Sergeant Jonathan Barton
JB, how many tours did you do in Iraq?
Hell, one was plenty, but I did two.
Are you going back?
Doubtful. I left the Marines to work on PWZ. Having said that, I have contacted a PSR (Prior Service Recruiter) about my options if I want to go back in.
How did you come up with the idea to create a company like Gunmetal?
Gunmetal was born out of necessity. After I finished as one of the Military trainers on Jarhead, I once again found myself unemployed. Sitting on my computer during Christmas Hiatus, I decided that the only way to keep working was to invent a way to wrangle in more jobs. I noticed that my competition had neglected television shows, so they became my target media. I came up with a cool name, had my then 16 year old sister draw up a cool logo, and went off into the wild.
How did you like working on PWZ?
Working on the new Punisher, from a Marine’s POV, was a dream come true! The Punisher, as a character, has a huge Marine Corps following. He represents the harder side of the Marine Corps. In Iraq my squad and I would spray paint the SKULL on anything we could find! I’m sure civil affairs lost their shit every time they found one! So having you want me on your crew for the film was an extraordinary moment in my life! BTW, did I ever thank you for hiring me?? I owe you a day shooting!
How well did Ray Stevenson do during training sessions back in LA?
Ray has the most natural God given Military talent than most Marines I know. He took every aspect of his training completely serious, even when it was only air soft guns! The man is a machine. He never tired and did everything that was asked of him, even when he didn’t quite understand why the training team was asking it of him. I hope we can track down that “B” reel footage from his training in Los Angeles. I think people would be shocked to see how the Punisher emerged in LA, but came to life in Montreal.
Seriously though, how fucking well did your director do in those training sessions?
You missed your calling as well! The fact that you ripped a watermelon sized hole at center mass in a training target with a 40mm Kevlar grenade tip at 40 meters deserves two round of drinks!
We wanted to be very close to Frank Castle's original biography, so I asked you to make him look like he spent some time in every branch of the Military before he became a renown Force Recon/Special Ops instructor. How did you and your Gunmetal colleagues go about achieving that?
Ray’s training team in Los Angeles was comprised of members from all branches of service so that we could give him all the tools from our Nation’s finest. We had Brett Lynch, a former Navy SEAL, Mike Lee, former Marine Recon, Dotan Baer, former Army Ranger, Alex Moore, Air force Para rescue, and myself, Matt Sigloch, Sean Kendall, and Justin Deidolf to give him hardcore USMC Grunt training. Each would take turns instructing so Ray always learned something new.
