About The Production

The genesis of Shoot ‘Em Up was sparked by a scene from John Woo’s Hardboiled where the hero, played by Chow Yun Fat, is in a hospital with a gun and a baby. “Putting together a hardboiled guy with the most innocent thing in the world delivers dramatic tension and a great image,” says writer/director Michael Davis, whose award winning films include Eight Days a Week and 100 Girls. Davis expanded upon this scenario and devised the idea of having a gun fight in the middle of a room while the hero is helping to deliver a baby. “I thought it would be a great opening for a movie,” states the imaginative director.

“Shoot ‘Em Up is akin to an American John Woo action movie and tells the story of the angriest man in the world, Mr. Smith, who’s stuck with a baby and a life-threatening situation,” continues Davis, who also wrote the original screenplay. “It’s about all the imaginative and clever things you can do with a gun fight.”

“The easy bit was plotting all the cool things you can do with a gun fight,” says Davis, a former storyboard artist who came up with a series of unique and outlandish scenarios in which to stage elaborate “shoot ‘em ups.” In addition to the birth sequence shoot-out which opens the film, there’s a gun fight while Smith and paratroopers are free-falling out of an airplane, a scene where Smith spins a playground carousel with bullets so a sniper can’t shoot the baby lying on it, and, in the perfect distillation of sex and violence, a sequence where Smith and the his accomplice, the prostitute DQ, make love during a gun fight.

“But to sustain the story, the hard part was to figure out the mystery and rationale as to why the bad guys want the baby,” adds Davis.

The John Woo film was one inspiration. But the seeds for Shoot ‘Em Up were sown several decades earlier when Davis was a 6th grader writing his own 100-page James Bond novels on a typewriter, with titles such as Masquerade of Death and Spearhead which mimicked the Ian Fleming tone. “I’ve been dreaming of doing an all-out action movie since then, whether it was writing my childhood novels or now, animating and writing a script,” says Davis, who drew 17,000 drawings to create 15 minutes of animation for the film’s 11 action sequences to use as a sales tool, which proved to be effective, impressing the producers – Susan Montford, Don Murphy and Rick Benattar (who, like Davis, is himself a Bond fanatic) – New Line Cinema executives and, ultimately, the cast. “The animation really encapsulated the high energy of the picture. It’s been very exciting to see that process of drawn vision translated to the real vision on film,” adds Davis.

NOTE: Examples from the animatic can be found online by going to: http:/www.latinoreview.com/scriptreviews/shootemup/promoreel/index.html Hollywood is an ephemeral place. You can be the most gifted screenwriter in town, but if you don’t get that break, you’re still a struggling filmmaker. Divine intervention intervened for Davis when his acquaintance from their days at University of Southern California, producer Don Murphy (Transformers, Natural Born Killers, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), along with his partners, Susan Montford and Rick Benattar, took up the cause.

“We felt Shoot ‘Em Up was this truly special script with a unique voice begging to be made. It was right up our alley because it pokes fun at America’s big obsessions – guns and breasts and violence, in that order,” says Don Murphy, whose company, Angry Films, worked with Davis on his presentation showing the director’s vision for the action sequences in the film as well as a line-drawn trailer. “We sent this stunning DVD animatic to New Line Cinema as our first choice and they loved it,” adds Susan Montford.

Executives at New Line Cinema saw the potential in the film after viewing Davis’ animatic and pitched it to the studio heads, who gave the green light. “New Line made sure that we were able to cast and hire the great people we have,” says Murphy. “Michael had a vision and passion for the script as evidenced in the animatic. We felt this was the movie he was born to direct.” Davis finally got his break.

Michael Davis describes Shoot ‘Em Up as a “blue-collar James Bond movie. Mr. Smith is the antithesis of James Bond. He has been psychologically damaged in his past and is homeless, which gives you a Rocky-like underdog feeling, because he has no resources but his own. He lives in a derelict building. He’s got nothing. Bond has all these gadgets. Mr. Smith’s only talent is shooting, so he eats carrots because they’re good for eyesight. And he has a pet rat trained to unlock his door – all low tech.” Smith is also ingenious. “I like to see the clever way the guy gets out of a tough situation, what his thought process is. I find that much more exciting than the big spectacle, because it’s the idea that’s being celebrated,” adds Davis, who from the start set out to make a highly visceral film punctuated with witty dialogue.

