Central to Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is the screaming, beet-red face of Ronald Lee Ermey, an actual US Marine Corps drill instructor who portrayed the film’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. When Ermey died in 2018, a New York Times piece contended that his immortal performance had inspired boot camp ethos around the US military, much in the way that The Godfather inspired the speech patterns of actual mafiosos. But Bainbridge-based marine corps veteran Steve Rhoades, 71, says that Ermey’s performance was simply par for the course—he saw it every day of his childhood.
“I was raised at Parris Island,” says Rhoades, referring to the film’s South Carolina training facility. “I
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