MovieChat Forums > An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) Discussion > Jus saw this for first time. Any AOCS/O...

Jus saw this for first time. Any AOCS/OCS grads not too impressed?

posted 16 years ago by billthrill1
14 replies | jump to latest

The entire romance Mayo has with Paula is obviously impossible, but that's fine because it's Hollywood and AOCS itself wouldn't make a good enough story.

However, I was hoping to see that the movie would at least nail the AOCS scenes, but there just wasn't much focus on accuracy at all. There were some blatant, inexcusable errors such as:
- Calling Foley, an E-7, "sergeant"
- Wearing covers indoors sometimes and sometimes not wearing them outdoors
- The sloppy salute with the bent wrist by Foley
- General lack of intensity/volume around Foley. Too much eye contact with him. Candidates referring to themselves as "I" rather than "this officer candidate."
- Too much chatter around Foley. This just wouldn't happen.

..and the list could go on.

If I were the director, I would have had AOCS grads on set with me to help with the accuracy.

Any other AOCS/OCS grads watch it and feel the same way?

[–] cgostel 16 years ago

Doesn't that list of grievances seem to be well into nitpick territory?

When did you attend OCS? Different instructors do things differently. Not all of us who went through OCS/AOCS had to do the 'this officer candidate' thing.

[–] billthrill1 16 years ago

I graduated last year. What about you?

If anything, I think most graduates would agree that the lack of intensity around Gy Sgt Foley in the movie was unrealistic. Whenever we were around our DIs, we were all extremely careful of doing the slightest thing wrong.

[–] cgostel 16 years ago

I think it's the combination of changing times and a few Hollywood liberties that ruined the movie for you. You are comparing modern OCS in Pensacola with OCS of 25 years ago in Washington.

My father attended OCS in (or about) 1970 and said the movie was almost 100% accurate in describing his OCS experiences. In particular the whole bit about local women chasing the OCs rang very true to him. According to him, there were generally two types of punishments administered, either getting kicked out of OCS or very intense physical "training" punishments.

His experiences contrasted significantly with my own experiences in 2006 which more closely resemble what you describe. I saw the movie a long time ago, so I was expecting to see what my father told me about instead of a reflection of what I had seen.

[–] josh-magder 16 years ago

Um... OCS was NEVER in Washington. And billthrill is correct. the stuff the OCs did in the movie would NEVER happen in real OCS. They chattered around their DI, talked to each other freely and joked around and it seemed as if they were ALWAYS on liberty. I didn't see the outside world until week 4 and that was a rare occasion. Didn't see it again after that until like week 7.

[–] ex250 16 years ago

This isn't a movie about AOCS. It is a movie about a young man who finds a
respectable father figure that he never had who changes his life and who he
is. It is a movie about the relationship between fathers and sons, it just
happens to take place in AOCS. Too much intensity and reverence for Foley
would have killed it.

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ntvnyr30 15 years ago

Agree with Bill----I served with the Marines and hearing everyone refer to Gunny Sgt Foley as "sargeant" made me cringe. Also Foley's moustache isn't up to regs either. Also seeing Gere with his blazer open and uncovered at the end of the film was irritating--and that's not nit-picking.

[–] vespid23 15 years ago

Yes, it is. Just like my pointing out that you misspelled "sergeant" in your comment.

It wasn't a navy training film, for crying out loud.

[–] Gwasgray 15 years ago

"General lack of intensity/volume around Foley. Too much eye contact with him. Candidates referring to themselves as "I" rather than "this officer candidate."

You've seen Full Metal Jacket, right? The boot camp part of the movie is completely dominated by the DI character (Gunnery Sergeant Hartman), apart from a few brief scenes where the recruits talk to each other while getting dressed or cleaning the toilets (when the DI isn't around). In An Officer and a Gentleman, the DI is more of a supporting character, if they gone down the Full Metal Jacket route in the training scenes (FMJ hadn't been made yet anyway) and had the Officer Candidates not speak unless spoken to, they wouldn't have been able to flesh out the characters enough (in FMJ we don't really get to know Private Joker until after the boot camp part of the film is over). Officer and a Gentleman is part boot camp film, part coming of age/love story. It tried to appeal to a wider audience than just people who are into military stuff (and probably even less to people who actually have military experience).

Officer and a Gentleman is a very different film to Full Metal Jacket, it's not even about war, but to compare Foley and Hartman, Louis Gosset Jr was very good and gave a more 3-demensional performance (he showed some humanity), but I think Hartman is the ultimate and most fearsome movie DI (R Lee Ermey should have won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as well, but perhaps the Academy didn't want to repeat themselves)

[–] grendelkhan 14 years ago

I was in the NROTC around this time. It's accurate and a damn fine movie. They did have an AOCS graduate around, the writer. He had been through the program. The Navy refused to co-operate because the writer and director refused to make the film less accurate to make it more acceptible to the official Navy image, including eliminating swearing (which Hackford pointed out they heard constantly while walking across the base). It's vastly more accurate than films that did have Navy co-operation, like Top Gun (the Navy was wetting themselves to help on that recruiting film).

Different DI's have different styles. Foley was accurate to many I witnessed, particularly that era. Ermey was from an earlier era and was accurate in FMJ (and Boys in Company C) for his era. Jack Webb was relatively accurate for his era, in The DI. Also, Ermey coached Gossett, so he didn't seem to have a problem.

[–] dp021904 10 years ago

A film doesn't need to be a documentary to make accuracy a priority. At the very least, the candidates should have been referring to Foley by his correct rank.

And Vesp, pointing out that Marine's spelling mistake makes you look supremely petty. You should have a little more respect.

"Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream..."

[–] jefgg 11 years ago

It was a movie, not a documentary.

[–] crockett_john 10 years ago

Some of the inaccuracies are necessary to make an entertaining movie. I don't think there are very many of us that would sit through two hours of a purely accurate film that was made for entertainment. Even when they know better, I don't think they go for pure accuracy. I think they pick and choose the ones that make the most sense sometimes, like calling Gunny Foley a sergeant instead of gunny, gunnery sergeant, or drill instructor. The first time I saw this, way back when I was 16, most of the military jargon was over my head. I think a lot of non-military viewers would be the same way.

I do agree with you that Foley's salute needs some help. A few years later, in Iron Eagle, it was even worse.

One other thing that stood out to me was that Foley was the only DI around most of the time. I would assume they did this to keep the number of characters down, which is why I also think there were so few cadets in the class.

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[–] cedrics 10 years ago

The entire romance is impossible? How so? Officer candidates and enlisted, once they hit their 'a' school or AIT have romances all the time, some just as dishonest (wife at home, etc) as what was shown here.