By Brian Trompeter
Notoriously finicky director Stanley Kubrick normally did not allow people to take photographs on his sets, but made an exception for actor Matthew Modine, who was playing Pvt. Joker in the 1987 classic Vietnam War film “Full Metal Jacket.”
Thirty-eight of Modine’s images – all but five of which are black-and-white – are on display through September 2025 at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle.
The photos provide a uniquely personal perspective of the film. Many images show actors goofing off, palling around or being pensive, while others resemble historical battle photos.
Modine, who turns 65 on March 22, attended the March 2 opening of the “Full Metal Modine” exhibit and fielded questions from onlookers.
So why did the director let Modine take pictures on the set? Modine theorizes that Kubrick found the acting process mysterious and may have thought the young actor, who played a Stars & Stripes correspondent in the film, was doing photography as an exercise in method acting.
A friend had advised Modine that showing interest in photography might ingratiate himself with Kubrick, a former press photographer. Kubrick saw Modine taking pictures with a Rolleiflex twin-lens-reflex (TLR) camera and advised him instead to buy an autofocus Minolta 35 mm camera. Modine did, but disliked the Minolta and kept taking photos with the Rolleiflex.
The exhibit is better for it. The 120 film negatives are nearly 4.5 times larger than their 35 mm counterparts and offer superior detail.
Working with a Rolleiflex likely would frustrate modern photographers accustomed to taking hundreds of photos with their digital cameras and instantly being able to view the results via a small screen on the back.
The Rolleiflex is laborious to load and provides a reversed viewfinder image that’s slightly different from that of the lens below that’s taking the photo.
The Rolleiflex forced Modine to look down into the camera instead of holding it in front of his face, as with the smaller 35 mm camera. His subjects reacted differently, he said.
Because “Full Metal Jacket” took so long to film, with Kubrick taking advantage of narrow periods with perfect light, Modine could take more photographs than on a standard movie set.
Much of the filming occurred in winter 1984-85 and the actors, dressed as Marines fighting in tropical Vietnam, shivered in the cold, Modine said.
The since-demolished Beckton Gasworks in East London doubled for the Vietnamese city of Hue, which saw ferocious streetfighting during the war.
The gasworks during World War II were a major target for German bombers. At one point during filming, a truck carrying Kubrick scraped over something metallic, which turned out to be an unexploded 500-pound bomb.
“They had to evacuate the whole area and have the bomb squad come in,” Modine recalled.
Other dangers lurked as well. The gasworks’ soil contained about 28 known carcinogens.
“When you took a bath at nighttime, the dirt that came off turned the white porcelain a cobalt blue,” he said.
Roughly 3 feet of toxic soil later had to be excavated before the site was redeveloped, Modine said.
Some of the photos seem directly out of the movie. A wall-sized image shows former Marine drill instructor R. Lee Ermey adjusting an M-14 rifle on the shoulder of actor Arliss Howard, who played Pvt. Cowboy.
Ermey, who began as a technical adviser on the film, auditioned members of the British Territorial Army as extras for the movie. His inventive invective caught the attention of Kubrick, who gave Ermey the drill-sergeant role originally intended for another actor.
People frequently ask Modine how the performers kept straight faces during Ermey’s outlandishly profane tirades. Ermey, whose Marine Corps discipline helped him become a better performer, had to yell for hours each day and his throat started to bleed.
So in addition to Ermey’s usual bouquet of coffee, cigarettes and spittle being inches from the actors’ faces, add the smells of blood and steroid spray for his worn-out throat.
“It was a horrible combination,” Modine said.
Ermey broke multiple ribs in a car crash while seeking Chinese takeout food, Modine said. His injuries force a multi-month delay in the production schedule, which is how Modine came to spend a total of two years in London working on the project.
Ermey had injured a shoulder in the Vietnam War and could not obtain the full range of motion when physically disciplining recruits in the movie.
Vincent D’Onofrio, who played an ill-fated recruit nicknamed Pvt. Pyle, noticed Ermey was having difficulties when trying to strike Modine’s character in the boot-camp sequence. D’Onofrio asked that Ermey actually clobber him when his character puts his rifle on the wrong shoulder during close-order drill. The memorable scene was sickening to listen to, Modine said.
One more bit of trivia: Kubrick did not get Disney’s permission to have the actors sing the “Mickey Mouse Club Theme” as they march past burning rubble at the movie’s end.
“It’s a beloved film,” Modine said. “It’s sad that war is part of our life, our culture, our world that we live in. [The movie] is as relevant today as when it came out.”
“Full Metal Jacket” gave Modine an entree into the U.S. Marine Corps and the chance to serve others.
“This really brought me into what I guess you’d call the family, this dysfunctional family,” he said with a laugh, adding, “You don’t have to join the military to be in service for your country.”
Marine Corps veteran David Trieu of Annandale said Modine’s photos were so realistic that he could have been embedded with a platoon in Vietnam.
“It’s a really cool, really awesome, meaningful experience,” he said of the exhibit. “Being Vietnamese, talking about the Vietnam War in this artistic display brings up the conversation about the Marine Corps, about the war, and then everyone can make that determination themselves.”
