They were two young men on the town who spent money as though they were rich, not just guys with a healthy per diem of £1,600 a week. He was reteaming with Cameron for Aliens, a sci-fi epic starring Sigourney Weaver that was shooting in London at the time. His apartment was beneath one occupied by Michael Biehn, a fellow actor who a year earlier had starred in James Cameron’s The Terminator as Kyle Reese. After weeks of rehearsing, Colceri was near a breaking point.įortunately, Colceri found comfort in another group of actors working on another soon-to-be classic film. It was tough for the actor, having to be on call and ready to film such a demanding role. All along, Kubrick - through Vitali - dangled the idea that he would begin shooting the next day, only for that day to come, and go. Vitali allowed no deviation from the words on the page, even as the pages changed constantly. Every night, Vitali took the tapes to Kubrick, who would rework the dialogue based on the footage. It was a grueling schedule, six days a week, 12 hours a day. Kubrick was off filming the second half of the film, and wanted to keep his drill instructor isolated from the rest of the cast so that they wouldn’t become overly familiar with the abusive, intimidating sergeant. Kubrick arranged for his star to move to a more private location, an apartment that was previously occupied by Superman actor Margot Kidder.Ĭolceri didn’t know it, but he wouldn’t see Kubrick again for more than a year. Kubrick, if you need 1,000 takes I’m prepared to give you 1,001,'” Colceri recalls saying.īy this point, Colceri was becoming self-conscious about spending his days holed up in a hotel room, spouting off drill-instructor dialogue as hotel staff shuffled down the halls, wondering what he was up to. Colceri found Kubrick to be affable as he stood in the freezing air, telling the actor not to believe stories about the filmmaker’s penchant for demanding hundreds of takes from his performers. He rehearsed in his hotel room for three days with Vitali, until finally he was summoned to meet the director. Those 28 pages to learn were just the start. He had one thought: “Oh, my god, my character doesn’t stop talking for 60 pages.”Īlmost as soon as Colceri got to London, Kubrick overwhelmed the actor with work. for $2,500 a week.Īfter the Warners meeting, he sat in a stairwell pouring over the 160-page script, half of it on white paper, half on yellow to mark the scenes that took place in Vietnam. His scene partner never made it past that stage, but Colceri soon had signed an eight-week contract with Warner Bros. ![]() Colceri recorded yet another audition tape with the young marine and sent it in. Vitali informed the actor - whose most notable credits at that point were in a few commercials - that Kubrick was impressed with him, but that the director would also like to see the young marine with whom Colceri had taped his audition. It was Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s longtime assistant and right-hand man. I’d completely forgotten about my tape,” says Colceri, who received a call from London in 1985. “They saw thousands and thousands of tapes for three years. Colceri recruited a young marine to play the part of a scared grunt, while he played the drill sergeant for a self-taped audition he sent to Kubrick in London. The friend was sure that Colceri, who served in the marines from 1969-71, was perfect for the movie. “It will never end.”Ĭolceri’s Full Metal Jacket journey began in 1982 when a friend saw a casting call in THR - then a daily newspaper - asking for taped submissions for a Stanley Kubrick military drama. ![]() “I’m still suffering from it,” Colceri tells The Hollywood Reporter with hesitation, as he doesn’t like to complain. For Colceri, his experiences with Full Metal Jacket would also come to define his life, in a very different way. The actor, who died in 2018, became so enmeshed in the pop culture consciousness that he played a sendup of his Full Metal Jacket character in three Toy Story movies. Lee Ermey convinced Kubrick to give him the part, with the filmmaker moving Colceri to the small, yet still memorable, role of the helicopter door gunner who famously shouted “Get some!” as he murdered Vietnamese civilians.įor Ermey, the drill sergeant would be a career-defining part that earned him a Golden Globe nomination. After some behind-the-scenes maneuvering, technical adviser R. Thirty two years after the film opened, Colceri remains best known for his work in Full Metal Jacket, though in a twist that’s become part of the film’s lore, he spent months preparing for a role he never got to play. He was going to make Stanley Kubrick proud.
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