Shechner, Shoot ‘Em Up

Lawdy-loo, Shoot ‘Em Up. If the late Chuck Heston had somehow gotten into an 80’s-style grandpa/grandson mind-swap comedy with David Lee Roth, this movie is what would be going on in that hybrid’s head at all times. To set the tone for you, here’re the closing credits, which do an adequate job of summarizing the film a bit..er… more discretely than the piece itself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ywuLFtMlK8

The bullet-holes-to-boobs thing is probably a puberty metaphor of some sort.

Years ago I heard this bit of industry lore–maybe you’ve heard it too–though it’s almost certainly apocrypha. Apparently, in its first drafts Good Will Hunting was an action-packed spy movie. The Matt Damon character remained the everyman-cum-superman with which we’re all familiar, but in this version he allegedly uses his photographic memory and indefatigable mathematical mind to foil international terror plots and rapidly ascend the ranks of the CIA. In the final script, all that remains of this purported earlier effort is the scene where Will is recruited by a government agency, and turns them down with rough-and-tumble Bostonian street-wit. One can only imagine what the original would look like: Matt Damon a covert op, the only man alive with the skills to take out an international conspiracy. They’re probably call it something stupid.

Anyway, I’m pretty much dead certain that this is exactly how Shoot ‘Em Up came to be, except the final product into which it matured is called Children of Men. Can’t you just see it? Some stupidly ambitious screen-writer loves the book, but decides that he wants to move into a bold, new artistic direction with it:

Clive Owen has to reluctantly shepherd a baby through a firefight?

Cool, we’ll keep that, but replace post-apocalytpic military factions with countless mafioso assasins.

The baby’s of profound phiosophical and political importance?

Um, drop the philosophy, but yeah, that’ll do. Oh, and now baby likes bitchin’ Heavy Metal!

The film conjures basic questions about the meaning of parenthood and society?

Paul Giamatti: master assassin. Ponder as you like.

Clive Owen is compelled to act through entanglements with a lost love?

Kinda’, but let’s also have him get it on with a lactating hooker. In a firefight.

I’m sorry, what?

Yep. Ooh, let’s make the baby’s mom a hooker, too!

You’ve replaced the moral, social and philosophical implications of the text with hookers?

There are assassins, too. In my philosophy, it’s basically hookers and assassins, all the way down.

Somewhere along the line, the writer was inevitably grief-stricken enough to make amends, or killed and replaced with a Replicate capable of following orders. Hence the film we know as Children of Men. But somehow, somewhere, that original draft remained, and either as the result of a lost bar bet, or some weird inter-dimensional transporter accident, it was birthed onto the world stage for all to view in abject, awe-stricken wonderment.

…and then to shuttle it to safety amidst a hellfire of bullets.

And now… vote!

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