US Marine Breaks Down Military Movies | GQ

What's up GQ? I'm James LaPorta, I'm former US Marine Corpsman and this is the first jarhead breakdown. I don't even know how many jarheads there are so far, but it has nothing to do with the original jarhead. there is one jarhead, everyone else is reserved for lack of a better term, so this is one of the most accurate

movies

: black, brown, yellow or red, now you're green before you even start. I'm seeing things that are standing. Tell me his haircut is right when the guys enter training camp, the first thing you do is shave your head.

The uniform is good, it's accurate in terms of the period, early 90's, what's absolutely ugly is the back. The barracks or their barracks especially for recruits are not so white, they look like they are in a mental ward, the blankets are usually green, they are like these green wool blankets that look like they came straight out of the Cold War, so that's what Lo that catches my attention, I mean, what's accurate is that yes, the bunk beds are made and this is exactly how you would hang the towels. Usually some guys wouldn't even go under the bed because when they wake you up at like 3:30. 4:00 in the morning by instructors, you don't have much time, you have to do it, everything is on a kind of countdown, so they don't even get under the covers, they just sleep on top of their bed.

I know it's already done and they just have to straighten it out. Comes back. Well, that's all exactly. That's called line dyeing. You have to do it a lot. I used to hide behind a stile if you're lucky. Your grid is close. one and so, when the drill instructor is looking down the line like that, you can lean back and hide and this there you don't have those stations, but that's accurate in terms of guys on both sides staring. They don't move at each other and you just hope that no one the instructor doesn't see you looking down sir yes sir yes again mother Jodi is fucking her right now get in her face and give me 25 she can pause it in terms of the screaming Whether that is accurate depends on the person, so because so many types of incidents have occurred, there is a lot of oversight in terms of the behavior of DRO instructors like Joan.

Truckers aren't supposed to be personalized, so a lot of you'll see the drill instructors, you'll hear them get around like a bad dog, you know or something, but usually the trucker would generally look around to make sure that there are no superiors there and they would know that it will still cost. again mom Jodi is fucking her right now get in your face and give me 25 for every time she gets in your face this month oh let's go back Jodi it's a real thing Jodi in the Marine Corps is almost like an urban myth Jodi is the person to use if you're deployed or you're in boot camp or you're off the field training Jodi is the guy who's at home taking your wife on a date or having sex with your girlfriend who's good on drugs so you can make sprites so these are mice that are supposed to know how to draw in terms of being a scribe, that's a real thing, there are also recruited artists, so they draw all the art, the drawings are always something that has to do with war or death, that's what they tend to do. giveaway for drama folks because you look cool think when I give you some advice you'll fire your rifle when grenades explode in your face we've been doing it here sir yes that's happened again it's not commonplace . between both phases and the non-common drone traders, they actually have a card in terms of how long they can make a recruit do push-ups, have the recruit do sit-ups if there's a lot of regulation, but I mean, even in perfect worlds where there's systems in place to not allow things to happen, things have and like a drill instructor hitting someone's head on a board, he stops right there, although this is very subtle, it is incredibly precise, so this is what which is known as a boot, basically What happened is that these Marines graduated from boot camp, from there they will have like a week off.

I think it's like ten days and then from there they'll go to infantry school, but the reason I wanted to pause is because there's fear in all these Marines and it's the same fear that those Marines had standing on the catwalks of the upper decks looking at these new guys, you can imagine that some of them are already veterans of the war and so you're just looking at these guys who are going to eat you alive. I was very stunned when I first showed up to my first unit. You know, it took me many years to realize after that that that was what they were dealing with. with things they had probably been in therapy for it wasn't because I was the new guy because they had just come back from seeing their friends die in Iraq, that's accurate, it's one of those things that is not common throughout the Navy.

Corps, but it has absolutely happened, so they will literally take an iron and bend it to spell USMC and brand people now again. This is not a common thing. I didn't see it in my time and I served from 2006 to 2014. I've seen pictures that are accurate for the early '90s and even the '80s. I mean, they didn't mark me, but something similar in terms of the gang mentality we were training in field. a new sailor, someone had discovered that I had a huge fear of snakes. I had six top guys hold me down and they found these snakes in the woods and I mean, I was fighting tooth and nail, at least it was one that he put on my chest and I was going crazy, you know, and then someone said, " Hey guys, enough, we have to go to a briefing to go to, you know, inside the field before we were supposed to run our range, so again I didn't do it." They don't mark you, but that's a kind of mentality like the older guys who gang up against a new guy who is precise, the next one you strip right right left right you stay in place left right left right left right left right left but Hey, okay, let's rewind that. when marching you're supposed to start off on the wrong foot, everything has some kind of meaning behind it, you're judged to the inch you know, in terms of badges and ribbons, it has to be a certain inch, the guy in front of you It's supposed to be 40 inches from your chest, everything has a structure, but it takes some people a while to get used to it.

General scouts have a few tricks because at boot camp it's not just the tallest recruits that are judged. The Command Authority is actually judging the drone structures, so the exercise is a big part of that, so far everything is accurate, there's a comedic element, guys looking around like laughing and stuff like that, there would be drill sergeants probably yelling at them while they pose. funny scene no one is going to start singing, the drill sergeant is in charge of that and if some random recruit started singing in the middle of his training, he wouldn't sing for a long time.

We sang? Yes, singing is common in the

military

around the world.

military

services that you wouldn't sing at the top of your lungs if the right soldier,

marine

, or officer is standing around because it's incredibly violent, okay, let's fast forward, let's pause, type, this is very director-like, let's make it look like an army really active. base where you know there are formations going in all directions, but it's like it feels fake to me, all these tanks driving behind all these formations and you know it all at the same time because you have to think about it.

