MOVIE INTERVIEW

Director's animation helped bring his live-action hero to life

It seems a long way from the pristine halls of Parsons School of Design to the gory, exuberant action of "Shoot 'Em Up." Yet thanks to animation skills he has honed since childhood and an action-packed script, director Michael Davis was finally able to make the movie he has dreamed about since he was a boy.

After spending much of the past decade directing indie romantic comedies aimed at the teenage set ("Eight Days a Week," "100 Girls"), Davis broke out of his directing typecast. Using 17,000 hand-drawn pictures that he animated into the 11 action scenes, Davis got his lifetime opportunity after pitching his vision, along with the animation, to New Line Cinema.

James Dittiger
NEW LINE CINEMA

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Paul Giamatti, left, and Clive Owen star in Michael Davis' 'Shoot 'Em Up.' 'Clive Owen – of any actor in the entire world, he was my first choice,' Davis says.

Alan Markfield
NEW LINE CINEMA

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Alan Markfield new line cinema To pitch his film, Davis, right, with Owen and Monica Bellucci, used hand-drawn animation that depicted 11 action scenes.

Read more from this interview and view director Michael Davis' original animation on The M.O..

"It (the 15-minute animation) was very helpful for me to figure out the rhythms, when I needed to up the suspense or have the clever moment," Davis says, while relaxing at the Driskill Hotel. "It's literally shot-for-shot what was in the movie. And it became a great tool not only for me to sell the project to the studio, 'cause they could see what they were getting.

"It was the animation. It was the script. It was so many things. I feel like my voice and my personality is coming through. I have an indie film voice that's coming through in a big studio movie. And I think that makes it more fun and much fresher than the standard genre fare. The indie film experience informed 'Shoot 'Em Up.' "

With "Shoot 'Em Up," Davis had envisioned an everyman's action hero who would break the mold of those from his childhood. While the movie is rife with nods to cinematic hero-makers of the past and present, including Sergio Leone and John Woo, Davis wanted to give audiences a hero with whom they could relate, without being cinephile geeks.

"I think because the movie works if you don't know the references at all," he says. "I mean, I'll go see a Tarantino movie and hardly see 1 percent of the references. The movie needs to stand on its own, and in 'Shoot 'Em Up,' you've got this new kind of action hero who's the ultimate underdog; he's the homeless hero. But he has the moral certitude. Any injustice in life, whether it's somebody driving a car badly, he corrects the situation. So I think he's very identifiable. I think everybody in life, they go and they say, 'Oh, I hate the guy who just took that handicap parking spot; I wish I could do something about it.' And it's kind of a wish fulfillment. Here's this guy, when anybody out there is kind of a jerk, he punches them. The great thing about creating a new action hero is that you don't have a formula you have to stick to."

That new action hero is the movie's protagonist Mr. Smith, played by the dashing and dangerous Clive Owen, on whom Davis relied heavily for collaboration in the filmmaking process. Davis knew from the beginning that Owen would be the antihero to fit the vision of his debut action film, but signing him was a task which Davis initially considered impossible.

"Clive Owen — of any actor in the entire world, he was my first choice," Davis says. "And the world had wanted to see Clive as an action hero. You got a taste of it in 'Sin City,' and everyone had wanted to see him be Bond. So he was my number one choice and luckily he was the studio's number one choice. So we sent him the script, we sent him the animation. Then the next thing was Clive's biggest fear was he's got all this action in there, and wondered 'Could Michael pull this off?' And I had drinks with him, and I was all excited and showed him the animation and had all my answers. And he decided I knew what I was doing. Here's a guy, everybody wanted him. He's worked with Spike Lee, Alfonso Cuaron, and I'm nobody."

With a major studio release in the bag, starring two of the business's most recognizable actors (Owen and Paul Giamatti), it's instructive to remember that, shortly before making "Shoot 'Em Up," Davis was close to quitting the business.

Asked if he ever takes a moment to pinch himself as a reality check: "Right now. I'll do it right now (pinches self). I'm still doing it," he says. "I walk and see the posters and I can't believe that it's happening to me."