Charles Krauthammer has passed away at the age of 68 due to abdominal cancer, on the longest day of the year. I want people to look at this post and then ask “Who’s this Charles Krauthammer?” Play the video below. Then read his book “Things That Matter.”
Go with God sir.
We miss you already.
BZ
God apparently ran a little low on Gunnies in Heaven.
From the UKIndependent.com:
R Lee Ermey, a former Marine who made a career in Hollywood playing hard-nosed military men like Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” has died.
Ermey’s longtime manager Bill Rogin says he died Sunday morning from pneumonia-related complications. He was 74.
The Kanas native was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his memorable performance in “Full Metal Jacket,” in which he immortalised lines such as: “What is your major malfunction?”
Born Ronald Lee Ermey in 1944, Ermey served 11 years in the Marine Corps and spent 14 months in Vietnam and then in Okinawa, Japan, where he became staff sergeant. His first film credit was as a helicopter pilot in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” which was quickly followed by a part in “The Boys in Company C” as a drill instructor.
He raked in more than 60 credits in film and television across his long career in the industry, often playing authority figures in everything from “Se7en” to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake.
But check this out:
The part he would become most well-known for, in “Full Metal Jacket,” wasn’t even originally his. Ermey had been brought on as a technical consultant for the 1987 film, but he had his eyes on the role of the brutal gunnery sergeant and filmed his own audition tape of him yelling out insults while tennis balls flew at him. An impressed Kubrick gave him the role.
In 1961, at age 17, Ermey enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and went through recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in San Diego, California.[2] For his first few years, he served in the aviation support field before becoming a drill instructor in India Company, 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, where he was assigned from 1965 to 1967.[4]
Ermey then served in Marine Wing Support Group 17 at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa, Japan.[2] In 1968, he was ordered to Vietnam with MWSG-17, and spent 14 months in country. The remainder of his service was on Okinawa where he was advanced to staff sergeant (E-6). He was medically discharged in 1972 because of several injuries incurred during his service.[5] On May 17, 2002, he received an honorary promotion to gunnery sergeant (E-7) by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James L. Jones.[6]
Here’s is Ermey’s second role, as that of an Eagle Thrust Seven helicopter pilot (listen and watch for him to say “I’m going to check it out below”).
R Lee Ermey’s first role was as drill instructor Staff Sergeant Sgt Loyce for the 1978 Sidney Furie film “The Boys In Company C,” a role so remarkably real because, well, it’s what Ermey did in his beloved corps.
Following The Boys of Company C, Ermey appeared in 1979’s Francis Ford Coppola-directed Apocalypse Now as indicated above — though completely uncredited in the movie.
He was next in a terrible 1979 science fiction entitled “Up From the Depths” as Lee. He returned for director Sidney Furie in 1984’s “Purple Hearts” where he appeared as Gunny.
R. Lee Ermey’s big break came in 1987 for director Stanley Kubrick in “Full Metal Jacket” where he portrayed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. The classic scene follows.
Here, Ermey talks about filming Full Metal Jacket for the History Channel.
Kubrick told Rolling Stone that 50 percent of Ermey’s dialogue in the film was his own.
“In the course of hiring the marine recruits, we interviewed hundreds of guys. We lined them all up and did an improvisation of the first meeting with the drill instructor. They didn’t know what he was going to say, and we could see how they reacted. Lee came up with, I don’t know, 150 pages of insults,” Kubrick said.
According to Kubrick, Ermey also had a terrible car accident one night in the middle of production and was out for four and half months with broken ribs.
It’s no surprise that Ermey was a conservative. This should leave no doubt.
However, like many other actors in Hollywood who “come out” as Conservative, Ermey’s film roles dried up.
The Marine turned actor told FOX411 while his reality show is in its second season, he can’t seem to book any other gigs in Hollywood.
“I’ve had a very fruitful career. I’ve done over 70 feature films,” Gunny told FOX411. “I’ve done over 200 episodes of [‘GunnyTime’]… and then [Hollywood] found out that I’m a Conservative.”
Actually, he corrected, “I’m an Independent, but I said something bad about the president. I had something unsavory to say about the president’s administration, and even though I did vote for him the first time around, I was blackballed.”
Gunny, who is an NRA board member, explained that his association with the organization and his disapproval of President Obama cost him acting jobs.
“Do you realize I have not done a movie in five to six years? Why? Because I was totally blackballed by the… liberals in Hollywood,” he alleged. “They can destroy you. They’re hateful people [who] don’t just not like you, they want to take away your livelihood… that’s why I live up in the desert on a dirt road… I don’t have to put up with their crap.”
Ermey earned a Golden Globe nomination as Sgt Hartman, and:
Ermey was an official spokesman for Black Book (National Auto Research), Glock firearms, TRU-SPEC apparel, Tupperware, Victory Motorcycles, Hoover, SOG Specialty Knives, WD-40, Young Marines, and appeared in commercials for Coors Light, Dick’s Sporting Goods, GEICO, and pistachio nuts. He provided the introduction for the Professional Bull Riders.[16] He can be seen giving a service announcement for Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, demanding that viewers be quiet during the film.[17] He was a board member for the National Rifle Association.[18]
Ermey’s Gunny Time was an arseload of fun as well.
And if this isn’t damned funny, I don’t know what is.
What did the “R” stand for in his name? Ronald.
God bless you Gunny.
We miss you already.
