10 Things You Didn’t Know About Shoot ‘Em Up

A long time ago, in a place not too far away, a man by the name of Michael Davis came up with the idea for a wild action film full of shootouts, lactating hookers, and carrot-chomping eagle-eyed badasses. Shoot ‘Em Up was among my favorite movies of 2007 and it’s still one that I like to re-visit at least once a year. If you’ve ever needed a quick and exciting action flick to entertain your buddies with, you can do a lot worse than Shoot ‘Em Up. Now that you’re totally sold on watching it, here’s a few random item you probably didn’t know about the film….

1.Writer/Director Michael Davis says the genesis of Shoot ’em Up is from watching John Woo’s Hard Boiled. The legendary hospital shootout scene at the end of the film with the baby was something that Davis wanted to carry throughout an entire film. Basically, a badass dude with a pistol and a baby.

2. Davis had written the script the same year the Columbine school shootings happened. It meant this type of film wasn’t going to be made for a while so he sat on the script for a few years. During that time he started animating the action sequences and eventually would put those scenes together to show the studio in order to gain funding for the film.

3. The pistol with the thumbprint technology was something that wasn’t science fiction. There are different versions of this tech in various gun companies somewhere in the manufacturing process.

4. The living baby/babies (it was twin babies) that was used for the film was cast when the mother was still 8 1/2 months pregnant. There were two animatronic babies made and 3 different stunt babies made.

5. The parachuting shootout was done in the green screen studio with an almost 180 degree green screen.

6. Davis and actor Paul Giamatti came up with the look for his character. They gave him a combover haircut and a misshapen goatee. Unfortunately, it was during Oscar season that they were filming and Giamatti had to show up to all of the awards shows looking like this.

7. Because of the short shooting schedule (55 days), the 2nd Unit Director Eddie Perez ended up shooting far more shots than they had originally planned. Most action films have 4 or so set pieces but this one had around 11, so it took much longer to film the action scenes and they were always running against the clock.

8. The budget for squibs was $70,000. You can normally get around 50 squibs for $1,000.

9. Paul Giamatti claims he took the role because of the scene where he breaks each of Clive Owen’s fingers.

10. There is a scene where they shoot a merry go round on a playground and it spins around. The Discovery Channel program Mythbusters attempted this and found that it was impossible with that caliber and type of weapon. They were able to move the merry go round with a larger caliber rifle but it was much slower.