Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

Date

1987

Description

Creator of the image: Stanley Kubrick (director)
Date of the image creation: 1987
Medium of the image: Film
Person depicted: Gunnery Sergeant Hartman played by R. Lee Ermey

This still-frame is taken from the first three minutes of the film Full Metal Jacket. It depicts the domineering figure of the drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, midway through berating the newly nicknamed ‘Joker’ for daring to speak out of turn. The drill instructor is an overbearing figure in the first third of the film, forcing his solders in training to undergo authoritarian exercises and obscene rituals in preparation for their deployment in Vietnam. The actor playing Hartman, Ermey, drew from his many years of military service in the US Marine Corps, was hence able to ad lib much of his character’s grotesque performance. This was one of the very times that the extremely controlling Kubrick allowed an actor to improvise.

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