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R
Lee Ermey
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 PCM
had the opportunity to particiapate in a conference call with
the legendary R Lee Ermey who hosts the television show "Lock
N' Load"
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Q:
Can you sort of talk about the historic values that come along
with the show?
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R
Lee Ermey: Well, that's the objective is to give a history
of different type of weapons, like we go to great pains to find
– when we did the tank episode for instance, we found the old
Renault tank, which is one of the very first tanks ever and
it was given to us by the French. But we went up to Montana,
we went up to Montana and we talked about it, we rode in it,
we drove it. And one of the things is if we do any – we start
with the oldest vehicle of its kind or the oldest gun of its
kind, talk about the origin of the particular weapon in question,
and we work our way up through the show up to the modern technology
aspect of the show. And so it gives everybody a good sense of
the history of each of these weapons. I mean with the rifles
for instance, we start with the old match locks. Well we start
actually with the hand cannons and how black powder came into
existence. The Chinese invented it years ago. And we work our
way up to the newest, latest and greatest. So that's basically
history, isn't it?
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Q:
Of all the instruments, all the devices that you've used so
far, what do you enjoy the most?
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R
E: We had a thing on the show the other day called the hwacha.
And this is a very primitive weapon that they load 200 arrows
into this big box and they light one fuse and each one of these
arrows has a black powder charge on it that ignites and sends
these arrows about 500 yards. I mean they go way out there,
and I was – we stood behind this thing, we lit the fuse, we
stood behind it. We're out on a dry lake bed out in California
out in the desert and we backed up about 50 yards behind this
thing and when it started going off, man it took about 20 seconds
for all 200 rockets or arrows to launch, but you were watching
this thing and you were absolutely transfixed. I mean this thing
was going off, shooting rockets and you had no idea which direction.
We tried to point it in a general direction away from us, but
you just never can tell. We had arrows going straight up in
the air and coming down all around us. But once we lit this
thing off, it was like you were so centered on this box of arrows
going off that nothing else entered your mind. Not your payments
to your credit card or the money you owed on your car or nothing.
Nothing interfered, you were totally centered on this hwacha
going off. That was one of the most amazing ones that we've
done. I thought that was just spectacular.
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Q:
As a veteran yourself, are you impressed by the latest technology
that's being used in defense, in American defense and offense,
for lack of a better expression? And also has the nature of
actually, whether you're in the Marines, Army, Navy or Air Force,
has it changed a great deal in maybe the last 20 or 30 years
from when you were a Marine to the point to when you were actually
serving as a Marine, for lack of a better expression, I apologize,
and in the present, if you don't mind.
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R
E: Absolutely. And huge changes, it's just the people are
the same. The motivation, morale second to none, no question
about it. Our military is man, they're top notch. And we've
got robots, UAVs, the communication systems now that we work
with in the military are – the stuff that we worked with in
Viet Nam is just like ancient history. The communications, for
instance, we could be in the field, Marines be in the field
and have a downed, have a wounded Marine. We could have an Army
helicopter hovering above us and we couldn't communicate with
that Army helicopter. We could only communicate with Marine
helicopters. So we would have to bring a medivac all the way
from Da Nang to come out and pick up our wounded comrade. And
nowadays, we can talk to everybody. If we can see them in the
air above us, we can talk to them. So they can come in and assist
us.
And survival rate is just phenomenal. I go
to Walter Reed in Bethesda. Every time I go to Washington,
DC, I go up to see the guys and I see wounds up there that
in Vietnam we wouldn't even have bothered to put this guy
up in the helicopter. We would have put him on blast, because
his survival rate would have been – we would have just figured
he's out of here, he's gone, you know. But nowadays we're
saving people's lives that have been wounded in combat that
years ago Vietnam, we wouldn't have had a chance. And last
time I was at Bethesda I seen a young man that had been shot
with a 50 caliber round. My goodness, it was right through
his chest and he survived. It was just amazing.
