Hollywood comes to Dublin with filming of 'Knockout'

THE WORDS “Hollywood” and “glamour” are commonly associated with one another.

But fame, fortune and the endless rounds of red carpets and award ceremonies really belong to showbusiness. The process of making movies, as any early bird in Dublin’s Grafton Street witnessed yesterday, is a tedious one of shooting and reshooting and mostly hanging around.

How many times can you film a woman coming out of Burger King? Let us count the ways. It took nearly two hours to film Gina Carano, the star of Knockout, crossing Grafton Street to the flower stall at the corner of Chatham Street, a sequence that might end up being 10 seconds in the film or alternatively could end up on the cutting room floor.

Carano, a relative unknown, is a tough cookie with a background in mixed martial arts, but, in between takes, she wore a full-length puffer jacket to keep out the cold.

Knockout, an international thriller, is one of the most high-profile Hollywood films to come to Ireland in recent years, mostly because it is directed by Steven Soderbergh who won a best director Oscar for Trafficin 2000.

Soderbergh's films, which also include the Oceans Elevenseries, Erin Brockovichand Sex Lies and Videotape,are better known than he is and few shoppers recognised the angular-looking man with the outsized glasses calling the shots yesterday.

You would have to have got up early to follow Soderbergh and the 100-strong cast and crew. While many people were sleeping off their Saturday night excesses, the team filmed outside the Shelbourne Hotel at 7.30am taking advantage of the light and the empty streets before moving on to Grafton Street and finally to Dawson Street.

In total they shot for 10 hours. At best five minutes of it will make it on to the screen.

The $25 million (€18 million) budget for the film is partially financed by the Section 481 tax breaks and money from The Irish Film Board. Irish company Parallel Films is one of the producers.

The movie also features three bona-fide A-list stars in Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas and Ewan McGregor. Unfortunately none is taking part in the Irish leg as the film is also being shot on location in Turkey, Spain and New Mexico.

The makers of Knockoutwill film in Ireland for three weeks in total.