Inspired by an unbelievable true story, Hit Man “is loosely based on a true crime article I read almost twenty years ago in the Texas Monthly,” says writer-director Richard Linklater. “The film is attempting to hit a lot of notes—comedy, noir, thriller, psychological study—while examining most of all the concept of identity and how fixed our personalities may or may not be.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Richard Linklater, the Oscar-nominated director behind Boyhood and the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight film trilogy, received a call from his friend and collaborator, Glen Powell, known to audiences for his starring roles in Top Gun: Maverick, Devotion and Hidden Figures, who asked if he had ever read the story Hit Man.
“I read it back in 2001 when the story came out,” Linklater responded. “The writer, Skip Hollandsworth, is a friend of mine. I just got kind of obsessed with it and over the years thought about it, but it never quite came together in my head as a movie because the story doesn’t seem to go anywhere.”
Powell had been introduced to Skip Hollandsworth’s ‘Texas Monthly’ article by producer Michael Costigan, he was similarly intrigued by the story and agreed that there was a compelling character in the article. When Costigan asked him who he thought would be good to explore this with him, Glen’s immediate response was Richard Linklater. Powell said, “There’s no one better at understanding the intricate nature of what makes humans human. He thinks about these things in a way that no one else I’ve ever met. So very early in the pandemic, I pitched it to Rick, and we were soon trying to figure out a way to make the story work as a movie.” It became the duo’s pandemic script project.
Powell recalls, “There was one line near the end of the article about Gary Johnson finding this woman who was trying to kill her husband but seeing the humanity in her. He looked at this person and thought, ‘This is a victim of their circumstances, and I want to help them through this thing.’ A guy who imitated humanity was in turn finding his own humanity. That relationship turned out to be key to the entire movie.”
Glen Powell as strait-laced professor, Gary Johnson, who moonlights as phony hit man for the New Orleans Police Department. Preternaturally gifted at inhabiting different guises and personalities to catch hapless people hoping to bump off their enemies, Gary descends into morally dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to one of those potential criminals, a beautiful young woman named Madison (Adria Arjona). As Madison falls for one of Gary’s hit man personas – the mysteriously sexy Ron – their steamy affair sets off a chain reaction of play acting, deception, and escalating stakes.
Tweaking the Genre
Hit Man combines elements of a variety of genres: noir, romance, thriller, heist, action, and comedy. Powell explains, “Rick has had this just incredibly bold career, having played in every sort of space, this movie is the culmination of all these different genres and characters in one movie. It was a difficult movie to pull off, and he made it look effortless.”
Linklater wondered about the central relationship when reading the ‘Texas Monthly’ article, “What would happen if a woman got back in touch with him, even went so far as to thank him? What if she asked him out? What if they got together? But he’s trapped in his hit man persona – but that’s fine because he’s finding it much more of a fun way to go through the world, particularly in relation to her. So, it becomes a body switch comedy in a weird, strange way.”
Powell also speculated, “Did he stay in character? Did she know him as a hit man? Did he come clean…whatever. And what was an interesting exploration was a guy who kind of emulates a hit man becoming a hit man. A guy who imitates humanity finding his humanity. So that was our journey.”
Commenting on their creative process, Linklater states, “you get fascinated with a story, a character, an atmosphere. Something draws you into it. In this instance, we were pretty far along when I realized we were kind of in noir-thriller territory…. It’s kind of fun to realize you are in a genre because you know you’re going to do your own twist on that genre. You’re going to kind of acknowledge the genre but still go your own way.” But HIT MAN is also comedic, “it’s oddly funny the whole way through, I like the dark comedy tone. So, it’s a comedy…about murder. What’s more fun?”
Linklater explains, “The traditional rules of the noir-thriller genre are that the poor schlub is either in prison or dead at the end because he can’t control his passion. Gary has gone down that path, he is trying to find the passion in his life. He finds it through Ron, he finds it in Madison. But should he be punished for that?” He adds, “It’s also about becoming your best self. So, there are a few dark moments in his past, but other than that he’s really a much better person at the end. That’s the thesis of the movie in some way. I want the audience to want happiness for Gary and Madison.”
