Shoot 'Em Up Edit Bay Visit Part 2

By Steve Chupnick on June 12, 2007

Visiting an edit bay is an extremely awesome experience – especially, as a former editor myself. I had the chance to sit with writer and director Michael Davis in the edit bay for his new film, Shoot ‘Em Up starring Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, and Monica Bellucci.

With the name of a movie called Shoot ‘Em Up, it better deliver from beginning to end – and that’s exactly what this does. Michael showed us the first five minutes of the film, as well as select other clips throughout.

Clip #1: The first sequence in the movie –

It starts with a tight shot of Clive’s eyes, and widens out to show him chewing on a carrot, sitting on a bus bench at night. A young pregnant woman runs past him, followed by a guy screaming at her in his car. Clive sees the guy grab his gun and run into the alley; that’s when he goes after them and follows them into the warehouse. His first kill – the guy, with the help of his trusty carrot through the man’s throat. And most of this scene was taken from Michael’s animation presentation.

By the way, why a carrot, you ask? As Michael explained, he wanted a real Looney Tunes feel. “I like the fact that his quirk is carrots which is actually healthy, the opposite of the drunk hero. The idea came from, I always like in movies when they give a quirk, but they always give it to the secondary character, the character actor. I always think if you have a great idea that's going to translate, give it to the main hero so he doesn't seem like just a handsome hero. It seemed to make sense that he needed his eyes to be sharp for shooting. In the movie, they actually say carrots are good for the eyes. It plays into it. But I do have to say, as the movie progressed, as I was boarding it, I kind of used it as - Bond has all these gadgets and stuff. Well, he's sort of the anti-Bond, the blue collar Bond. Things like when he scoops up the gun out of the backseat with the carrot wasn't originally in the script but as I was boarding it, I was going, ‘Where can the carrot show up again and kind of help him out?’ It's kind of absurd but it still kind of makes you smile, so the character grew as a character in the movie.”

The scene continued as Clive discovers the woman is about to deliver the baby; so as he’s helping her, more guys show up to try and take him out. But not so – common, why would you have your main guy dead before the first five minutes. Anyway, Clive kills about 10-15 guys while delivering the baby; and wouldn’t you know it, more guys show up. So using his trusty skills, Clive takes most of them out. In one awesome move, he shoots an oil can and slides through the floor on the slick surface.

Clive eventually makes it up to the top of the stairs; the woman has been shot, and he’s forced to keep the baby. To get away, Clive jumps the roof; it ends with Paul and Clive exchanging pleasant phrases through the neon lights. Clive’s message to Paul: FUK U; Paul’s message to Clive: FUK U TOO.

Clip #2 – meeting Monica Bellucci, the lactating hooker

With nowhere to turn with this baby, Clive heads to the only place he knows that’s safe – the whore house. Greeting him at the door is a woman dressed as a nun; when the camera pans behind her, she’s wearing bottomless chaps. He goes up to see Monica, who reluctantly helps him out.

We also got to see a spoiler scene with Paul – don’t worry, not going to tell you what that was, but it was to show the depth Giamatti was willing to go for this role. “Once Paul Giamatti came on board, we realized we should write the script a little bit more for him and take advantage of him. That line was not there originally in the script, and then we went, ‘Uh, we have to give Paul more stuff.’ Yeah, we have sort of acknowledged that it is larger than life and trying to think off the top of my head.”

Clip #3 – the Looney Tunes aspect of the film

Clive walks in on Paul and Monica in bed at the whore house. (Paul has figured out how he can possibly find the baby.) As Paul picks his head up, he calls Clive a ‘waskilly wabbit.’
This isn’t the only mention of a Bugs Bunny reference. “It really does have a Looney Tunes kind of quality, and we even enhance that later on in the story,” notes Michael. “Paul Giamatti’s ring tone is the Vagner Kill the Rabbit, Kill the Rabbit. And I think it helps tell the audience ‘yes, there’s these dark elements’ – people trying to kill the baby and all that kind of stuff, but it is supposed to be light, it’s like a violent cartoon. And so I kind of liked how their little interplay kind of enhances the Looney Tunes aspect.” We also had the chance to see a scene where his phone was ringing; it was his wife, explaining he would be home to see his son – Michael wanted to show that Paul was really also a family man, as well as a hit man.

Clip #4 – The James Cagney line from Paul, and the staircase shoot-out

Paul is telling his men that Clive must be killed; just then, Clive gets into the warehouse. That’s when the real shoot-out begins; Clive dives through windows, on conveyer belts, and anywhere he can gain leverage from these guys. His final move is the jump through the middle of the stairs, twisting and turning shooting everyone and everything he can see; he eventually escapes. At the end of the scene, Paul screams out, ‘Do we really suck or is he just that good?’
This was an awesome scene, and proved how in-depth Michael went in his camera moves; we saw the shoot-out from about 4 or 5 different angels, from Clive’s point of view and from Paul’s point of view – good stuff.

Clip #5 – The car chase

Clive is on the run, and he’s left with stealing a car – actually jumping through the sky roof, with baby in tow. But before anything else, he buckles his seat belt. He’s being chased by one car, but gets away – with help from the driver-side door, whacking the other guy in the head. Just as he thinks he’s in the clear, he get smashed by a van; the car flips over, ejecting the baby. When he realizes he’s missing the baby, he goes back to get it; but with the van charging at the baby as well, it’s a race to the sack. Clive quickly thinks, shoots out the windshield, unbuckles his seat belt and goes head first into the van’s front window, shooting everyone in the vehicle – excellent stuff!

According to Michael, he wanted to see Clive Owen go ‘balls out’ but wasn’t concerned at all with him doing all these stunts. “I was only nervous when the line producer started, ‘Well you know we’re so close to the end of production and we haven’t had anything bad happen.’ When you start talking about it, that’s when bad thing happen. The line producer, who did a great job and totally supported me, but was nervous and he said, ‘You shouldn’t have Clive jump.’ Clive was like, ‘What is it? I just need to jump from here to here on the pads? I can do it.’ Clive wanted to drive the BMW a little bit more; in the BMW movies, he got to do all of his driving, or a lot of it. We didn’t let him do too much driving in this one.”

Clip #6 – Clive’s improv scene

Michael wanted to show us a scene where Clive improved some of his lines. One in particular was when Clive was giving the baby a bath and he was explaining the intricate workings of a gun. As he was talking about the barrel and the trigger, you could see the baby laughing. Clive talks about the safety on the gun, but says, pointing to his finger, ‘This is your number one safety.’ Monica walks by and sees him talking to the baby; it showed his softer side.

“This is the scene that Clive altered the dialogue which I think is a lot better,” explains Michael.

“It's more specific; I had not identified the different parts of the gun, and then he came up with the idea that this is ‘your number one safety’ which I thought was really cute. It's a lot more specific and sort of makes the scene; I'm waiting for him to go through WGA arbitration but hopefully not.”

Shoot ‘Em Up is gearing up to be one hell of a ride. It opens in theaters September 7th. To check out the story behind the movie, click HERE TO READ THE SCRIPT REVIEW.

Source:Latino Review

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