Producer Susan Montford’s perspective on the picture: “If you love cinema you will love this film – it references the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, the French gangster movies of Melville and of course John Woo. The lead characters are cinematic archetypes re-imagined through Michael Davis’ very twisted imagination. DQ is the tragic prostitute/mother. Smith is the mythic hardboiled loner with a slew of witty one-liners.

They are classic outsiders doing whatever it takes to survive. When along comes this baby and brings them together, throwing both their lives into disarray. They join together to save the baby from Hertz, the fetishistic gangster with glasses and a comb-over. Like the BTK Killer, you could almost mistake him for a regular family man.”

When it came time to assemble the dream cast, Michael Davis’ top choice for the role of Mr. Smith was Clive Owen, best known for his work in Sin City and Inside Man. “Clive’s a straight-up action hero, but we never thought for a moment we’d get him,” says Davis. But Owen, who co-incidentally had just turned down another film, was keen to play Mr. Smith. He and Davis met, hit it off and, as they say in the UK, ‘Bob’s your uncle!’ They decided that Owen would play the off-beat character with an English accent, because the British have a knack for dark witty humor. “He’s a little bit tougher with the British accent,” explains Davis.

“Shoot ‘Em Up is absolutely wild,” says Clive Owen. “This is one of the freshest and most original screenplays I’ve read in a long time. It kicks in at a very high tempo with wild extraordinary situations and then doesn’t let up. It has a dozen incredible genius shootouts. It’s all redeemed with a great wit and humor.”

“When I read the script, I called my agent right away and said, ‘If the director can pull it off, it’s going to be extraordinary.’ And when I met Michael I knew straight away that he could do it, basically because he’d been waiting do to this movie for seven years. It takes a particular brain and a particular person to pull this off.”

“The way I’m playing Smith, you don’t really get to know too much about him,” adds Owen. “He’s very enigmatic and a very good shot, yet, somehow, nobody seems to be able to get him. He doesn’t really want to be in this situation. He ends up with this baby and he’s running around throughout the whole film. But he’s very protective of this kid. He’s sort of symbolic in a way. He’s a very original action hero,” laughs the actor.

“Clive is the prototype of a young Sean Connery – alpha male, sexy, intelligent and very witty. He is an understated, nuanced actor which is a great compliment to the over-thetop action he has to perform,” says producer Don Murphy, who, along with the other producers, felt that the cast had to be as unique as the script, so they championed actors who were fresher and more soulful.

“Clive brings a very mysterious brooding quality to Mr. Smith. He’s also done a lot of his own stunts and action as well. He’s really brilliant. You can’t take your eyes off him,” adds producer Susan Montford.

“Mr. Smith is the angriest man in the world,” says Michael Davis. “Because he’s angrier at a bigger thing that has caused trouble in his life, it’s all the little things in life that make him angry. He verbalizes all the small things that irritate any one of us in real life – someone chewing gum, a guy who doesn’t use his turn signals, or someone slurping coffee. He’s hardboiled, but we can identify with him. A back story hints as to why he’s homeless, why he has these great abilities. Not only does the movie have a mystery structure, plot-wise, as to why the bad guys are trying to kill the baby, but there is a progression as to who this character is. Although he comes across as sarcastic and angry, the irony is that he’s the most sensitive guy in the movie. That’s why all these things bother him so much – because he is so sensitive.”

Clive Owen concurs, “Smith says he hates everything, but he doesn’t really. It annoys him when people try to kill him. It winds him up and he can be pretty ruthless at times. But ultimately he always finds a way and deals with the situations.”

Playing the key role of DQ, the prostitute whom Smith enlists to help him care for and protect the newborn baby, is Italian actress Monica Bellucci. “Monica is an incredibly beautiful, soulful actor with a refreshing lack of inhibition,” says producer Susan Montford. “Once we imagined her as DQ we couldn’t envision anyone else.”

Echoes Michael Davis, “Monica is great for the part because I needed a strong personality to interact with Smith’s strong personality. She’s also very sexy and is the only character in the movie that doesn’t take crap from Smith. She calls him on everything. What’s also great about Monica is that in Italian families, the matriarch is such a strong figure. Her name is Donna Quintana, but Smith calls her DQ for short. She’s really the emotional core at the center of the movie. She’s always honest, she’s always saying what she’s feeling and eventually she gets Smith to make a transformation, to be a bit more open and caring, to start healing from his emotional wounds.”