But technology is actually the only changes
in the military, the troops are still the same, the motivation
is there, the morale, the honor. The difference in today's
military and the military that I dealt with back in the ‘60s
is technology at its finest. I mean we don't go knock down
doors any more to clear a house or a building suspected to
hold terrorists. We now have robots that can do that. We have
robots that we can mount guns on, we can mount cameras on
these robots, they can go knock the door down, they can go
in the building and clear the building. Not saying that we
don't still have troops that go clear buildings, but we have
these robots at our fingertips. We don't have to send a pilot
into harm's way to find the bad guys. We now have UAVs, unmanned
aerial vehicles, that mount cameras, we put cameras on them
and they fly them over the suspected bad guys' lairs and find
out where the bad guys are. We have also helicopters that
are unmanned helicopters that we can do the same thing with
and not only can we mount cameras on them, we can also put
weapons on these UAVs. It's pretty amazing stuff. Technology
rules right now.
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Q:
Do you find, for lack of a better expression, what you were
talking about before about the use of robots and that sort of
thing, I couldn't help but think of the Terminator films because
obviously that's sci-fi, but do you find that's sometimes amazing
to the point of where what once would be considered the realm
of science fiction like a helicopter that's being operated by
a robot controlled from a central site.
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R
E: UAVs.
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Q:
AVs, okay. Do you ever say to yourself, my God, I mean this
is – I read this in Starship Troopers or something like that,
do you know what I mean?
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R
E: Yes, I think, I honestly believe that's where a lot of
these weapons developers get their doggone ideas is out of science
fiction movies, you know? Because who would have ever thought
that we would use a robot in combat. Who would have ever thought
that we would have unmanned aerial vehicles that could fly missions?
It is very science fiction. Not to say we don't need grunts
on the ground, because we certainly do and they're the ones
that do the hard work. But sure, but still and yes, that sure
is a nice thought that they have all of these different innovations
at their fingertips where they can use these. And so it's like
DOD, or excuse me, EOD, explosive ordinance disposal.
Now, we've had a problem, as you know, and
everybody else knows, we've had a problem with IEDs. That's
the explosion, the roadside explosions that blow up our vehicles
as they go on convoy. We hear all the time, well we hear on
TV all the time about IED killed one or two of our troops
today, you know? And we have now got, we find – well let's
start this way, you never hear about the 18 IEDs that, explosive
ordinance disposal finds and disarms. Sure, all we ever hear
about is the one that gets through the system and somehow
explodes and injures our guys. But they have EOD has at their
fingertips robots that go disarm these IEDs. And it's amazing
stuff to see this at work. It used to be we would have to
send some PFC out there with a shovel and dig that thing up
and disarm it by hand. Nowadays, we have robots that do that,
so we don't have to – can you imagine you're in this big,
thick suit and you can't hardly move for Christ sakes and
you're leaning over a damn 500-pound bomb that might go off
any second. That's got to be pretty damn nerve wracking. But
we have machines, we have robots now that can actually do
that job. So I would much rather see . . .
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Q:
A robot blow up?
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R
E: You bet. Any day of the week rather than sacrifice one
of our very patriotic and hard charging devil dogs. So that's
what we've come to and I think it's just getting better. I've
seen that we have a lot of great technology in the works right
now that I'm not at liberty to talk about. But I mean to tell
you, I've seen some of the really coolest stuff that's going
to save lives. War has changed. War is not the same as it was.
We were extremely primitive back in Vietnam, which was only
40 years ago.
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Q:
You served 11 years in the Marine corps. What made you want
to go to the University to study drama of all things?
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R
E: Well, I needed to have a job and it just seems to me
that like I didn't want a job where you had to work real hard.
Work is something you do with a shovel, right? That just did
not appeal to me, so anyway I thought this would be fun, I thought
I could do it and I wanted to take advantage of my GI Bill of
Rights, so that was where I ended up. And it just paid off.
I never did get to finish school. I went to school for about
a year and all of the sudden they started bringing over films
like Apocalypse Now, Boys in Company C, Purple Hearts and so
I just got so caught up I never ever did get to finish school.
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Q:
Did you intend, I mean you played numerous drill instructor
and sergeant roles throughout the years. Did you intend to fall
into that kind of stereotype role?
