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Radio War Nerd EP #399 — Short-Timers, Full Metal Jacket & The Persecution of Gustav Hasford, feat. Annibale (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-30 22:52:17
Edited:
2023-09-30 22:54:41
Imported:
2023-09

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Content

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

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

*Buy John Dolan's comic memoir "Pleasant Hell" now available in both audio and ebook format.

Files

Comments

grimbo

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.

a clash of purple

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.

Alec

He thought that the line about “sucking a golf ball through a garden hose” was so funny he decided to enlist. Back in the day, if you wanted to learn new slurs you’d have to go to boot camp. Kids these days are so spoiled with their ironic comedy podcasts.

Mark Ames

Now now let’s keep it civil. I said Full Metal Jacket was a Marines recruitment film for boys of a certain age because I understood it that way when I saw it, and I was 20 or 21 at the time so I had no excuse. I can imagine how it would work on a 17-19 yr old boy at the dumbest point of a boy’s life. You don’t think the bad parts of the film will happen to you; you think you’ll be a first person spectator to all the black comedy and nihilism, you’ll be that one protagonist who lives through it all and comes out the other side with stories to tell.

Eran Greenberg

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.

Karl Childers

as a teenager i was a nerd of the non-war variety, when i saw Full Metal Jacket i super related to Pvt Pyle/Leonard and regarded him as the hero of the movie. still do tbh. he figured out who the real enemy was.

Karl Childers

recommendation seconded, fun podcast overall imo but that whole Kubrick series is genuinely inspired

NYCM&AHole

The Canadian parliament’s Nazi salute is literally what Mike and his brother mean by the West as the 4th Reich

Steven Wilsher

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).

Annibale

On the other hand, the book(s) is/are the most distant thing from a recruitment tool someone can imagine. You can read them ending up interested in the Vietnam War and the USMC, but you couldn't ever say "I enlisted because of Short-Timers". And Phantom Blooper is even more outspoken in its distaste for war in general and imperial/colonial wars in particular.

Jaime Christley

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.

NYCM&AHole

I was ambivalent on it until the judge movies thing I linked to re Kubrick’s final US films

Jaime Christley

Yeah I enjoyed that series. It spurred me to give A CLOCKWORK ORANGE a fresh look; for 20-30 years it had been the one Kubrick film that I fully disliked. I wouldn't say I love it now but, thanks in large part to the Judge lads, I found a lot to like. One thing that stood out to me this time around was the final shot of Alex, his eyes rolling skyward as he considers a fuck fantasy in the snow, applauded by society's elites (I wonder if we'll see that kind of thing again?!): a tortured, psychotic expression, but also an inverse of the "Kubrick stare".

Jimothy Realname

Love me a book episode. Book recommendations are half the reason I listen to pod casts

David Bond

Judge movies Kubrick series was incredibly eye opening

Karl Childers

Judge's series convinced me there's more going on with Kubrick thematically than I had realized but honestly I still think his films are vastly overrated. Learning that Kubrick appropriated and watered down a genuine antiwar story into palatable middlebrow Hollywood fare and was then rewarded as a politically brave artistic visionary for it goes a long way to explaining some of the hosts' venom in this episode. (Personally, I've always been more bothered by the fact that Kubrick's films are just completely humorless and self-serious.)

Eric Snow

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

Jaime Christley

Thanks karl, I’d never heard of Kubrick being described that way before. Glad to hear a fresh perspective.

Jimothy Realname

Follow up: Cheapest paperback copy of Short Timers is 97 dollars on eBay, cheapest copy of Phantom Blooper is $169. Fuck.

Jaime Christley

Worthwhile looking for on library websites for the ebook. Also both books can be found on ebook torrent sites like libgen, but I can understand that not everybody feels at ease with such things.

Jimothy Realname

I cannot read a book on the computer, but i thank you for the advice nevertheless

Miko

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.

j

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.

Karl Childers

i bought myself a cheap e-reader for exactly this reason, still not quite as good as paper but far better than reading on a normal screen and imo a fair tradeoff given how many books are available in e-reader formats for free if you care to find them

blazed uncle

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.

Benke

Does anybody have the vid of the Armenian being cut off while speaking about Karabakh?

Steve Mathews

It's "core-man" not "corpse-man" guys...

a clash of purple

In my mind palace, Dolan created the Annibale persona to be his new alter ego after people realized who Gary Brecher actually was. He spent years developing that accent.

a clash of purple

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.

a clash of purple

R. Lee Ermey was also on a classic episode of the Simpsons! He played the colonel on the Air Force base where Sideshow Bob stole a nuclear bomb. "Gonna tear you up like a Kleenex at a snot party!" and "Aww, not the Wright Bros.' plane! The Smithsonian's gonna have my ass on a platter." Speaking of that episode, Bob tries to set off the nuke, but it's a complete dud; interesting connection to the RWN episode where they talk about how no one is sure if all these nuclear weapons in the world actually work anymore because nobody wants to test them nowadays.

Steve Mathews

It's a totally understandable mistake from a civilian, but a good one to correct in order to avoid unfair criticism.

Jaime Christley

The corpsman crossover is an interesting wrinkle in the relationship between services: corpsmen who are attached to USMC entities don't just go into combat wearing camo and whatnot, but they also wear nearly identical service/ceremonial/dress uniforms, but with Navy insignia, which is very distinct from Marines insignia. Both the Navy and Marines fall under the Department of the Navy; the Marines since the middle of the 19th century. I expect that's part of it. Someone else likely understands the lore better than I.

Mark Ames

Yeah i realized as i did it and then thought fuck it i did it once i’ll stick with it

Steve Mathews

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.

SB

Annibale just shone his new facet! This was great. Now I need to go hunt for these books in the wild.

SB

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.

j

I look into it.. Jack Murphy is playing a game in my opinion. I think you learn who you give nods too and what view point you parrot then you can do your intended work.. I think the fallout from his book about Benghazi was a learning point for him and with a little lip service you can get bad entities off your back. You can see similar formula here,,,, you can talk about what really happened in the past just acknowledge the right view about current events…. I’m sure Murphy isn’t a fraud but I’m sure he has seen the mockingbird cage from the outside at least.

Doug Cartel

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

Doug Cartel

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,

David Andrews

Too much time spent on a very dull topic. 😑

Rod Miller

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?