R. Lee Ermey

"To make Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann's performance and the recruits' reactions as convincing as possible, Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, and the other actors playing recruits never met R. Lee Ermey prior to filming. Stanley Kubrick also saw to it that Ermey didn't fraternize with the actors between takes.

Director Stanley Kubrick had nothing but praise for R. Lee Ermey's skills as a performer. Kubrick originally was going to write dialogue for Ermey's character himself, but he became so impressed with what Ermey improvised, he decided it was not necessary. He simply let him ad-lib, an act practically unheard of for a Stanley Kubrick film. Ermey's performances were so faultless that Kubrick only needed two to three takes to get his scenes filmed, which was also extremely rare for a Kubrick film. The only instance Ermey had to film more than two to three takes was in the "Jelly Doughnut Scene," which he claimed was filmed in 37 takes, to the point his voice kept disappearing from time to time. "

"Advertisements for this film were censored in some parts of Canada due to the tagline "In Vietnam the wind doesn't blow, it sucks." At that time, Canadian censors had not yet decided whether the phrase "it sucks" (or "this sucks") was obscene."