BZ
One of the classic character actors of our time, Powers Boothe, passed away Sunday morning in his sleep, of natural causes according to his publicist, at age 68 in Los Angeles.
In my opinion, he was an absolute joy to watch.
Mr Boothe received a 1980 Emmy for his portrayal of Jim Jones in Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones. By the way, Boothe beat both Henry Fonda and Jason Robards that year for the award.
One of my most favorite portrayals of his was that of Cy Tolliver in the HBO series Deadwood, as well as his roles in Red Dawn and By Dawn’s Early Light.
In my estimation, he was a quite under-utilized actor who lacked a good agent.
You were way too young sir, way too young.
Sleep well. You will be missed.
BZ
From MPRNews.com::
Bob Hoover, one of history’s greatest pilots, dead at 94
by Bob Collins
One of the greatest pilots in the history of aviation died this morning, according to reports.
Bob Hoover, a World War II fighter pilot, a former Air Force test pilot, and the chase plane pilot for Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier for the first time, was 94.
A lot of the greatest pilots who ever lived will tell you that Hoover was the greatest pilot who ever lived.
And he was, if you were ever lucky enough to witness a Bob Hoover performance at an air show in the United States when he flew, for example, his Shrike Aero Commander. As destiny would have it, I was sufficiently lucky to have seen Bob Hoover a full five times.
As a German POW, Hoover escaped Germany by stealing an airplane. Balls of steel.
After being shot down in 1944, Hoover spent 16 months in a Stalag Luft I, a German prisoner of war camp on the northeastern coast of Germany, according to the National Aviation Hall of Fame. Hoover jumped a barbed wire fence while the guards were distracted by a staged fight. He stole a lightly-damaged Focke-Wulf Fw 190, flying it to freedom before ditching the plane in a field in the Netherlands.
Bob Hoover’s North American T-28 Trojan trainer.
The winner of hundreds of military and aviation awards, including the prestigious Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in 2014, Hoover died Oct. 25 in Los Angeles at age 94. While frail in recent years, he lived at home and relatively pain free until the last few days, according to close friends.
Known for his ability to tell one engaging aviation story after another, Hoover loved interacting with pilots and prospective pilots, often going out of his way to speak to children, encouraging them to follow their dreams. “Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do it,” Hoover said during the presentation of the Wright Trophy. “You learn how to do it. You figure out how to do it. And you are the only one who can make it happen…. Don’t give up if that’s what you really wish to do.”
Let us look at Bob Hoover in action. In 1986, for example, when the below video was shot, Bob Hoover was 64 years old. That, ladies and gentlemen — to be blunt — is a stud.
How many people customarily performed actual aerobatics in a two-engine plane? Yes. That would be one: Bob Hoover.
He was called the “best stick and rudder man who ever lived.” Hoover lived and survived by his senses — not like the digital pilots of today whose human-to-metal contact is limited by electrons and joysticks and glass cockpit screens. You don’t truly “fly” a plane today — you mostly program it and wait for the autopilot to take charge. You are a human “course changer” and “altitude changer.” You are a backup. You are extraneous. The difference, say, between Airbus and Boeing. Joysticks vs actual yokes.
Bob Hoover — who had to fight and conquer air sickness — became the kind of human whose spatial consciousness, inner ear and sense of presence exceeded that of 99.9% of most mortals. Today’s cockpit occupiers are primarily programmers entering numbers. They know it and it makes them simultaneously sad and appreciative to have, truly, the very last jobs in aviation before fully autonomous aircraft take over.
They know it. And they all wish they’d been Bob Hoover.
CNN.com wrote:
A precise aviator, Hoover famously was able to pour a glass of iced tea in the middle of a barrel role. Hoover’s famous green and white stunt plane sits prominently under the wing of the Concorde supersonic airliner at the National Air and Space Museum Annex in Chantilly, Va.
God bless you, Robert Anderson “Bob” Hoover.
Just as UNBROKEN documents the life and times of WWII hero Louis Zamperini, Hoover’s book FOREVER FLYING documents the incredible life of Bob Hoover.
God bless you, R.A, “Bob” Hoover.
When a person gets to do what one actually loves to do, they are truly blessed.
Fair skies and following winds. Be forever flying, sir.
BZ
P.S.
I love you, dad.
From CNN.com:
(CNN) Former first lady Nancy Reagan, who joined her husband on a storybook journey from Hollywood to the White House, died Sunday.
She was 94.
Reagan died at her home in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure, according to her spokeswoman, Joanne Drake of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“Mrs. Reagan will be buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, next to her husband, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who died on June 5, 2004. Prior to the funeral service, there will be an opportunity for members of the public to pay their respects at the Library,” Drake said in a statement.
Say what you will of Nancy Reagan — and the world is filled with her detractors — there was no wife more supportive of a husband than her. She adored Ronald Reagan with all her might. It was truly an American love story.
Any husband would be lucky to have a wife so devoted.
It was this day that hastened the death of Ronald Wilson Reagan.
A bit of Conservatism died with Ronald Reagan in 2004, at the age of 93. His wife managed to live another year longer than her husband, and another 12 years longer after his passing.
Nancy Reagan is survived by Patti Davis and Ron Reagan — her two children with Ronald Reagan — and Michael Reagan, a son from Ronald Reagan’s first marriage to Jane Wyman. Maureen Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s daughter with Jane Wyman, died in 2001.
Nancy Reagan will be buried alongside her husband at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.
BZ