Special Guest: Tim Colceri

Today Tim Colceri, famous for his portrayal of the Helicopter Door Gunner on "Full Metal Jacket", will be joining us to share stories of his time working on the film. Here's is an excerpt of some of them, from Dan Valenti's "Stanley Kubrick's Full Mental Straightjacket: The Siege of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman".

"In addition to helping Kubrick rewrite the dialogue, particularly the now-exalted “Get some!,” Colceri suggested dramatic changes in the character’s appearance. “The script originally had the door gunner with a big mustache, a Hawaiian shirt, marijuana joints behind each ear, and sunglasses. I told Stanley, ‘No. This is all wrong.’ The Marine Corps would never allow this. Not even in Vietnam. The Army, maybe, but not the Corps. So I told him what I would wear. A helmet and mic. I decided not to wear a shirt, just a flack jacket so my arms would show.” Kubrick agreed. Great call. If Colceri had meekly followed the script wardrobe direction, he would have come off as a faux-Eliot Gould in M.A.S.H. ... Just before the scene, Colceri pumped some weights to make his character as intimidating as possible. He also wanted a “somewhat deranged” look, that state of emotional disconnect/misconnect that war can cause. “I’m shooting civilians, mothers and children, and I’m doing it as a likable guy.” ...

A van with eight Vietnamese women and children extras rehearsed to get the timing of their fleeing and falling aligned with the copter as it passes and the door gunner’s firing. Terry Needham, first assistant director filling in until Kubrick arrived, gave them cues by bullhorn. When you pick apart the logistics of the scene, it’s one with the choreography of a June Taylor dance number...The extras had to begin running well off camera and into the scene. Each would follow a pre-determined path so they would hit their marks at the precise moment to be in the door-gunner’s sights when the ’copter whizzed by to shoot them. It amounted to a group of receivers running pass patterns, with the quarterback counting on them to run the route to perfection and be at a specific spot at a predetermined time. They had to fall dead or wounded as directed (not all at once) timed with the gunfire."

Valenti, Dan. Stanley Kubrick's Full Mental Straightjacket: The Siege of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (p. 318). PLANET MEDIA BOOKS. Kindle Edition.