Director and Stars Discuss Netflix Hit
Jun 24, 2024
Directed by Richard Linklater, from a script adapted by the award-winning filmmaker and star Glen Powell, Hit Man was one of the best movies to land at the Venice Film Festival last year — and certainly the most purely enjoyable. Nine months later, it’s on Netflix, even as its banter and goosing, crowd-pleasing scenes cry out for a communal viewing experience. (It’s also in some theaters, in limited fashion, if you can find it.)
An amusingly slippery, multi-layered movie that takes a “true story” — or the life of a real person, at least — and then spins it off into a very fun romantic dark comedy and fizzy character study, Hit Man stars Powell as Gary Johnson, a technologically savvy college professor who moonlights with the New Orleans Police Department, assisting them on undercover sting operations in which they bust people trying to hire a contract killer to commit murder for them.
When Gary gets thrust into actually posing as a for-hire assassin, he quickly ascertains that every person has, in their own mind, a particular vision of what an assassin looks and talks like. When posing as slick killer “Ron,” Gary meets up with Madison Masters (Adria Arjona), a woman living in fear of her controlling and abusive ex-husband. Finding himself attracted to Madison, Gary talks her out of murder, and in short order he finds himself in an unlikely relationship, all while still operating under the guise of this cocky “Ron” persona. Of course, further complications ensue.
Recently, during a special virtual international press conference, Linklater and his stars took the time to share their recollections and feelings about making the movie. A few highlights from the conversation are excerpted below, edited for both clarity and length.
Question: This film is an adaptation of a magazine article. What did you see in that material, cinematically, that inspired you to adapt it?
Glen Powell: It was early on in the pandemic and I stumbled upon this article in “Texas Monthly” by Skip Hollingsworth. And, immediately, it was so clear there was such a compelling character there. I mean, if you look at the real-life Gary Johnson, he was a psychology professor who actually moonlighted with the police department, did AV equipment, was a ornithologist, you know, a Zen Buddhist. I knew this was just such an incredible character piece, but I didn’t really know where it went. All I knew is that there was like a fascinating guy here. They called him the Laurence Olivier of fake hit men, because he approached the job differently. Instead of just becoming the hit man for hire across from someone who is trying to kill their husband or their wife or their business partner, he embodied their fantasy of what a fake hit man is — because hit men don’t really exist. So he took this skillset to a whole new level and started putting on these disguises and all these different things. I just thought it was a fascinating idea. So I was like, who’s the best person on the planet with character, you know? Already, these ideas of identity were baked into the way the character thought, and the way he moved through the life. So I called up Rick and I said, “You know, I just read this amazing article called “Hit Man,” and Rick took a beat ad he said, “Yeah, I read that article when you were in seventh grade.” (laughs)
Richard Linklater: I think I might’ve said when you were in diapers.
Glen Powell: And if we were in the same room, he would’ve patted me on the head.
Richard Linklater: (laughs) No, no. I was so excited to get this call from Glen, because that story had been kicking around in my head. I had talked to Skip, I had had a couple meetings on it over the years, but it didn’t really work as a film, because there was this repetition. It didn’t really go anywhere. So I told this to Glen. I said, “Yeah, I don’t think it really works.” And he said, “Well, let’s talk about it.” It was the pandemic, and what else are we gonna do? (laughs) So what we did every day for a while is we would just have hours of conversations. And Glen kind of loosened the log jam I was in. He said, “Well, what if we deviate? You know, why does he have to stick to the facts?” So once that floodgate opened, we were off to the races. We just started having these great ideas. And you know, the last two-thirds of the movie kind of comes out of that. The (different) genres kick in, and it becomes this thrill ride, you know? But it was grounded in that reality that Glen described, that reality of Gary Johnson’s life.
Question: Adria, how did you come on board?
Adria Arjona: I first met Rick over Zoom, and he really is one of my favorite filmmakers. I always aspired to be an actress in one of Rick’s movies. It always feels like his characters are saying words for the first time, and it feels so fresh. I’ve always just found (his films) so beautifully crafted. So when I got on a Zoom with him, I was pretty nervous because all I wanted to do was just to work with him. And we hit it off. I was encountered with this egoless man who was really interested in picking my brain and wanting to know what I thought of Madison. And that was really refreshing. That doesn’t happen often.
Question: Madison is marked by some incredible dichotomies. She is likable, and extremely alluring, but there’s obviously this dark side too, a bit of femme fatal in her. What was it like, tapping into those dualities?
