
he would say ‘Action Vincent,’ I remember that–and I would do it. And he would
linger and linger and linger and then he’d say, ‘Cut.’ And he goes, ‘Ok,
now I’m gonna raise the camera up and we’re gonna do the same thing again.’”
Vincent D’Onofrio: “So the minute he did that and he goes, ‘Now look up at the camera,’
I knew exactly what he was doing because he had done in all the other movies. So,
he kind of cued me to then, ‘This is where I want you to go’–without ever talking about it–’this
is where I want you to go with the next scenes that fit in this kind of, in the order before
the bathroom scene.’ So he kind of cued me into the insanity, so then I thought, ‘Ok so I’ll
keep doing what I’m doing, and then whenever he wants to do that shot he’s gonna tell me.’
So all I gotta do is show up with the interior, and then he’s going to mold it the way he wants.”
The one time Kubrick really spoke to D’Onofrio about acting was the night before shooting Pyle’s
death scene. They were walking back to their cars after a day of filming and, in the parking lot,
Kubrick asked D’Onofrio if he knew what he was going to do in the scene tomorrow.
D’Onofrio said, “yeah, I think so” and Kubrick said,
“good” and started walking away before turning back (Commentary).
Kubrick had this thing where he would always clear his throat before he was about to say something.
He goes, “(clears throat) Are you sure? It has to be really good.” D’Onofrio said,
“I’m hoping, Stanley” (Pollack Interview). At this point, D’Onofrio had been on the
production for 13 months and was pretty comfortable, saying in an interview that
he no longer felt like he was about to cry when talking to him (Pollack Interview).
Kubrick said, “Okay, but it has to be big though. It has to be like Lon Chaney
big” (Pollack Interview). Lon Chaney had a substantial impact on the early days of cinema
and was a pioneer of film acting and make-up effects (Chaney Wiki). Most
notably, he played the lead in the 20s adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame
and The Phantom of the Opera where he had a glued strip of fish skin pulling his nostrils up
often causing him to [quote] “bleed like hell” (Feast Your Eyes, Chaney Wiki). The
brilliance of Cheney’s performances is in how grotesque and exaggerated he behaved.
Vincent D’Onofrio: “This thing happened inside me that was like Christmas,
because at home at my flat, I had about fifteen Lon Chaney films on video.”
Kevin Pollak: “Because you were obsessed with him at the time?”
Vincent D’Onofrio: “No, because of this scene.
Because I always saw Leonard Lawrence turning into a monster. I always saw him as a monster.
I always saw him as a weak-minded person that switched from being a country bumpkin
to a monster, like his wires got crossed in the training and they made a monster instead
of a soldier. That’s how I saw it. And it’s a very–when I think back at it, I probably
wouldn’t have made that same choice today, but I think it came from a very inexperienced,
very simple, way of looking at it, and I think it was exactly right.”
D’Onofrio had also collected Godzilla films and King Kong films while preparing for this
scene (Pollack Interview). He said that the realization that he was thinking the
same thing as Kubrick gave him the courage to play the scene how he wanted (Commentary). He
had been working on the look and voice and wanted to come across as a cornered
animal (Commentary). He also kept in mind the ‘Kubrick Stare’ and worked
out his posture in the scene so that the look would happen naturally (Pollack Interview).
To me, it sort of looks like D’Onofrio is playing this scene as if he is wearing a
bunch of monster make-up, like how an actor in full monster prosthetics gets
this special kind of courage that is really difficult to get when you are fully seen.
According to D’Onofrio, he performed the scene three times and the kill shot once
saying that it only took an afternoon to shoot both his side and Modine’s (Pollack Interview).
Kubrick: “You should probably not be–should be more, uh...frightened, and then get into it.”
“Do something brilliant.”
It was actually D’Onofrio’s last day on the production (Commentary).
Vincent D’Onofrio: “And I went–I would go sit next to him and there were two chairs,
and I would go sit next to him and he’d play it back and we’d watch it. And
he didn’t say anything, he just put his hand, I think he put his hand on my wrist. Stanley put
his hand on my wrist and he squeezed my wrist and he said, ‘Well we’ve got this, this we’ve got.’
He was, you could just see that he was thrilled with it.”
...“I think that this particular character was so far from me that I lived in it while
we were doing it and I dumped it off quickly after. You know, it was such a sad character.”
After the production, D’Onofrio and Modine would become friends again
and are still good friends to this day.
I’m going to try something new here. There is an interesting story behind how they did
the special effect of Pyle shooting himself, but it would be near-impossible to talk about
it without showing the effect, which would make YouTube demonetize the whole video.
So I decided to make it a separate 4-minute bonus video available on Patreon for 1 dollar.
This way, I don’t have to censor anything and can show you all the gory details
and the photography and other special effects that Kubrick used for inspiration.
Supporting me on Patreon at the 1 dollar level now also gets you access to ad-free
versions of my videos and helps me in my quest to expand the channel.
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