Bellucci was attracted by the originality of the script and the mix of different elements. “Shoot ‘Em Up is violent, it’s rock n’ roll, sexy, dark, scary but human with a lot of humor. It’s difficult to find all those elements together,” says the actress, who was also drawn to the unconventional love story. “When the film starts, neither Smith nor DQ know how to love or what love means. Through the baby, who accidentally comes into their lives, they realize who they truly are; and through giving to the baby they also learn how to love each other.” Bellucci also loved the character of DQ. “She’s a hooker with a specialty, something very kinky. I loved playing her because she’s totally free. She does dangerous, dark dirty things in a playful way.”

Some years before, Michael Davis had written a screenplay about Alfred Kinsey. “Because I’d done all this research on human sexuality, all my scripts became more influenced with so many great things about sex. I never would’ve written about a lactating hooker if I hadn’t written the Kinsey script. In Shoot ‘Em Up, the hero is stuck with a baby. Who would he go to for help? Why not go to this woman who can actually feed the baby? DQ’s the perfect foil for Smith because she helps. Just as Smith seems like he’s had something in his life that’s shattered him, she too has had something that shattered her. A really strong love story develops about these two broken people who come together and form this makeshift family, making the story stronger.

“Monica’s a terrific actress and has done some incredible work,” says Clive Owen. “In the film we obviously have a history – I go to her for help because the baby needs to be fed. We have a very tough relationship, but you can tell really that we’re very fond of each other. She’s very nurturing towards the baby and we make a very weird little family unit.”

Paul Giamatti plays the chief bad guy, Hertz, who is relentlessly prowling after Smith. “What I found interesting about bad guys is that they’re not bad guys 24 hours a day,” says Michael Davis. “They don’t think that they’re bad guys, so how could I make a bad guy character feel like he’s not a bad guy? Consequently, throughout the story, Hertz is always calling home and talking to his wife as if his job is a Wall Street broker. He just has to work late. You get this family man side contrasting with this horrible violent guy.”

“A thriller is only as good as your bad guy,” continues Davis. “So I didn’t want to play it safe with Hertz. I needed an actor who could pull if off and became intrigued with the idea of Paul. The idea grew on me because it’s against type. Though he’s not physically big as a villain, mentally he is. It made it more fun that Hertz can represent everything about him as big: he has a big gun, drives a big car, has a big belt buckle and he’s also compensating for his size. You need a great actor to pull off somebody’s that a little bit more dimensional.”

“Paul usually plays angst-ridden characters and now he gets to play a straight-forward bad guy, whom he modeled on the BTK Killer. He’s very funny and creepy as well,” says producer Susan Montford.

Giamatti, who had never played a bad guy or fired a gun before, gleefully reveals why he wanted to do the film. “There’s a kind of Gestapo scene near the end where I break all of Smith’s fingers. When I first read the script, I really wanted to do that scene. It goes on forever and I really break each one of his fingers nice and slowly. It was a fun scene to do. I try to kill his spirit. I’m more about killing people’s souls. I have one great scene where I get to torture Monica Bellucci. She was great to torture. She’s fantastic and an incredibly interesting actress.”

“Clive is great at playing damaged sour guys. He makes a really interesting hero and brings this dark quality to Mr. Smith. It’s funny because I play my guy almost sort of cheerful. It’s like a weird role reversal,” says Giamatti.

Replies Owen, “Hertz is a really wild character from the minute the movie starts to the end. He’s the chief antagonist. The thing that’s great about Paul playing this part is that the script is full of really wicked humor. And Paul’s perfect because he can play it completely committed and straight. He’s really a nasty piece of work, but it’s incredibly enjoyable watching him go at it.”

“Paul is the perfect villain in this, a role we haven’t seen him in. He is such a terrific actor that he is able to externalize the complexes of Hertz without turning him into a caricature of a villain, which is a tricky task,” adds producer Rick Benattar.

Adds Giamatti about his character, “I play an FBI profiler gone bad who’s a superintuitive genius. The idea was to have a non-traditional bad guy so we came up with the idea of making him look like an accountant. To all outward appearances, Hertz is a bland nobody little guy. Michael wanted to have a guy who kills people but has a family life back home. I have sweet conversations with my wife in the midst of incredible violence. It’s when Hertz shoots someone in the head that he’s actually kind of happy,” laughs the actor. “It’s nothing but big, cool scenes of people shooting each other.”