Adria Arjona: You mentioned the femme fatal, which is interesting because it keeps coming up. And I think what we were really interested in the rehearsal was the idea of the femme fatal. I think that’s what Madison is sort of playing, actually. She’s a woman that’s coming from a traumatic relationship, this weird kind of dark relationship, and she’s desperate for reinvention. And I think we all do that in life, we’re all always trying to find sort of a different version of ourselves. So she’s sort of playing that. She’s kind of looking at Ron and going, what would Ron like? As a woman, she’s kind of saying, what would a bad boy like Ron want in a woman? So I don’t see Madison as a femme fatal. I see a woman trying to play the illusion of a femme fatal, and that was really fun to play with. I just had so much fun sort of crafting that with (both Richard and Glen), and it felt a little bit more grounded. That was something I could do. I wasn’t interested in just being the femme fatal.
Question: It’s difficult to think about this movie being screened at home, because there is a certain sequence that is just such a communal, crowd-pleasing moment. I think you know the one I’m talking about, the text improv scene. There are so many layers of acting going on there — you as actors are playing characters, and those characters are pretending to play someone else. What do each of you have to say about that scene?
Glen Powell: I’ll talk about the writing process real quick. The interesting part is that when Rick and I were writing that scene, we knew that we had to put Gary in an impossible place, you know? With any good thriller, you sort of write your character into a corner and really have to figure out a way to get him out. I think we had a lot of different iterations of how that could work. And that was really the “team sport” mentality here, really just continuing to throw rocks at what’s the best version of this scene and what’s really gonna make it tick. And I think the great breakthrough that we had was really putting the ultimate pressure cooker around these two. And what we talked about is, you know, that it’s a makeup scene. You know, they just broke up. They’re coming back together, but they’re all on different pages. But this makeup scene is different because at the heart of it is their sort of love language, which is role play. And so the fun part about it is it’s really the wish fulfillment of the movie, in addition to all the layers of characters going on, which obviously makes it complicated. It also allows the audience to re-fall in love with the reason they fell in love with them in the first place.
Adria Arjona: We spoke about that scene so much between the three of us. And like you said, it was that scene that we just never gave up on. There were so many different iterations of how we might do it. There was, like, note cards at some point. And then we started sort of getting the feeling of like, “Oh wait, it’s gonna be a phone. And then, you know, we will have the questions.” But I already sort of knew the question. So there was an element of surprise that I was like, “Oh, I wonder if that will come, right?” Because I’m acting within acting. And there was also this voice acting that we were kind of doing. And that’s something that was really concerning for me, for it to sound believable to the people (listening) in the van. So you had all these questions, and everything was so locked in in rehearsal. For the day that we filmed it, it felt like we had this perfect choreography. We had this dance so locked down, but we sort of hadn’t heard the music yet. So when we first heard that first action, all of a sudden I start seeing Glen kind of guide me through this scene in such a seamless way. And my job really was to follow his lead, as much as I could. It was one of those scenes where we didn’t stop looking at each other. I looked at every gesture that he did, and it triggered something in me. So I feel like it’s a scene where teamwork was so important and so crucial. I don’t think I’ve done that before in any movie. You aspire to be the best listener you can. I mean, that’s what acting is all about. But everyone has their own motives, you’re playing your own characters. For this scene, we had to be symbiotic for it to work. And it was also so much fun. We didn’t really shoot it for that long because we rehearsed it and talked about it so much.
Richard Linklater: Yeah, we had a short schedule. We shot for, I don’t know, a few hours.
Adria Arjona: A few hours, which is so crazy when you watch the movie. And I think that says a lot about the way that Rick works, and his process. Everything is sort of locked down in rehearsal. So by the time that you’re on set, there’s no doubt, there’s no figuring things out — you know exactly what you’re doing. And for me, it was so refreshing because I could go to sleep every day at peace that we did what we set out to do. I wish more people would work like that. I miss it.
Richard Linklater: I was gonna say that scene, it hits me. It’s a good example of how we were never complacent, even on the page and in the rehearsal. It’s a good example of, you know, we get to what we think is perfection or good enough, and we just keep going — there’s gonna be a new layer revealed, we’re gonna find some new gesture, we’re gonna have a new good idea. So you don’t stop and get complacent. I think in movies, it’s all about craft. And I’m not worried that we’re gonna leave the performance in the rehearsal stage. That’s not what professionals do. So we got there and we kept going and we kept going, until the very end. And that was it.
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