Anytime anyone screams in someone’s face “What is your major malfunction, numbnuts?!?” the memory of R. Lee Ermey lives on.
But Ermey had experience as a real drill instructor from his time in the Marine Corps, and Kubrick sensed his potential after watching him berate extras.
The role that made Ermey synonymous with drill instructors, the role that he played or spoofed over and over again throughout his long career, came in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.
Kubrick initially hired Ermey as a technical adviser on his Vietnam War film (he’d served in a similar role on Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now).