Giamatti was so enthusiastic about his character’s look, he entreated his hair stylist to shave the crown of his head, leaving some long strands to comb over, and he framed his face with a beard. His stylist topped it off with a ‘greasy’ look, with a bit of help from Brillcream.

“Paul Giamatti’s like the guy next door. He’s ‘everybody’ and that’s why everybody loves him. In Shoot ‘Em Up he saw an opportunity to almost go over the top. He’s the greatest Bond villain that never was,” says producer Don Murphy.

“Hertz sees himself as being smarter than anybody else,” says Giamatti. “I’m the muscle guy who goes out with all these soldiers and we try to kill people. I take charge all the time. I do a lot of sitting in the back of a limo on the phone telling people to kill other people. But for Clive, it’s been exhausting. He has the lion’s share of all the actual action.”

“I had to get very fit for this film because it’s a very physical part,” says Owen. “The whole thing about the action in this movie is that it’s always got this momentum where it’s heading forward. It’s never static. I think what separates it from any other action movie is its humor. The action has great wit about it. It’s unexpected, and funny as well as being cool at the same time.”

“I’m having the actors play it as if it’s very, very real,” says writer/director Michael Davis. I like to use the word ‘exuberant.’ The movie just goes for it. So many action films are about boom boom boom and giant things toppling down, but this is about the individual, and the intimacy of the action. And the great thing about Shoot ‘Em Up is we’ve got A-list actors doing an outrageous action movie and they’re having the time of their lives.”

The actors all relished their experience working with Davis on the film.

“Michael wrote this ingenious action film,” praises Clive Owen. “There’s an incredible discipline in shooting action, but I’d say he is one of the most organized directors I’ve ever worked with in my whole career. He’s incredibly clear about what’s required and what he wants all the way through the day. We did a huge amount of setups and he’s incredibly precise.”

Monica Bellucci agrees. “It’s a big pleasure to work with Michael Davis because he’s so talented. Because he wrote the screenplay, he knows exactly what he wants. His vision for the film is fantastic.”

“Michael had a real kind of eccentric vision for the movie. It’s got a lot of black humor, which is a good thing. It really doesn’t ever stop moving and is a dynamic movie,” says Paul Giamatti.

“It seems to me that Michael Davis was born to direct this film,” adds producer Susan Montford. “When he wrote it, it was like all the elements of his personality were coming into play with the various characters – their quirks, obsessions and loves – all the things that amuse him. So when it came to directing, he really made it happen and brought all the characters to life, as they were so much a part of him.”

Davis’ animatics – 15 minutes of hand-drawn animation he created – were a key element in selling Shoot ‘Em Up to New Line Cinema and enticing Clive Owen to star. Over a period of six months, he animated ten of the big action set pieces of the film by hand, which involved 17,000 drawings. As Davis says, “It’s like you are watching the actual movie shot for shot, cut by cut, but it is animated.”

Initially Davis never dreamed the animatics would be such a great sales tool. “It just started as a hobby. I wanted to see what I could do with iMovie on my Apple. I started goofing around. I had this script I loved but was having difficulty getting it set up. I was itching to make a film and the animation sort of satisfied this urge.”

“Once I animated the first sequence – the skydiving gun fight – I thought it was so cool. It was directing without a crew, so I decided to animate another scene. In the back of my mind, I thought if I ever got a chance to make the movie, the animation would be a great way to show the director of photography and the editor and everyone else how I wanted the scenes to work.”

It was only later that he discovered that the animation was a great sales tool. The vision was so exciting and exacting that New Line decided to take a chance at letting Davis make the jump from independent to studio filmmaker.

The animation, along with script, also excited the talent agencies and several major stars expressed interest in the project. New Line and Davis both wanted Clive Owen, and the one-two punch of the script and the animatics led him to come aboard.

The key role of the baby actually required the involvement of two sets of twins, one triplet and five replicas. Prior to principal photography, Toronto-based Eva Mende Gibson received a call from an agent two weeks before she was deliver twins, one girl and one boy – Sydney and Lucas. Would she be interested in participating in a film?

