Full Metal Jacket Schneider alleged that Kubrick took the cinematic idea of a recruit being broken down in boot camp and driven to suicide from the epic film series "The Human Condition" (1959–1961). Kubrick's daughter Vivian Kubrick, under the alias "Abigail Mead", wrote the film's score. According to an interview, which appeared in the January 1988 issue of "Keyboard", the film was scored mostly with a Fairlight CMI synthesizer (the then-current Series III edition) and a Synclavier. For the period music, Kubrick went through "Billboard" list of Top 100 Hits for each year from 1962 to 1968 and tried many songs, but "sometimes
Full Metal Jacket into a series of self-contained set pieces, none of them quite satisfying" and concluded that the film's message was "too little and too late", having been done by other Vietnam War films. However, Ebert also gave praise to Ermey and D'Onofrio, saying "these are the two best performances in the movie, which never recovers after they leave the scene." This review angered Gene Siskel on their television show "At The Movies"; he criticized Ebert for liking "Benji the Hunted" (which came out the same week) more than "Full Metal Jacket". Their difference in opinion was parodied on the television show