Glen agrees, “It’s a fantasy at the end of the day. You want to buy into the fantasy. We made a film that is not only fun, but sexy, thrilling… this movie has it all, it even has the first sex scene in a Linklater movie – It’s a perfect date movie!”
Working with Richard Linklater
Powell recalls, “When I was 14, I worked with Rick for the first time. And at that point, I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, he’s one of the greats. I’m getting to be on a film set, a Richard Linklater film set.’ And now it’s 20 years later, and I look at Rick the same way. I just pinch myself every day that I get to be here.”
Linklater and Powell shared writing duties, collaborating in a shared document, taking it in turns or writing side by side, Powell explains “We’d be on the phone while we were writing talking out beats. There were times when he would take a section, and I would take a section. We’d do our homework separately and come back and then write it together. But, for the most part, we were working together in real time. There’s no greater joy than to be in Richard Linklater’s mind and watch the way he sees the world.”
During the writing process with Linklater and Powell researched real murder-for-hire cases, they listened to and watched hours of surveillance tape, and has all of Skip Hollandsworth’s research file for his story. To capture the way people really talk when they’re thinking about killing someone, some of those cases actually show up in the dialogue. “This is a world few people know about, we didn’t know this world, and discovering the reality of it was a joy to do it with Rick, who has such a great sense of humor. We would laugh so hard over the phone, about the stories that we found.”
Powell adds “The best part about working with Rick though is there is no ego. We’ve been eye to eye and lockstep on this thing, every step of the way. This is our fourth collaboration, but the most special part about this one is I truly feel that I have a teammate, and we’re navigating this together.”
Setting the story in New Orleans
For Linklater, New Orleans was an obvious place to set the film, “New Orleans is a big character in this movie. It kind of fits the New Orleans spirit. As in, yeah, the crime and murder rate is up, it’s a lawless kind of crazy place, but you love all the people – they’re great”
Powell recalls, “It was very interesting that when Rick and I were setting the film in New Orleans we realized there were all these natural metaphors that we already had in the script: the city built on a swamp, what people can get away with and how. Even just the way the New Orleans is broken into parishes, it’s like the personalities of all these different places live all within one city.“ He continues, “Gary is basically New Orleans in a human form. He loves New Orleans because if you’re an observer of people, there’s no better city to see all these different personalities and interests.”
GLEN POWELL – Co-writer/Producer/Actor in Hit Man, was most recently seen starring in the historical war epic Devotion. He was also recently seen starring alongside Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick. Last April, Glen starred in Richard Linklater’s animated sci-fi film Apollo 10 ½ for Netflix. Additionally, Powell star in the Sci-Fi action thriller Deputy X and Foreign Relations. Powell received CinemaCon’s 2022 Star of Tomorrow award and was honored as one of Variety’s 10actors To Watch in 2019 alongside Cynthia Erivo and Jessie Buckley. He won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his work in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. Additional past credits include Netflix’s 2018 Set It Up, Richard Linklater’s comedy Everybody Wants Some; Ryan Murphy’s hit series “Scream Queens”; as well as the final installment of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. He also voiced a role on Netflix’s animated adventure series “Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous” from Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, and Colin Trevorrow.
RICHARD LINKLATER – Director/Writer/Producer – a five-time Oscar nominee, two-time Golden Globe winner, two-time Bafta winner who has directed 23 feature length films. His most recent credits include Boyhood (2014), Everybody Wants Some (2016), Last Flag Flying (2017) and“Where’d You Go Bernadette? (2019), Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood (2022) and Hit Man (2023). He also serves as the Artistic Director for the Austin Film Society, which he founded in 1985 to showcase films from around the world that were not typically shown in Austin. The Austin Film Society operates a repertory theater, manages a film studio and has given out over $2,200,000 in grants to Texas filmmakers since 1996.