After her initial surprise, she thought, ‘why not?’ And so her babies had their first fitting – a sock placed on their head – at two weeks old. “I think it’s their 15-minutes of fame,” says Mende Gibson. “It’s almost like their baby book is being immortalized. We can look at the DVD when they’re grown up and see what they looked like as babies, caught in time forever.” The live babies alternated with each other and the artificial babies.

However, by the end of the eleven-week shoot, her twins had grown too large, and another baby selected from triplets was cast for the last few days of the shoot.

“The babies are incredible,” says Clive Owen, who is a father himself. “Every time you put a live baby into the situation, it centers everything. It’s an incredibly smart device in the middle of an action film to have a baby as being the number one thing that has to be protected. There’s an instant and instinctive reaction every human being has to seeing a new baby getting upset or scared or worried or in danger. And to have an entire film where that baby’s under threat in the midst of crazy action is incredibly powerful.”

Prosthetics and Animatronics expert Paul Jones and his team built five other babies, all of which were doubling for Oliver, the baby in the film. Two of the babies were articulated animatronic radio-controlled robots and three were non-moving stunt babies. The heroradio- controlled baby was self-contained, with no batteries or wires hanging out of it.

“You see this baby kicking, screaming and moving its arms and head, and can actually pick it up and leave frame,” says Jones, whose team initially sculpted heads to match photos of his own baby, as the twins had not yet been born! Once they were born, he matched their skin tones and hair patterns to his creations. “Some babies are born with no hair. So interchangeable baby wigs were made at the very last minute,” smiles Jones. “The visual effects team, Mr. X, did all the face replacements to ensure authenticity.”

To create realistic animatronic babies, Jones researched babies, videotaping their moves and feeling their skin so as to replicate it as closely as possible with soft silicone skin. His department also made a full-size dummy of the mother, who Mr. Smith carries at the opening of the film. Severed hands and umbilical cords are but a few of the extras to come from Jones’ busy workroom. “We ordered five gallons of really nice blood from the Makeup Company in England,” he smiles. “They make the best blood for films. We used the ‘nice’ blood on the actors, and for the other 85 bodies who get shot and maimed, we made our own blood out of syrup and food coloring.” In fact, he’s got five different kinds of blood from dried scabs to fresh, arterial and gloopy blood.

For a teeth-gritting scene in which Giamatti’s character breaks Mr. Smith’s fingers, Jones had UK colleagues make life casts of Owen’s hands prior to his traveling in for the shoot. After making molds, Jones created artificial silicone hands for close-up shots where Owen’s hand is in front of his face, allowing Giamatti to “break” his fingers one by one. To make this scene work, the camera cut back and forth from Owen’s real fingers to the artificial ones.

No action film, especially one as extreme as Shoot ‘Em Up, would be complete without guns, which constituted a large part of the shoot. Weapons Specialist Charles Taylor was able to provide approximately 80 different weapons. “Clive handles 18 different guns when he takes out the bad guys. Hertz is a little man with a big pistol – 50 caliber Desert Eagle. Hertz’ gang carries a mixture of standard guns from hand guns to machine guns. Hammerson and Lone Man use higher end custom-made sub machine guns and machine guns,” says Taylor, who, before principal photography, tutored Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti at an indoor range training facility where they learned basic gun safety, gun handling on set and advanced tactical weapons training – CQB (Close Quarters Battle).

“Basically I taught the actors how to handle firearms close to an assailant; how to engage a target while moving and advanced weapons tactics because the director, who selected the guns for each character, wanted Clive Owen to be doing some pretty spectacular things and be well versed in urban combat,” says Taylor, whose weapons were all been modified to fire blanks. He estimates that more than 25,000 rounds of blanks were fired throughout the shoot.

One of Taylor’s guns was so technologically advanced that it could only be fired by the owner’s thumbprint. Thus, in one wrenching scene, Smith has to sever the hand off a dead assailant in order to use his thumbprint to fire the pistol.

Comments Paul Giamatti, “I have to carry a gun called Desert Eagle which is an Israeli gun that I don’t think anybody actually would use as a sidearm. I think it’s kind of useless. It’s a 50 caliber pistol and it’s enormous and heavy. It looks great but it’s tricky to use because it’s a giant. Just getting it out of the holster is a whole thing. I was happier when I had the smaller guns that feel like a water pistol after using that big thing. They were much easier to use. I never fired an actual bullet out of this 50 caliber gun because I think I would have broken my arm!”

