Awesome moments in Full Metal Jacket.
- Hartman's legendary rain of insults is really something to behold.
- The fact that a good chunk of R. Lee Ermey's dialogue is improvised, and on top of that, his scenes only needed two or three takes at most, something completely unheard of in a Stanley Kubrick film. It's one of only two instances in a Stanley Kubrick film where he allowed and accepted improv (the other being Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove).
- However, Ermey's dialogue isn't unscripted. A significant amount of it is taken verbatim from The Short-Timers, the novella the film is based on. As for the rest, various cast members (and the original shooting scripts) have confirmed that while Ermey was encouraged to improvise in rehearsal, Kubrick ensured it was written down so he could select the lines he wanted and work them into the shooting script, and so during actual takes, Ermey was only delivering scripted dialogue. This was necessary to ensure that whatever Ermey said in the master shots was always the same thing he was saying during coverage (all the takes of scenes from different angles).
- After Joker denies believing in the Virgin Mary, Hartman tears into him worse than usual, demanding that he "sound off that [he loves] the Virgin Mary". Joker refuses, correctly guessing that any answer he gives will be wrong and that Hartman will punish him harder if he changes his answer. Hartman immediately promotes him to squad leader.
- The VC Sniper is pretty darn awesome in her own right. She manages to succeed in ambushing and killing three members of the Lusthog squad despite being outnumbered, outgunned, and having (so far as can be ascertained) far less combat experience. All while using a standard vz.58 with no scope.