‘The Book of Eli’ brings down the house

The spectacular farmhouse shootout that comes midway through the Hughes brothers’ “The Book of Eli” was so destructive it required an entire home to be constructed in the New Mexico desert with the specific intention of ripping it apart bit by bit. “The house had to be built with all the supports in different places than normal,” production designer Gae Buckley said. That allowed them to tear away part of

the front in the rocket-launcher attack and to move around the walls inside the house to accommodate the camera and lights. A pit was dug underneath where the resident cannibals George and

Martha would capture their prey. And the front of the house was rigged with 1,500 tiny explosives to simulate bullet hits. Those explosives were covered over with thin balsa wood and replaced for each take, though they had only enough extra balsa wood for three takes. “We used it all,” Buckley said.

-- Patrick Kevin Day