“I’ve shot in films before and I’m not uncomfortable with handling guns, but in this picture I have to handle so many different types of guns,” says Owen. “It’s crazy. Smith is always losing his gun and having to pick up another one. The guys here are experienced and really know their stuff, so it was just a matter of spending time with them.”

Blasting guns result in bullet holes, sparks and general mayhem. “Michael Davis always told me that special effects were one of the stars of the movie,” says Oscar-winning Special Effects Coordinator Colin Chilvers. “He wanted it to be very exciting and fast moving with lots of energy – and big! The bigger the bullet hits, the more that came out of them, the better it was for the look of the movie. So we concentrated on doing everything a little over the top.”

They worked out that 85 people would be killed in the movie. In some scenes there were from 150-200 pyrotechnic squibs set up at one time, requiring multiple retakes and different sizes, sometimes combining blowing a hole with a spark or adding blood bags. A squib is a small explosive device which punches out whatever you put it behind. Chilver’s challenge was making it look real without it doing the kind of damage that the real thing would normally do. Actors and stuntmen are protected by a metal plate placed behind the device. The magic of CGI adds hundreds more bullet hits.

“I think we spent most of my expendable budget on squibs,” says Chilvers, who estimates that 6,000 squibs were used throughout the shoot along with 15 gallons of blood. “I think we’ve used more blood on this movie than I’ve used on most of the other movies I’ve done put together!”

At the outset of crewing Shoot ‘Em Up, producer Susan Montford said to Michael Davis, “Since you are talking about doing an American John Woo film, why not get the cinematographer from Hong Kong who knows how to best do that?” And shortly thereafter, Peter Pau came aboard.

What intrigued Pau was Clive Owen’s character and the fast pace. “The down-to-earth guy who is warm hearted but with a cold face allied to the fantastic fast pace of the picture was what interested me,” says the Oscar-winning cinematographer, who averaged between 35 to 55 set-ups a day, shooting with two full-time cameras.

“I could not have made this movie without Peter Pau,” says Davis. “This movie requires lots of setups and he’s fast as lightning. But he also adds elegance and extra lyrical moves to my action dance. He also helped me with the red/green color palette. For example, in Smith’s crib, he’s added florescent lights that go green; and instead of making nighttime blue, we’re going with a yellowish-green from the sodium vapor lights that already exist.”

“Peter prelights with a very distinct color palette so hopefully there will be a greater unity to the movie because of the strong control of color that Peter has brought to it,” adds Davis

“Michael already had the color palette in mind,” says Pau. “We desaturated in blue but saturated in green, yellow, orange and red so we have a warmer color over all, and a little cold color too. But primarily Shoot ‘Em Up is a very high energy film. To create a sense of speed, we tried not to slow down, even for the dramatic sequences – a new style of film that Michael and I are trying to create.”

Pau’s team pre-rigged 70 to 80% of the lighting, which was operated by a remote control system, allowing lamps to be rapidly turned on and off, facilitating the fast nature of the shoot.

The look of Shoot ‘Em Up was also forged early on during an initial meeting between Michael Davis and Production Designer Gary Frutkoff, who came to the meeting with a slide show he had assembled from various photo blogs of abandoned urban sites in Toronto and Montreal. Much of the visual lexicon they would share throughout the remaining months evolved from those images.

“Michael conveyed his idea of looking at the story as one big action sequence, one big chase….one big gun fight,” says Frutkoff, who set out to design the sets with that in mind. Davis wanted to portray Smith’s world to be a unifying vision throughout the story.

Sets and locations would be designed and chosen to help portray this world – its architecture developed to support the action that would continually accelerate through the story. Their collaboration would also include details of each character without giving away too much. Davis wanted to keep a lot of the characters’ background mysterious – his belief being that it would keep the audience guessing, not being too obvious or “on the mark.” Davis also wanted a sense of humor sprinkled throughout – another important element of this universe.

“The film is an urban, distressed realism – but pushed into a heightened, exaggerated style that could support the heightened action,” says Frutkoff. “We’re trying to define Smith as a character. This is a man who’s emotionally wounded but can rise to an occasion with heroic efforts and succeed. But we’re also trying to slowly unpeel the mystery of this man. He’s a genius, a mythical character like James Bond, who happens to operate in a much different socio-economic world. His environment speaks a lot of what’s going on in his head. We’re going for a look of urban distress, which is juxtaposed by an underlying humor.

