Radio War Nerd EP #399 — Short-Timers, Full Metal Jacket & The Persecution of Gustav Hasford, feat. Annibale
Guest: Annibale
Recorded: September 25, 2023
We're joined by friend o' the show Annibale to discuss the grim story about the greatest writer on the Vietnam War, Gustav Hasford, author of two criminally out-of-print novels — The Short-Timers (which Kubrick made into Full Metal Jacket), and The Phantom Blooper.
At 1:11:58 — Music break by Brendon Anderegg (check out his group Mountains here)
At 1:14:00 — We discuss Canada's NaziGate scandal
*Gustav Hasford
Total time: 1:34:13
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Comments (26)
Just listened to this. Annibale dismisses Lee Ermey as someone who had barely seen combat, to which I reply Big DEAL. Ermey had actually been a Marine *Drill Sergeant* during the Vietnam War. He was playing HIMSELF. What greater authenticity could one ask?
Too much time spent on a very dull topic. 😑
Soldiers applauding zeal is definitely something I've read about whether it's the US civil war, world war 1 or 2, or the Russo-Ukrainian war. People seem ready to cheer on the guys they're about to kill just because... I don't know, "Game recognize game" or something,
for xmas I got FMJ from my great uncle, who fought in Korea and hoped I'd watch it so I'd see the dark side of the military before making any decision to sign up ironically I didnt watch it til long after he died, and I had already shunned the military before I even left college
Annibale just shone his new facet! This was great. Now I need to go hunt for these books in the wild.
I was working on starting a small business once years ago, and my ex-military partners wanted to call it "Corps Capital." I said "Normal people will pronounce it 'Corpse'." They didn't believe me.
It's "core-man" not "corpse-man" guys...
Bit of trivia for those not familiar with the U.S. Armed Forces: not a lot of Naval personnel are at risk of getting shot in America's wars, generally speaking. However, the Marines do not have their own combat medics. Instead, the Navy attaches people from their medical corps to Marine units to handle those duties; hence why Joker's buddies shout for a "corpsman" instead of a "medic" when he's wounded. More trivia: Navy corpsmen are also the ones responsible for providing medical services to the President.
Does anybody have the vid of the Armenian being cut off while speaking about Karabakh?
I love Annibale and I’m sure he has good reasons for being semi-anonymous but hopefully one day we can learn more about him and his background. Very all-around interesting guy.
Yeah I'm intrigued too.
On the topic of MIA soldiers defection to viet cong.. past guest Jack Murphy has done articles on the subject and definitely at least one verification of this.
PSA: Murphy is a fraud. BTW, True Anon just had a three-part series on the whole POW/MIA scam. It was an eye-opener for me.
On the full metal jacket as a recruitment movie I had some military friends in my younger years and they would watch it ONLY for the boot camp scenes and get pumped up and then turn it off when it swaps to Vietnam.
Mark and John, you guys have absolutely ruined so many war movies for me. 🤣🤣🤣 I can never again watch something like Full Metal Jacket or The Deer Hunter without hearing John in my head saying: "Oh come on! They would never do that! Those guys are way too valuable!" In any case I'm a total Kubrick nerd and I've seen pretty much every documentary on him. There are a couple of documentaries on full metal jacket that are worth checking out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KFg3fFeJLoY And Cinema Tyler has a great series on full metal jacket: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-X4wB-C5Gmg
Love me a book episode. Book recommendations are half the reason I listen to pod casts
Follow up: Cheapest paperback copy of Short Timers is 97 dollars on eBay, cheapest copy of Phantom Blooper is $169. Fuck.
I can understand being ambivalent about Kubrick's film - I go back and forth on it, myself, as I do with most of his work - but aren't you guys being a little hard on it? You speak about R. Lee Ermey as if he ran over your dog. A cuple of fun and not-so-fun facts: Ermey was at one point considered for the John Doe role in SE7EN. Of course he plays the police captain, in a performance I like very much, very restrained but you can tell he's got that dog in him. (He's got the great line "Wake up Glimmer Twins!" to sleeping Somerset and Mills, who are waiting on a fingerprint ID.) Animal Mother is played by Adam Baldwin, who, for a time, was pretty good in certain kinds of roles, but more recently proved himself a different kind of sociopath, that is, a very ONLINE one: he literally coined the term Gamergate circa 2014 and spent many many hours cyberbullying lots and lots of people (mostly women). A genuine shit-kicking asshole of the first order.
I was ambivalent on it until the judge movies thing I linked to re Kubrick’s final US films
Just in case you didn't know, both Short Timers and Phantom Blooper are available from the open library at archive dot org (Join as a user, borrow a book for an hour [or renew until you can't], chip in when and if you can).
Phantom Blooper is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Re-read it until it fell entirely apart. Bummer it’s rough getting another copy. I wound up joining a military that was filled with glass cannons.
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=58AD7A155D356F877410426F8D23D5B5
As to Kubrick, this helps enjoy the film more. Also there’s a whole series that are worth listening to. https://www.patreon.com/posts/77446180?utm_campaign=postshare_fan
recommendation seconded, fun podcast overall imo but that whole Kubrick series is genuinely inspired
I joined the Marines in a big part because of Full Metal Jacket. Lol. Such a stupid kid to think I were being subversive because that was the reason. In a final inspection at recruit training, I told the training division Sgt Major the reason I joined the Marines was to "make my mother proud and the movie Full Metal Jacket." Two tours to Afghanistan later I realized that I had just made myself available to the racket. So it goes. Good episode and thanks for providing such a unique perspective.
Joining the Marines because of Full Metal Jacket is like becoming a starving orphan because you saw Grave of the Fireflies. Were you inspired by the part where a recruit was tortured by his instructor and fellow trainees until he killed the sadistic instructor and then himself? Or the part in Vietnam where they're just wandering around getting blown up by IEDs and gunned down by a child sniper? I will say, Full Metal Jacket makes the Viet Cong look pretty badass. R. Lee Ermey talks up the Marine Corps an awful lot, but when the fighting actually happens that little girl wiped out like half of Joker's squad by herself with a rifle and a couple bombs hidden under teddy bears. I could see it being used as recruitment propaganda for the Northern Vietnamese. As Walter said in the Big Lebowski, they were worthy fuckin' opponents.