Watch Brian Atene’s strange audition for Stanley Kubrick movie ‘Full Metal Jacket’
Director Stanley Kubrick seemed to deliver masterpiece after masterpiece, and in 1987, he turned his talents to providing one of the greatest war films of the decade, Full Metal Jacket. The plot told of a US marine platoon’s boot camp training and their subsequent deployment in the Vietnam War.
In Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, writer John Baxter noted how it was reported at the time that Kubrick would undertake a nationwide search to find young actors who could play new Marine recruits in his film. Warner Brothers had also said that the director had intended to “stick close” to a particular age bracket for such actors.
“Kubrick played on his mystique, letting wannabe actors do much of the work of casting for him,” Baxter wrote. “In March 1984, he told the world’s press that he wanted audition tapes from anyone who felt able to play an 18-year-old marine. They should stand against a plain background in jeans and a white T-shirt with a card showing their name and a contact number, then perform a dramatic scene of no more than three minutes.”
The writer added: “After that, he wanted a minute on themselves and their interests. Then they should hold up a sheet with their name, address, phone number, age and date of birth. A series of close-ups, full-length shots and left and right profiles would finish the tape, which should then be sent to Warners in London.”
Vincent Lubrutto, another Kubrick biographer, had suggested that the director had personally taken it upon himself to review as many as eight hundred audition tapes. He wrote: “Kubrick received as many as three thousand videotapes of prospective movie Marine grunts. Kubrick’s staff reviewed all the tapes received and eliminated the ones they deemed unacceptable. Kubrick personally reviewed eight hundred audition tapes, noting that the majority of young men played the guitar and were involved in bodybuilding.”
The call for actors was heard by a young man by the name of Brian Atene, a student at the renowned Juilliard School, who subsequently sent in his tape. It’s fair to say that the self-shot audition was nothing short of disastrous. “Good day, Mr. Kubrick,” Atene begins in an over-the-top thespian voice before drawing note to the fact he attends “the finest acting institution in the world.”
Atene proceeds to reveal several truly random facets of information about himself, including his favourite composer (Erich Wolfgang Korngold), his favourite colour (green) and the fact that, when he was 12 years old, he once “won a spaniel puppy for 50 cents”. It’s not long before he reveals his belief that he is a “young Alec Guinness”. Oh, dear.
Check out the hilarious, if admittedly cringeworthy, audition tape from Brian Atene below, in which he performs a scene from S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. Amazingly, the hopeful actor had actually made two tapes for Kubrick, deeming the unseen one unsuitable. We can only dread to think what it may have held…
