American Gun (2002 film)

Plot

The film tells the story of Martin Tillman (Coburn), a World War II veteran on a cross-country journey to trace the origin of the gun used to kill his daughter Penny (Madsen). On the way he seeks for his granddaughter Mia (Holden).

Writer/director Alan Jacobs was inspired by a visit to the Smith & Wesson factory in Massachusetts, where he saw an obituary for a young girl above the workbench where a man was assembling guns. He wondered if the worker had perhaps assembled the gun that killed the girl. "At that moment it clicked," Jacobs said. "I had recently read a book called Lethal Passage by the journalist Erik Larson who tracked down the history of a submachine gun that ended up in the hands of a kid who took it to school one day. That put the idea in my head that a gun could have a history."

Production

The film was shot over a period of 40 days of principal photography which began in December, 2000 in Rutland, Vermont, followed by Los Angeles, California, Las Vegas, Nevada and Miami, Florida. The film was shot by cinematographer Phil Parmet in 35mm Kodak color, black & white, with additional footage on Sony PD150 mini-DV, and the combination of formats won the Modern Digital Cinematography Award at the Seattle Independent Film Festival in 2002.