Michael Biehn on Stanley Kubrick: “sociopath”

Full Metal Straitjacket


We are very grateful to Aaron Couch and The Hollywood Reporter for their fine article detailing Tim Colceri’s experience acting in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. As mentioned in the article, Colceri lived in a basement apartment of a house in upscale Chelsea Fox had rented for Michael Biehn, then working on Aliens. They swiftly became friends and Michael grew alarmed as Aliens neared wrap while Colceri hadn’t even begun yet — he had the pivotal role of Drill Instructor — and his movie had started shooting before Michael’s. Michael became appalled by what he witnessed in Kubrick’s treatment of Colceri throughout the entirety of that experience and if anything, that feeling has only intensified over the years.

That intensity was very much present when Jim spoke to Michael several months ago. We’ve known each other since our earliest days in Hollywood and Full Metal Jacket was in the theaters when Jim met Colceri. At the time he was handling development for the HBO anthology series Vietnam War Story and he wound up purchasing Colceri’s account of his first day “back in the world” returning from Vietnam. He was taken by the same effusive spirit and magnetism, that same capacity to fill any room he enters, that had drawn Michael when they first met and became fast friends in London.

Seeing Colceri recently in Las Vegas stirred again that long simmering animosity Michael’s harbored for Kubrick ever since FMJ. In his four decade long career he has never witnessed such abuse by a director toward actors — toward everybody in his orbit, really — as what Kubrick practiced on the people who sought to work with him. Michael wanted to see this documented in print and he and Jim put together memories and thoughts that provided the rudiments of the story Aaron produced.

In the course of our discussions, we looked at a great many of the reminisces of working with Kubrick available online and we were struck by the consistent accounts of abusive behavior running the gamut from disregard to deliberate, vindictive, spiteful mistreatment detrimental to his movies. For us, the experience led to a fuller, more unblinking appraisal of the price paid by those who worked for a man who appears, in turns, insidious and oblivious.

The Netflix documentary Filmworker amounts to Leon Vitali’s “vacant stare” look back at the twenty all consuming years he devoted to Kubrick. “He sucked the life out of you,” Vitali assesses of the man, “if you told Stanley you’d give your right arm to work for him, he’d think you were lowballing him. He’d want your left and everything else.” Others interviewed in the documentary offer the same assessment.

Voluminous accounts of Kubrick at work are available on YouTube; we found two enlightening and disturbing. “Staircases to Nowhere” (https://youtu.be/8wwqkxJuNTc) is a “making of” look at The Shining. Eighteen minutes into the film, Assistant Director Brian Cook chuckles as he talks about how he and Stanley “harassed” Shelley Duvall throughout the laborious shoot and alienated her from the rest of the cast and crew, something we’d see echoed when Colceri showed up in London. When Duvall would plead with Stanley to tell her what he wanted from her, he’d reply “You’re the actress, do something brilliant.”

It’s impossible in the online Kubrick material, at least in what we’ve seen, to find actors who speak glowingly of their time working with him. All are clearly exasperated by the endless number of takes Kubrick would require and none speak of him giving them any real insights into conceiving and shaping their performances. “You’re not going to do it that way, are you?” represents the substance of what a number of actors recall hearing from him.

In a twenty minute introduction to a screening of Filmworker (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CsrOmGS5PX0&t=1050s), Matthew Modine poses questions to Vitali and Filmworker director Tony Zierra. Ten minutes in, Modine recounts the torment Kubrick put Dorian Harewood through during his final days on the film. When Harewood’s six month contract expired, he asked to negotiate for increased money as he was losing out on lucrative career opportunities. Furious at this impertinence, Kubrick fulminated until he declared he was going to kill Harewood’s character in the film. For Harewood’s remaining six days, Kubrick shot endless takes of him in the freezing mud, riddled with painful and bruising full load squibs.

Part One