Wanted to grab Tom Cruise by his ankles and beat the whole cast and crew with him!
Apparently, so did Kubrick: [link]
R. Lee Ermey, the actor who played the menacing drill instructor in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987), says that two weeks before his death, Kubrick phoned him to express his despondency over Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, which reportedly had taken longer than any film in history to film and which was only in a rough-cut state. "He told me it was a piece of s**t," Ermey said in an interview with the online Radar magazine, "and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to have him for lunch. He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him -- exactly the words he used...He was kind of a shy little timid guy. He wasn't real forceful. That's why he didn't appreciate working with big, high-powered actors. ... He would lose control."
The solution to that problem, of course, would have been to hire R. Lee Ermey as your AD.
What's shocking about R. Lee Ermey isn't that he can bellow like an ox farting nettles, but that when he's not bellowing, he can be a strikingly subtle actor. He was one of the parents of the murdered couple in
Dean Man Walking,
and it was cool to see him play subtle.
The solution to that problem, of course, would have been to hire R. Lee Ermey as your AD.
HELLS YEAH! Loves me some Gunney.
What's shocking about R. Lee Ermey isn't that he can bellow like an ox farting nettles, but that when he's not bellowing, he can be a strikingly subtle actor. He was one of the parents of the murdered couple in Dean Man Walking, and it was cool to see him play subtle.
Also true. His Gunnery Sergeant Hartman/Gunney, the Host of Mail Call schtick is just that -- a character he plays.
In person, he's warm and soft spoken, and as an actor, he's capable of great range and skill. "Gunney" is just the character he's best trained to play, so he plays it well and gets called on to play it a lot. And as you can tell on Mail Call, he frequently likes to play that specific character with a twinkle in his eye.
Loves me some Gunney.
but it's certainly got its gender-trouble
Not to mention the infamous bath house scene between Olivier and Tony Curtis.
And Jean Simmons!
Damn right! I think Simmons was one of the hottest women in Hollywood in her prime. Not only was she drop-dead gorgeous with a smokin' body, she was an intelligent, classy performer, and sadly, I don't think Hollywood knew what to do with her mix of sensuality and refinement. She was difficult to pigeonhole.
I love EWS, and the idea that it was in a rough state is utterly ludicrous, especially given how long it took to get it to the state it was in when Kubrick showed it to the studio. The idea that an actor pushed around Kubrick is equally bugnuts. Todd Field has directly contradicted Ermey's claim, which pretty much puts it at he said-she said, but I find Ermey's claims to be not even credible on their face.
DAMMIT. I just realized that I lent out my copy of Dr. Strangelove to someone, and I forgot who, and now I'll never get it back. Bollocks.
Put it on your Christmahannukwanzakah/birthday/wish list. That's how I got my copy of Invader Zim Vol.1 back. Turned out my brother had it.
Dean Man Walking
Someone's been waching too much Supernatural...
Ha! And you know, those two keys aren't even on the same side of the keyboard.
Bon bon, you are brave to contradict R. Lee Ermey. He could tell me that the world is flat and that history's greatest filmmaker is Michael Bay and I would holler, "SIR YES SIR!"
Hey, Vonnie, I think the Kubrick guy you're talking about was that asshat Merrwit. Haven't heard from him in years.
In other news, am I the only one who's slightly weirded out that Angelina Jolie is playing Mariane Pearl with a tan and an afro wig?
