steven@ism70.UUCP (09/04/85)
The ever-secretive Stanley Kubrick has begun principal
photography on his 11th film, "Full Metal Jacket," for Warner
Bros. in England.
After several weeks of rehearsals, the director put his Vietnam
War film before the cameras on August 27 at an abandoned gasworks
in Beckworth, S.E. London, where all the sets were constructed.
Matthew Modine ("Vision Quest"), Adam Baldwin ("My Bodyguard",
"Reckless") and Dorian Harewood ("The Jesse Owens Story", "The
Falcon and the Snowman") are toplining this adaptation of Gustav
Halsford's raw violent novel, "The Short-Timers," for which
Kubrick and Michael Herr, who wrote the book "Dispatches" and the
narration for "Apocalypse Now," have written the screenplay.
Phil Hobbs is producing with Kubrick, Jan Harland is Executive
Producer. Anton Furst, who recently did "The Company of Wolves,"
is production designer and Doug Milsome, camera operator on
Kubrick's last pic, will be cinematographer instead of John
Alcott, who has lensed all of the director's films since "A
Clockwork Orange".
Shooting is expected to last at least until the end of the year,
which would put the pic on track to possibly rate as a late 1986
release for Warners.
Only statement Kubrick would release about the picture concerns
its plot which he stated follows an "18 year old marine recruit
and private joker from carnage and machismo initiation rites at a
Marine corps training base to his climactic involvement in the
fighting at Hue during the Tet offensive." The acclaimed novel by
former reporter Halsford begins at boot camp, then features a
succession of gruesome, explicit, violent events which reach
surreal proportions.
Although information could not be confirmed, sources said that
some second-unit work would be done under the director's close
supervision. Otherwise, Kubrick intends to recreate the Vietnam
War on the sets constructed at the gasworks, and it was reported
that he has developed a rear projection technique that he claims
will yield results indistinguishable from on-location shooting.