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R
E: Well, I've actually played I think nine military films.
I've done 75, so there was a time when I, very early on in my
career, when I stopped and thought, wait a minute, I'm getting
awfully stereotyped here. I better kind of do something about
it, and I started turning down every, you know it was to the
point 25 years ago where if there was a military guy in a movie,
I got the script. And so I just basically started turning those
down and held out for the different types of roles. So I've
done 75 movies and 9 of them or 8 of them have been military,
but the ones that are extremely memorable, I guess, would be
the military roles.
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Q:
You have done a very wide range of work so far. Obviously, the
authoritarian military role has been one of them. You also seem
to be unafraid of parodying that same role in things like Children's
... and certain movies – The Frighteners, for instance. If you
think it's essential for an actor to be able to look inwards
and have a laugh at their previous roles, if you understand
what I mean. Not to be too serious at times.
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R
E: Well, when you were a kid, you played cowboys and sometimes
you were the Indian, too, right? And we used to play cops and
robbers, too. I mean you have to have a little variety in life.
It would be extremely boring if you had to do the same thing
all the time, but I love the challenge. I did a show they sent
me a script of and the character was out of a homicidal high
school football coach. And that was Saving Silverman, and it
was a comedy. And I prefer comedy, I enjoy comedy. And so I
saw that as a challenge. I hadn't ever played that of a homicidal
high school football coach before, so I thought I'd give that
a whirl. And I think I pulled it off with a lot of class, but
I just love the challenge. It's fun for me and for me it's no
problem to put myself in the right frame of mind. I mean you
just have to put yourself in that situation and respond accordingly.
That's all there is to it. And as far as I'm concerned, anybody
should be able to step in front of a camera and do that, because
it's just …
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Q:
Have you guys had any dangerous mishaps or encounters with using
some of the machinery, particularly probably the older equipment?
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R
E: You know, I had one blow up in my face just the other
day, as a matter of fact. It was called the potato digger, and
it's a machine gun. We're doing a second machine gun show right
now, and you know these old weapons are very unstable. You have
to be a little bit careful about them and this one did a nasty
thing right in my face the other day. But no one got hurt. You
know, it's just part of the hazards of what we do. When you
mess around with these old guns and old ammunition, things of
that nature, there's a certain element of danger about it. But
you just, we try to be as safe as we possibly can. We'll put
the guns out and test fire them first and stay back away from
them. But sometimes they're a bit temperamental and they want
to spit back on us a little bit. And it's not the first time
I've had it happen, so and I'm sure it won't be the last. When
you mess with these old antique weapons, things happen.
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Q:
When you shoot on the set of Lock and Load, do you shoot more
than – well how long does it take to do it, to actually record
an episode and do you shoot more than one episode a day when
you're doing this, or does it take so much preparation that
for lack of a better expression, you don't dare shoot more than
one episode because you said something could blow up in your
face and that sort of thing?
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R
E: Well, we're right now, in March the History Channel asked
us for 13 one-hour episodes. When I was doing Mail Call, I would
work approximately two days per episode. On Lock and Load I'm
working 10 to 11 days per episode. And we have been shooting
now for five months, we're almost finished with episode number
12 and we have shot – I've been home 9 times in 5 months, and
my idea of a day off is they fly me in to LAX, I usually arrive
10 or 11:00 at night, I get the car's there to take me home,
I get into the desert, my home in the desert by about midnight
or 1:00 in the morning. Then the car is there at home to pick
me up at 4:00 the next day and take me back to the airport.
But we have shot in, last count it was 30 different states and
four and a half months now. We've got about 7 or 8 days left
and we'll have the 13th episode in the can. But it's been day
on stay on. I've got a crew of, there's seven of us, and we
travel around and we're on the air playing several times a week.
We go wherever we need to go. We find like the Renault tank
that we had on to open the tank episode. It was like this tank
we found the oldest tank that we could find, this tank was like
91 or 92 years old. It was given to us by the French, and it
was one of the very, very first tanks. And we traveled up to
Montana and this old boy had this tank, and we drove it, we
shot it, we did, we loaded the gun, we did everything that we
could and it went four and a half miles an hour. I could have
sworn we were going at least 5 miles an hour, but it was fun
to do. I mean it was a great way to start the show off.
