Michael Davis: "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. 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 greenlit. 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."
Michael Davis showed the opening scene of Shoot 'Em Up which begins on Mr. Smith (Clive Owen)'s face, sitting on a bench waiting for the bus, chomping a carrot. He sees a pregnant woman running away and a guy with a gun chasing her. Deciding to follow, Smith ends up delivering the baby while shooting at bad guys.
Michael Davis: "The reason I wanted to start off the movie this way is because obviously I’m influenced by The Man With No Name, the Leone movies. But I wanted to twist it by starting out this Sergio Leone close up, but then setting up the quirk with the carrot crunching. Obviously, there’s the Hard Boiled influence, because I love the scene in the hospital with Chow Yun Fat and the baby. Actually, that’s the inspiration for doing the whole movie."
Unfortunately, the mother is killed in the crossfire, so Smith spends the rest of the movie protecting the baby. Hey, Clive Owen running around with a baby. It's worked before.
Michael Davis: "I knew when he was doing Children of Men, there was a slight comparison of him being with the baby, and then later on relieved that I got him even though he could have said, ‘I don’t want to do two movies with a baby.’ The movies are so different. There’s such a sober feeling in Children of Men. I loved the movie but this is so comic book-y and over the top and just fun, that I really don’t think he was ever bothered by it, I’m not bothered by it. So, it really never came up. Maybe audiences out there might, but I think it’s a completely different movie, which is balls-out action."
Smith actually goes to the most motherly woman he knows. Monica Bellucci plays a prostitute who may have skills to help care for the infant.
Michael Davis: "He hooks up with this lactating hooker and I like this idea because not only does it sort of fit with the story line that he’s stuck with this baby, who would he go to help him, get help from but also, because I had done all these romantic comedies that were sort of raunchy and were very frank about sexual talk, and so I like putting the same kind of sexual frankness in the movie. I just think it’s fun and it’s what I’ve been doing, even though this is an action movie, not a teen romantic comedy. It still feels like a progression of what I’ve been doing."
Page 2: Gunplay and Bonding with the Baby
