Today’s guest post if from actor and filmmaker Matthew Modine. His latest project represents a nice example of how filmmakers can encourage collaboration from other members of their team and extend their work into new realms. In this case, even after the death of the filmmaker.
While making Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, I kept a diary. I was portraying a combat journalist, so it made sense to both Kubrick and myself to take some notes along the journey. Sometimes between set ups, Stanley would ask me to read out loud what I had entered in my small cloth-covered book. Being put on the spot like that made me realize that I’d better keep a detailed, accurate, and hopefully, entertaining description of the film’s events. Stanley also allowed me to photograph the filmmaking process. No snapshots would do on a Kubrick set. I used my beautiful 2 1/4 x 2 1/4-inch Rolleiflex camera. I made prints of a number of photographs and gave them to Stanley and the other actors as gifts. Once the filming was over, I returned to my home in NYC and put the photos and my diary in a box.
After several years,