And then we evolved through the show and
we go to the next tank, the next tank and we follow evolution.
The evolution of tanks right on up to the M1 Abrams main battle
tank, which is the one we end the show with. But we have to
go where the vehicles, where the guns are, where the tanks
are, where the bombs are, where the rockets are. So we travel
a lot. We were up at Aberdeen Testing Center. We did the MRAPs
up there and the Bradley fighting vehicle. I got to shoot
a TOW missile, I got to drive the MRAP over the testing fields
where they test them. And man, you've got to drive it through
water and ditches and it's really a very rough terrain. So
the show is tremendously fun to shoot. There's no question
about that. I'm having a great time, but we do have to travel
a lot and we do spend a lot of time on the road and away from
our families, but another 7 days and we're going to go home.
And as soon as I finish up, I'm going to Africa to shoot some
wild game out in the plains of South Africa.
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Q:
How do you keep your intensity up for all your different roles?
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R
E: Well, I've done about 75 feature films. I've done hundreds
of episodes of television episodic and I've done over a hundred
episodes of Mail Call. But you know what, if it's not a motivator,
if I read a script and I don't think that character's going
to be a fun character and it's also about adversity and I like
to do different things. If I had to do the same thing over and
over, I guess it would be rather mundane. It would get to the
point where it would be routine and it would be a little difficult
to stay motivated, but everything I do is like – each thing
I do in Lock N' Load, for instance, I can't wait to get out
of bed in the morning so I can get after this thing because
the day before yesterday we two explosions. We blew up stuff
yesterday, we blew two huge explosions. We blew up a bunker,
we blew up a car. The explosion was so violent that it actually
blew the car in half and strung pieces, hoods and trunk lids
and seats and air bags and everything was like 100 yards away
from the car. I mean that was a nice explosion, you know? But
it's just like the guy that goes fishing, I guess. Every day
you throw your line out there and you just never know what the
heck you're going to pull in. And it's kind of like Christmas
time. Open a package, you don't know what's in there.
So it's diversity I guess. For me, it's fun.
I've got the best job in the world. I thank the good lord
every morning and every night before I go to bed that I've
been fortunate enough to have this kind of a life. And if
I, I look at it this way, if I died tomorrow, I would have
had a full life. There's no question about it. So you know,
life is good, life is fun. When I read a script, if I can't,
if it doesn't turn me on, I throw it in the trash can and
read another script until I find the one that excites me you
know, that's different. So for me life is fun, life is great.
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Q:
Based on your experiences with these old weapons and what you've
done to watermelons over the years. Would you say that technology
has made war a less bloody affair?
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R
E: Oh, absolutely. And you know, troops when I was in Viet
Nam 40 years ago, the troops that would have died in the jungle
now are being saved. I go to Walter Reed in Bethesda every time
I go to Washington, DC, which is several times a year. And I
see young troops there that would have never have survived combat
in Vietnam. They would have never been saved. Modern technology
we have right now, it's like we've got robots that can break
down doors and go into buildings and clear buildings. We mount
guns on robots, we mount cameras on them. So that eliminates
the need to put a human being in harm's way. We have UAVs, which
is the unmanned aerial vehicles, we've got helicopters, we've
got fixed wings and they can – we don't have to have a pilot
to fly this. The pilot sits 100 miles back in the rear with
the gear and looks at a screen and pilots that UAV. It's got
a camera mounted on it, it's got – we've got to the point where
we can put weapons on the UAVs, we can drop bombs with them,
we can shoot guns from them. And communications, my God, evolution
has taken us to the inventions and technology has just gone
totally in the past 40 years has just, evolution as far as technology
has just taken us to a different world.
