Shoot 'Em Up Edit Bay Visit Part 1

By Steve Chupnick on June 12, 2007

Last year, Latino Review got to visit (Check out the set report HERE) the Toronto set of Shoot ‘Em Up starring Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, and Monica Bellucci. What he discovered was writer/director Michael Davis was just as charismatic as the three lead actors. And now, nearly a year later, I discovered the same thing during an edit bay visit with Michael. We saw several clips from the film, as well as the animation sequences of the action scenes that won him the job for New Line.

Shoot ‘Em Up is an action thriller, which just like Snakes on a Plane, pretty much tells you exactly what you’re getting into – lots of guns and a whole lot of non-stop action. Clive stars as Mr. Smith, who after delivering a baby in the middle of a shoot out, teams up with Monica who plays a hooker; Paul plays the villain, trying to get the baby – why does he want the baby? I’m not going to tell you that, you’ll just have to watch the film for that.

As with some films, the intensity is relenting with 12 action scenes sprinkled throughout. To get the job as writer and director, Michael Davis decided to put a montage of action scenes together in an animated sequence. “I basically went to New Line and they loved the script,” he noted. “And then I had 15 minutes that I cut into a 5-minute demo reel. We pitched to one executive and she was a little afraid that Toby Emmerich wouldn’t go for it because he was just having a baby and then we had a baby in jeopardy and so they said ‘no.’ But then we went back to Jeff Katz, who is sort of the guy who saved Shoot Em Up; he went around his boss and went to Cale Boyter and said, ‘Hey, this is a great project, we can’t let it die.’ Cale read the script and really loved it and we showed him the animation; and it was sort of like a six month process getting New Line invested in the script.”

Michael credits a certain website for putting the animation out into the public’s eyes. “Believe it or not, the MPAA, made me cut some of that because it was too violent. But, Lationreview.com nicely put up most of my animations, so that is, that is – people have seen most of that. The intro, New Line asked me to do some of the video intro to some of my animation that they’re going to put on their website, and I kind of felt like ‘I’m not Peter Jackson, I’m not a celebrity director, so I didn’t want to come off too cocky. So I thought it was funnier if I animated myself. So that’s going to be on the website to intro the animation.”

Bob Shaye, head of New Line, was also a big supporter, which is why Michael refers to him as ‘G-dfather of the film.’ He also gives props to producer Don Murphy, who championed the flick through and through, sticking on the studio to move forward. “In the past, I’ve made 5 indie movies; And so, what was interesting about what Don Murphy did – it was the first time I ever had a script that instead of going out as a big spec to get a ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ he just gave it to New Line and Don never let it die. Don kept bugging them and bugging them; and this was at the time that New Line didn’t have much stuff in development or ready to green light because of “Lord of the Rings,” they had blown their wad and they were waiting to see how it turned out. So they had nothing on their slate, and Cale ended up saying to Don Murphy, ‘Yeah, it’s really great we have this movie “Cool Breeze”, “Letters from the Underground” or whatever the movie was, ‘but we have nothing.’ And Don Murphy said, ‘Well you do, you have “Shoot Em Up”. ‘Oh yeah, I forgot, we’re just waiting for you to bring us an actor. Oh forget it, we’ll just give it to Toby.’ And then they gave it to Toby and eventually, they said ‘yes.’ The other thing that was great that Jeff Katz did was, even before they closed my writing deal, Jeff submitted it to all the agencies and said, ‘You’re going to love this script; on top of that, look at the animation.’ And when they saw the animation and the script, it was green lit.”

It was then up to Michael and the studio to choose a leading man; after getting the ‘ok’ to go ahead with the project, several of the major talent agencies starting sending in requests for their actor to be attached. “all the agencies were throwing everyone at them, and my favorite person was Clive Owen ever since “Croupier” and the BMW films. And we got very fortunate that a lot of the decision making at New Line comes from the foreign division and the foreign division loved Clive; and so then it was a matter of was he available? But when we wanted to shoot the movie, he was still attached to Poseidon Adventure; and then all of a sudden, he dropped out, I had drinks with him and we hit it off, and it was like all the planets aligning. We just got lucky for it to come together the way it did.”

And Clive was game for all the high-flying action involved in the role, doing most of his stunts himself. In one scene, Clive has to jump through several obstacles in order to get away, kill the bad guys and stay alive. Michael says, “He did a lot of it - did you see in the crib gunfight when he was going down the stairwell? That was all him, absolutely all him; he just loved it. We just put him on the descender up and down, up and down. He was a real joy to work with; he was calling me ‘boss’ all the time. ‘You have me eating out of the palm of your hand, boss. What more do you want?’ I was like, ‘Oh you’re calling me boss? Alright.’ Totally easy to work with - same with Monica, same with Paul; we really got fortunate, these three actors were just total pros.”

Michael even pointed out that Clive was involved in the writing process, catering more towards his style. “There were a couple scenes were Clive read, loved the scene, but said, ‘I think it can be better. Can I go back and change the lines? Rewrite them.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He came back and there was this one scene that he just made more specific and I was really thankful; it was a great collaboration. Clive was always respectful and he wasn’t like, ‘Oh I don’t want to do this.’ It was always, ‘What do you think about this?’ He would come in and have it hand written out; he’s a really great collaborator, totally professional, totally into it. A couple of times, I remember him going up to the line producer and saying, ‘Stop leaning on Michael, Michael is doing great; don’t pressure him.’ So he kind of protected me as well.”

And rather than the normal hero accessories, Clive uses his trusty carrots as sidekicks; and not only does he eat the carrots, he also uses them as weapons and hand extensions reaching for his gun (in one particular scene).

All you need to know about Shoot ‘Em Up is the name – kick-ass action, lots of gun fights, and Monica Bellucci as a lactating hooker. Look for the flick in theaters September 7th. To check out the animatic clips of the movie, just click right HERE.

Source:Latino Review

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