“Smith’s world is made out of stuff he’s collected from the streets – metals, woods, strings, cords and wires. DQ’s domain is more sensual, sophisticated and colorful,” says the production designer, who worked from a color palette of red, green and gold. “We were always trying to take the sets and push them – without letting them get distracting.” Mr. Smith’s world is not glamorous, so he was set up as a downtrodden character living in an abandoned, neglected world – a world he’s adopted, but also a world he has impressed with his personality and talents.

“We felt that Gary Frutkoff, who had worked on Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey and Out of Sight, would bring a gritty understanding of the type of environment the characters in the film would inhabit,” says producer Don Murphy.

“As well as trying to maintain the aesthetic, we had to design for repetitive action,” adds Frutfkoff. “Things had to be designed to blow up, and then be put back together as quickly as possible. Part of every set had to be designed for sliding, jumping, and crashing repeatedly. Keeping track of logistics was a full-time occupation.”

Likewise, the wardrobe department had to have multiples such as Clive Owen’s 14 pairs of jeans, 14 sweaters and six leather coats. “Although Clive wears the same outfit throughout the film, the same costume was required for photo double, stunt double and stand-in – that’s four costumes in one day,” says Costume Designer Denise Cronenberg. “Furthermore, his clothes go through different stages of breakdown, some with bullet holes. As he lives on the streets, Mr. Smith gets gradually grubbier. Shoot outs are a grubby business. Clive has one other costume change at the end of the movie.”

The Lone Man’s 16 men all dressed alike in gray suits, white shirts, black ties and trench coats. Cronenberg had 20 grey suits, 20 ties and 20 trench coats all shipped in from across Canada by a Toronto high-end retailer. For Hertz’s men, she purchased 80 black leather jackets in different styles. “The hit men all wear black outfits and some sported black sunglasses,” says the designer. “Monica’s character is a hooker and the only woman in the movie. I wanted her to look like a hooker but also have class.” The actress wore a Fendi chinchilla fuchsia-purple-pink blend shrug, a black leather slitted skirt and Dupioni red silk corset reflecting the color palette. In the brothel she was draped in a sexy dark emerald green outfit, a copy of a 1930’s robe. At the end of the movie, she’s in a pink Dairy Queen outfit. Paul Giamatti liked his brown suit paired with a purple shirt. “I wanted to give him some sort of edge.”

High fashion names whose designs appear in the film range from Giorgio Armani, Fendi, Christian Louboutin (signature red soles) to lingerie from UK’s Agent Provocateur and leather gear from Roots.

Among Mr. Smith’s adventures is a shoot-out skydiving sequence which Michael Davis is hoping will be one of the greatest gun fights in cinema history. It’s certainly one of the most elaborate scenes in the movie. Because the animation had very distinct choreography. Davis felt the only proper way to do it was against green screen as Smith does barrel rolls, flips and twists around and turns upside down as he fires. It took more than a week of shooting in front of a green screen – more than any other days allocated to action scenes – to complete the meticulous sequences, following Davis’ storyboard shot by shot. “I’m hoping it will be one of the freshest gun fights in recent action film history,” says the enthusiastic director.

To choreograph these multiple movements, Clive Owen was attached to a various rigs with pulleys which effectively manipulated him like a puppet while the camera-mounted crane snaked out to give the illusion of him whizzing by as wind machines ruffled his hair and clothes. The green-garbed stunt riggers propelled Owen, who was rotated on a green pillar or gracefully swung through the air, turning somersaults, diving and turning upside-down, while simultaneously firing a gun in a sort of aerial ballet. Other actors also flew through the air, all orchestrated by the Director of Photography and Director. Stuntmen took over where the actors left off.

For this sequence, Second Unit Director Eddie Perez (Blade: Trinity) contracted the Cirque du Soleil to design the spreader bar which supports the body and incorporates a pulley system to allow the body to twist, turn and move freely without major assistance. Perez designed a harness to fit Owen and his stunt double, as they are a little big bigger than Cirque performers.

“Eddie Perez is one of the great unsung action specialists,” says Don Murphy. “He knows two things: how to get a lot of kinetic motion and how to make sure everyone stays safe. And those are the two things you want for a movie like this.”