But the difference between the military that
we have today and the military of my era is simply the fact
that motivation, morale is still there, the human element
is still there, but they have such fantastic toys to play
with. And that's our objective on Lock and Load is we want
to show everybody some of this really neat, cool stuff that
the brilliant minds have come up with in the past 40 years
as far as technology goes. But it's, I see this stuff and
I just stand there in awe. I can't believe how brilliant people
are that they can come up with some of this stuff. And I do
believe that a lot of these guys have been watching a lot
of science fiction shows, you know, because they get these
ideas from science fiction movies. So it's the brilliant minds
in Hollyweird that actually have stimulated and motivated
some of these technologies that we enjoy today.
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Q:
In regards to Lock N' Load, how much of your, what you say is
actually scripted and how much of it is ad libs?
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R
E: Well, you know, we basically come, we have just a very
basic scenario that we want to stick with and maybe a few talking
points and we just put the camera on me and I just go to town.
I read the book, I pretty much know the weapon. I talk to the
individuals, the operators of the weapons such as the tanks,
the M1 Abrams main battle tanks and such. I hang out with those
guys and I pick their minds and I find out what the interesting
points are about this particular vehicle or this particular
weapon. And my objective is to ask the questions that you would
ask, would want to know the answers to. So I try to play as
ignorant as I possibly can and just when we're in front of the
camera, I pick the minds of the individuals that are there that
have the knowledge that I don't. And so we don't really script
a lot. It's not really a lot of scripted stuff. It's basically
me finding out about the vehicle or the weapon and then me getting
the expert in front of the camera and getting him to explain
everything about the vehicle or weapon.
So it's really simple stuff, it's easy. There's nothing to it.
The beautiful part about my job is I get to shoot the guns,
I get to drive the tanks, and I get to fly the airplanes. And
if I can't shoot it, drive it, or fly it, well then hell, we
just blow it up. So we're just out there having a great time
and when I'm having, my thoughts are, if I'm having this much
fun doing the show, then people are going to have fun watching
the show.
And so that's my attitude. And I am certainly having fun, there's
no question about it.
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Q:
With the show, are there any plans to broaden the scope of like
traveling to other countries to experience foreign weaponry
in comparison to the American technology?
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R
E: Oh absolutely. We're not shy about traveling. We travel
constantly. It's that the first 13 episodes we're seeing how
it plays out and if it's successful, which it really has been,
we've I think the History Channel has experienced something
like double the numbers that it had originally expected for
the show. So it is a successful show and when they order the
next 13 episodes, then we can start traveling. You know, on
Mail Call, the little half-hour show that we had, we did a one-hour
show on Viet Nam. We went back to Viet Nam and we traveled from
Hanoi. We had a week or two weeks. We traveled from Hanoi down
to Saigon City and we stopped at every fire base that we could
find on the way down that the old fire bases that we manned
when we were in Vietnam. Then we went to Normandy, we did the
60th anniversary of Normandy. We went to Iwo Jima, we did the
60th anniversary of Iwo Jima. We traveled over to Iraq and Afghanistan
both and we did one-hour specials on those.
So absolutely, we go where the action is.
That's one of the great things that I like about it. I get
to go over there and hang out with the troops for a while
and enjoy going on patrols with them. I went on foot patrol
with them, and I went on roaming patrol with them. So it's
just, I consider that a great honor to be able to hang with
those guys. They're honorable people, they're respectable
and our military guys are second to none. There's no question
about it. And Australia has been involved, too. You know Australia
pitches in, you guys are great about it.
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Closing
Comments: Well, you know, I just want everybody to know
that our military today is second to none, and they deserve
the respect that our military has always deserved. Back in World
War I and World War II, Viet Nam, Korea, these men have fought
and their objective is to keep this country free so that we
enjoy the rights and freedoms that we do enjoy. And people need
to wake up and understand that that's what it's all about. We
cannot allow these terrorists to gain a big stronghold and once,
if we did allow it, they would start taking over countries and
the next thing you know, we would not just be able to go over
and take care of this business on a small scale like we are
right now. It would be another world war. And we can't allow
that to happen. So folks need to wake up, pull their heads out
of their posteriors and start supporting our military a little
bit better. And understand that that is the reason why we enjoy
the freedom that we enjoy today is because of our beloved military.
Give them some respect, honor, courtesy. Hoorah.
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