“Full Metal Jacket”: what happened to “Lard ball”, the meaning of the title and 9 other secrets of the film

Stanley Kubrick’s penultimate work arrived in cinemas in 1987: «Full Metal Jacket» (broadcast tonight on Iris at 9 pm). The film – a crude and cynical anti-militarist work – is inspired by the novel “Born to Kill” written by former Marine and war correspondent Gustav Hasford, who collaborated on the screenplay. Set in 1967-68, it is divided into two parts: the story of the training of a group of soldiers – including Joker, an aspiring war journalist, his Texan friend Cowboy and the peasant “Ball of lard” – entrusted to the rude and ruthless Sergeant Major Hartman, and the actual mission in Vietnam. The original title refers to the copper sheath of the jacketed bullets, mentioned by one of the protagonists in the middle of the story, but this is not the only curiosity about the film.