Owen spent several days in preproduction working with the wires for the sky diving. “He’s such a natural at it, he looked like he’s in the Cirque du Soleil,” comments Michael Davis. “He’s truly athletically gifted.”

Although the cast and crew saw only green walls and stunt riggers looking like aliens dressed from head to toe in digital green to match, with only holes for their eyes, thanks to CGI generated by Toronto-based visual effects studio, Mr. X Inc., the audience will see three different types of sky behind these stunning sequences. “We will also have full CG characters creating moves that would be impossible on wires,” says Mr. X Inc.’s Brendon Taylor.

“Initially the audience will be skimming the earth at 40,000 feet. They’ll see what you’d see out of a plane flying that high – layers of cloud lit by golden sunlight,” says Visual Effects Supervisor Edward Irastorza. “Smith falls down to a bank of billowing clouds as the paratroopers jump out of the plane after him.”

The second part of the fight takes place inside the cloud bank with wispy clouds drifting by as Smith shoots it out with the paratroopers. The top layer of clouds is lit by the sun; the layer below is shrouded in grey.

The third segment shows Smith breaking through the clouds above a city where he has the final battle with his pursuers.

Director of Photography Peter Pau, who was inspired by an eloquent sky in King Kong, liked the idea of juxtaposing the beauty of the sky with the violence and death that’s happening within it.

Additional stunts include a head-on car crash in which Owen’s character flies from one vehicle to the other, shooting out one windshield and smashing through another to land inside a van where he shoots eight bad-guy occupants. The car crash was for real. The two vehicles sped towards each other at 25 miles per hour, totaling 50 mph on impact. All the safety precautions paid off. The helmeted and padded stuntmen, who had been firmly strapped into their vehicles, walked away, unscathed. Other parts of this stunt were filmed against a green screen in which a stuntman flies on a wire from one car to the other. In another car chase sequence, Mr. Smith leaps from a bridge and crashes through a sun roof. For this sequence, Owen’s stunt double traveled by descender cable, dropping through a specially designed oversized sun roof.

Another mammoth shootout had Owen rappelling down four stories through the stairwell while firing a machine gun and being fired upon by Hertz’ army of assailants. At least 80 different stunt people were used during the course of making the film.

Visual effects not only create the environments added to the backgrounds, but are also used to create digital face replacement of the live baby on to the animatronic babies; and transplanting Owen’s face onto the stuntman’s, among other artistic achievements. In addition, A CG car was created for the car flip, a CG airplane for the sky dive and a CG scalpel that slices through Smith’s hand in a fight scene between him and Hertz.

Although Shoot ‘Em Up was influenced by John Woo, writer/director Davis has pushed the genre beyond the envelope with his original and outrageous exploits, certain to titillate even the most jaded moviegoers.

“A lot of of action movies have four action set pieces with 20 minutes of dialogue in between. This movie really moves. It’s got 11 action sequences and in between them, the dialogue scenes are also going to feel like they’re on the run. It’s Run Lola Run with a gun, which I love because it’s a love song to cinema about motion graphics,” says Davis, who followed his animatic shot-by-shot.

Smiles Monica Bellucci, “Mr. Smith is like a trash James Bond and I’m like a strange James Bond girl. It’s going to be a really cool and sexy film.”

Michael Davis states, “The point of the movie is to have great entertainment. I believe that any movie is creating its own environment, its own world, its own rules. And as long as you stay true to that, I think people will be emotionally satisfied. I’m going for the hard-core action fans that just love to see the big action dance. The coolest thing is basically seeing Clive Owen hold a gun. He just rocks as an action hero.” He adds with a grin, “When I was a kid, I wanted to be James Bond…now I want to be Clive Owen!”

“Shoot ‘Em Up will serve up all the action the audience is expecting, but hopefully all the dark humor of it and the interesting more quirky characters will make it a different kind of action movie to see,” says Paul Giamatti.

Adds Owen, “I can absolutely guarantee that Shoot ‘Em Up will be unlike anything anybody’s ever seen before. For people who love action, it really delivers.”

Producer Don Murphy sums it all up – “Men will love the action, they will want to be Clive and fantasize about Monica. Women will love Clive and Paul and find Clive and Monica’s relationship sexy. Cinephiles will love everything!”ed)