Question: How does it feel to be in the most controversial movie of the year?
Modine: Is it?
Question: Yeah, pretty much.
Modine: I don't know.  I haven't read anything about the film.  I don't know about the controversy that's surrounding it.
Question: Well, some people think it's a brilliant anti-war statement.  And some people feel that it's nihilistic and cliched.
Modine: Everything that happens in Full Metal Jacket exists.  The boot-camp sequence is probably the most realistic portrayal of boot camp in the Marines that's ever been put on film, with the exception of a Parris Island training film.  It's not pleasant.  You're not allowed an escape.
    The reason that Stanley's stories are shocking is because they're so truthful.  He doesn't try to create some sympathy for somebody because it's a film, because he wants to win the audience over.  It's not pleasant to see somebody killed.  And it's not pleasant to die.  Why try to make it something romantic when it's not?  Maybe in all those World War II movies--because of what was happening in Europe--it was necessary to romanticize people going to fight.  But to continue that romanticism is a mistake.  You know, it was a tremendous thing that happened in the Sixties, when people started to ask why.
Question: A lot of people are comparing Metal to Platoon.
Modine: I think they express two completely different points of view.
Question: Good and evil are much more clearly defined in Platoon--
Modine: But it's difficult in life to define good and evil, isn't it?  It's much easier to make a film about good and evil than to actually recognize it.
Question: What was the feeling on the set during the training-camp sequence?
Modine: We called ourselves "swinging dicks," because if you squint your eyes and look at us--everybody with their shaved heads standing at attention--we look like giant erections.  It was humiliating.  I mean, it's not pleasant getting your head shaved once a week and getting yelled at by some guy for ten hours a day.
Question: Did you begin to hate Kubrick?
Modine: No.  Stanley is my friend.  There were times when just out of pure frustration you'd get angry with Lee (Ermey).  But there's some kind of bonding that happens and you can't really get mad at anybody.  You don't get mad at the director, because he's trying to create an art form instead of just a film.  It's not like pop music, which you listen to for the summer and giggle about.  It's like a piece of classical music that you're able to listen to over and over, and every time you listen, you find different nuances.  That's how I feel about Stanley.
Question: Did Kubrick sit down and explain what the film was about or--
Modine: No, no.  I think he probably had the temptation to do that.  But my feeling is that by not telling you what he wants, you will somehow find it together.  He certainly gave direction, though.  We had a lot of talks that ranged from boxing to Greek mythology, a lot of conversations ranging from A to Z.  It was great.
Question: How did you find the way to act, or react, in the battle sequences?
Modine: You've been doing it all your life--that's the ridiculousness of it.  From the time that a little boy is able to run, somebody sticks a gun in his hand and he runs around pretending to kill people.  The military is like this giant fraternity of men trying to hang onto their childhoods.
Question: Kubrick's image is of a "cold" director who's not very interested in characters or actors.
Modine: I find his films very human.  You know, when Stanislavskia started his new theater, people used to act by making grand gestures (he lifts his arms in a grandiose pose) and shouting.  And Stanislavski--well, I don't have to tell you this--changed it into a theater of what he felt was "real."  I think Stanley says, "OK, it's real, but is it interesting?"  Or is it more intersting to heighten reality and make it a metaphor?  I mean, how does one behave when somebody puts a gun in their face?  You can't say that this is the "real" behavior.  It's "a" behavior.  There are hundreds of different ways to react to having a gun put in your face.  I think Stanley's interested in what reality is, but he doesn't just settle for the first thing that the actor comes up with or that he himself comes up with.  He's looking for something that can be more interesting, more unusual, strange.  Other filmmakers don't get the time to change.  They have to shoot something tomorrow, and often times it's not the way they want to shoot.  With Stanley, you do it the way that you want it to be, not because you're forced into making a decision based on time.
Question: Why have you been in so many films about Vietnam--Birdy, Streamers, Full Metal Jacket?
Modine: It's something that I grew up with: Three of my brothers and one of my sisters were in the war.  And the more that I read and the more I try to understand, the less sense it makes.  I just watched the war on television.  Listening to the body count--you know, listening to the score.  Who was winning.  It was like a baseball game: We got ten casualities, they got a hundred.  Oh, we had a good day.