Val Kilmer told Matthew Modine that he was “tired of you getting all the jobs in town” & inadvertently informed him about Full Metal Jacket.

Matthew Modine starred in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, but it was a role he may not have received had it not been for Val Kilmer. While you might think that this story involves Kilmer recommending Modine for the role or helping him audition, it doesn’t. Instead, Kilmer was pissed that Modine was taking all the roles and inadvertently told him about Full Metal Jacket after assuming he had snagged that role as well.

“I was with the wonderful actor David Alan Grier at The Source on Hollywood Boulevard,” Modine told THR. “So we were sitting there having pancakes and discussing that, and just a few feet ahead of me, someone was looking at me and clearly telling me, for simplicity, to go f*** myself. And I told David, ‘Unless this guy’s got Tourette’s or he is an actor memorizing a monologue, he’s clearly telling me to go f*** myself.’ So David looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Oh, that’s Val Kilmer. He’s a really nice guy.’“

Modine went over to introduce himself to Kilmer, but the actor was already well aware of who Modine was. “I was on a run from Private School and Streamers to Vision Quest and Mrs. Soffel, and while Val could have easily been cast in those movies, he wasn’t,” Modine explained. “So he said, ‘I’m sick of you. I’m tired of you getting all the jobs in town, and now you’re doing Full Metal Jacket.’ And I said, ‘I’m not doing Full Metal Jacket.’ You had to audition for it, which Val did. In his documentary, it shows how deep he went into the audition for that film. So I said, ‘I assure you, I’m not doing Full Metal Jacket because I didn’t audition.’“

As soon as Modine finished breakfast, he was on the phone with his manager. “I ran out to a payphone and put in a bunch of quarters to call my manager in New York. I said, ‘This actor just told me that I’m doing Kubrick’s movie Full Metal Jacket. Do you know anything about it?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know anything about it.’ So I said, ‘Well, I know that Kubrick makes his movies with Warner Bros., and we have Vision Quest there. So why don’t we call [Vision Quest director] Harold Becker and Warner Bros., and ask them to send a print to Stanley Kubrick so he can see it? I’ll also call Alan Parker in London to get him to send over some scenes [from Birdy’s edit].’” Modine received the script for Full Metal Jacket in his mail a month later, which included a note from Kubrick which said: “Hello, my name is Stanley Kubrick. I’m a film director, and I wonder if you’d consider being in my film.” The rest, as they say, is history.