Full Metal Jacket, one of the greatest war movies of all time, turns 31 this year. To celebrate we’ve collected a ranked list of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s greatest insults delivered by a man born to play this role, the late great Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee “Gunny” Ermey who passed away earlier this year from complications with pneumonia.
Ermey elisted in the United States Marine Corps at the age of 17 in 1961. From 1965 to 1967 he served as a drill instructor in India Company, 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. Ermey was originally hired as a technical adviser for the film, but director Stanley Kubrick asked him to audition for the role of Hartman. Kubrick said that Ermey was “genius for this part” after watching him improvise dialogue against a group of Royal Marines who were hired as extras. According to Kubrick, more than 50% of the insults featured in the final version of the film were improvised by Ermey.
Here are 14 of the best. Do you think we missed any?
14. “You had best square your ass away and start shitting me Tiffany cufflinks or I will definitely fuck you up.”
13. “I’ll PT you all until you fucking die. I’ll PT you until your assholes are sucking buttermilk.”
12. “I’m going to three seconds, exactly three fucking seconds to wipe that stupid looking grin off your face or I will gouge out your eyeballs and skull fuck you.”
11. “You little piece of shit you look like a fucking worm.”
10. “Looks to me the best part of you ran down the crack of your mama’s ass and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress!”
9. “You are pukes—the lowest life form on earth. You are not even human fucking beings. You are only unorganized, grab-asstic pieces of amphibian shit!”
8. “Did your parents have children that lived?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“I’ll bet they regret that. You’re so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece.”
7. “You had best unfuck yourself or I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!”
6. “Who said that? Who the fuck said that? Who’s the slimy little communist shit twinkle-toed cocksucker down here who just signed his own death warrant?”
5. “I do not look down n*****s, k***s, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless.”
4. “I bet you’re the kind of guy would fuck a person in the ass and not have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around!”
3. “Do you suck dicks?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
“Bullshit, I’ll bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose.”
2. “Where in the hell are you from anyway, private?”
“Sir, Texas, sir!”
“Holy dog shit, Texas! Only steers and queers come from Texas, private Cowboy! And you don’t look much like a steer to me so that kinda narrows it down.”
1. “How tall are you, Private?”
“Sir, five foot nine, sir.”
“I didn’t know they stacked shit that high!”