The bases themselves are also small. cities, there are tons of civilians working on the base, yes, overall, they got the basic idea right, but they are taking what we would call artistic liberties next in Hacksaw Ridge, it's a true story. Desmond Doss, yes, the recipient of the world war, that's right, you and that's why he served. as a combat medic, but at that time combat medics did not carry weapons, they only treated the wounded, they wanted to put him on the front line and be in the infantry and he was a conscientious objector and he went to a court martial, but he won constitutionally.

They were the military that was trying to violate his rights, but he won the Medal of Honor, yes, a true story and a crazy story. Those Oscars, I've seen them, they really depend on the base, but they're common, even you know. where they have to go up and down these are specifically called loops or they could even go through the O loop which is an obstacle course so yeah especially if it's like a timed event you know you have only so much time to get over the obstacle. Of course, you have a clipboard right there, it's a timed event, so yes, people are racing to try to get the best time.

If I remember correctly, there is supposed to be a Camp Lejeune. There is not a single mountain near Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. They're obviously in California, which ruins everything for me. Exactly, this is not a training camp. They are already in the fleet. shooting an m16 came out of the vietnam war, many people don't know that the bottom half of an m16a1 in vietnam is plastic and was actually developed by mattel, so this is all from akron, this is a normal shooting range, it is common. both in training camp and in the fleet, so what is not accurate is that you would have a lot more people because you know that safety when firing weapons is paramount and that things can go wrong when people start firing weapons, for That would be many more people who are accurate.

So his name was Pitts and actually a guy, a person, just put out a paddle. There are these carriages down there in the pits, you can see them. There are

marine

s down there, they are setting objectives, they are specific objectives and they are bringing. They lower them for someone to shoot, they will lower it to the mark where the shot was and they will put it back and show where the shooter shot, but that is all accurate, there is a red line in the pits and if you stay behind that red line . They won't shoot you, however, I was in the field once an instructor was shot in the leg, so the ground hit the cart he liked either the left or right side of the cart holding the target , and it bounced and hit him. leg even though it is behind the red line, keep it tight first.

I want to know what I would love to know what yard that hit, so we shot from the 200 yard line, the 300 yard line and the 500 yard line, it's because I'm questioning that accuracy, put that aside, people pointing at the line happens all the time. and it's scary, they lack barrel knowledge, they just lack common sense, they think I need to keep my gun pointed down the road, I mean, they would be immediately kicked off the range because that's incredibly egregious and incredibly dangerous, but yeah, that happens often. What there is in the actor is for him tough, as undisciplined as Clint Eastwood's character is and he is trying to instill discipline in this recognition squad.

He wouldn't let them walk without their chins. undone in vain if he ever watched John Wayne

movies

, he always had his chin strap undone in the middle of combat and somehow his helmet never fell off. Next, Full Metal Jacket Holly Emery, there's a great story about how he worked his way up to get In this role, he was Stanley Kubrick's military advisor in this movie, he wasn't meant to be in the movie, but the actor they had hired to be the instructor just wasn't that and polyamory was in the Marine Corps he was a staff sergeant and he was an instructor in real life and he just had that kind of rhythm.

Joe's instructors have a certain rhythm to how they talk, how they shout, Joe's instructors are putting on a character, no one walks around angry all the time like that, you know. Is it not so, sir, yes, sir, if they were not gifts like you, they would be anything in this world, sir, no, sir, well, now let's see if there is anything missing that is not different from them when I passed through the field of training in In 2006, that's completely accurate, there were a lot of people who had their entire trunk destroyed by an unmanned trucker. I've seen entire rooms trashed by exercise instructors because a towel was in one place or a shelf wasn't made correctly, so if there's a trunk that was open, well, we have to see if something is missing and they're going to throw yours away. the entire floor and then they will give you about 30 seconds to pick it all up and put it back in the same usual order.

If it happens to one person, it will happen to the rest. Attuned, you do everything as a unit, there is no individual, everything is done as a team, so if one person is punished at some point, the rest. - they will punish you, so you are only as strong as your weakest link, that's the idea, but uh, dro instructors, it's actually a very, very hard life, no, truckers in their first cycle lose an incredible amount of weight. I met one. guy who literally lost like 30 pounds in three months, I mean, because it was non-stop, his job is really to make everyone's life miserable and just walk around and scream all the time, absolutely accurate pause when he says you haven't given him private pyle the right motivation there is asubtext that you are talking in code for a jelly donut now get in your face open your mouth your fans for you eat hazing they will disguise themselves with other names like training or motivation but what they really mean is we I need to force you to obey and that's what he's really saying there and once he got it, I think it was nine points under this eye.

He wasn't doing a push-up, right? A soldier who kicked me in the face kicked me. Classified, but he had been in Iraq and I hadn't, so even though I classified him, I didn't do it in terms of social hierarchy. The overall metal jacket is accurate, especially for the time, so this is happening during Vietnam. -Jacket is probably responsible for recruiting tons of Marines into the Marine Corps. It's the movie that I watched when, when they're thinking about going into the Marine Corps, they watch Full Metal Jacket, you know, or they watch Full Metal Jacket and they're like.

Well, I'm not going to go to the Marine Corps, I'm going to go to the Air Force or the Navy. You know, in some of his services there were some atrocious moments, but most of what I saw is taken from real life and I think when you know, when, when. service members or veterans or you know, watching TV shows, watching military movies, that's what we expect, even if that didn't happen to us, as long as it falls into the realm of something that could happen or that realm. There are possibilities, we will let it go, but we cannot let it go many times.

You know, the tapes are out of place, you know, and that's where the question arises: why didn't you do a little research sooner? I started writing a script and that's where it drives us crazy. I'm James LaPorta, thanks for watching the breakdown.