And not just the opening scene of Shoot ‘Em Up, New Line Cinema’s latest action movie, where a hero delivers a baby during a shootout. The infant is wanted by hitmen, and the mystery surrounding why killers want the child dead in this fast-and-furious film propels the plot.

No, the idea of the movie started with a baby. Writer/director Michael Davis swears his inspiration was John Woo’s Hardboiled, specifically a scene where star Chow Yun Fat protects a baby with a gun.

Davis realized “This is an image for a whole movie, a hardboiled loner with a baby. I really felt the image of a hardboiled tough guy in this adventure was kind of compelling.”

He threw all of his effort into writing the script, a talent he honed writing James Bond novels in 6th grade. And according to producer Don Murphy, who knew Davis from University of Southern California film school, the script was brilliantly written and full of humor.

But more than just write the script, Davis wanted to direct his vision.

However, Murphy knew Davis’ directorial experience was limited to movies with lower budgets, whereas Shoot ‘Em Up required a higher budget. (The final price tag came to $37 million.) How would Davis be able to convince Murphy, the other producers, and more importantly, the studio, that he was the right director for this movie?

Thanks to his experience as a storyboard artist, Davis had drawn 17,000 images and animated the film’s action sequences as part of his pitch. (He whipped out his iPod proudly so I could see it, like a parent showing off baby pictures.)

Murphy said, “He turns around and puts a DVD into the DVD player, and it’s seventeen minutes of the film of stick-figure animations of all of the action sequences.” So it didn’t make it a no-brainer [to give him the job as director], but it gave us a tool.”