Richard Linklater on Hit Man: ‘Everybody wants to escape themselves’ (2024)

Feature

7June 2024

The director ofDazed and Confusedis talking to Dazed and Confused. “I’ve always felt a kindred spirit to the magazine,” says Richard Linklater during a trip to London. “Which comes top of the Google search, the movie or the magazine?”

Such is the vastness of his filmography, Linklater is known for more than creating one of the most iconic teen movies of all time. To many, the 63-year-old filmmaker is a humanist who dissects the ups and downs of adult relationships (Before Sunrise,Before Sunset,Before Midnight); he’s cinema’s greatest manipulator of time (Boyhoodwas shot over 12 years, whileMerrily We Roll Along, starring Paul Mescal, will take two decades to complete); he does animation (A Scanner Darkly,Waking Life); he does stoner classics (Slacker,SubUrbia); and, if he feels like it, he does crowd-pleasing comedies (Everybody Wants Some!!,School of Rock).

Linklater, then, knows about transformations, and his newest film,Hit Man, doubles down on the concept that we’re all chameleons. Starring Glen Powell, the ultra-dark romcom follows Gary Johnson, an undercover police officer who pretends to be an assassin-for-hire. Gary’s task is to record potential clients trying to buy his murderous services on a microphone. Often, it involves a costume or gluing hair to his face; to his colleagues, he’s their “Daniel Day”. The resulting escapades aren’t just laugh-out-loud funny, they’re clap-out-loud impressive. At Venice, word got out that people would start applauding during one specific scene – and the trend has persisted. I witnessed the clapping myself at the London Film Festival.

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“[The mid-film applause] is at every screening of a significant audience,” says Linklater. “It’s like in a stage production when they finish a song.” The relevant scene involves Gary and his love interest, Maddy (Adria Arjona), roleplaying for eavesdroppers. “You applaud with a live performance, and here there’s a performance within a performance. It’s three levels of acting going on. Then there’s a gap when they quit talking, he winks at her, and he leaves – that’s the bow. You have permission to go, ‘Good job!’”

Maddy, by then, has entered Gary’s life as the ultimate forbidden work crush. Wishing that someone would eradicate her husband, Maddy reveals to Gary that she’s a victim of violence; Gary not only botches the sting to spare Maddy a prison sentence, he embarks on a secret affair. Except, to Maddy, it’s not Gary – it’s his persona, Ron, a smooth, sexy charmer who kills for a living. While Powell tends to play smooth, sexy charmers anyway, the film introduces Gary as a nerdy, glasses-wearing loner who lives with two cats named Id and Ego. However, as Ron, Gary feels alive, desirable, and horny enough to overlook the fact that Maddy is capable of murder.

While Powell, who cowroteHit Manwith Linklater, had a small role in the director’s 2006 movieFast Food Nation, he came to prominence as the mouthy jock Finn inEverybody Wants Some!!In that sports comedy, Finn adorned costumes to seduce punk rockers, theatre geeks, country music fans, and so on. I suggest to Linklater thatHit Manexplores similar themes but ups the stakes from getting laid to getting waylaid.

“You’re the only person who’s put that together,” says Linklater. “Maybe people don’t knowEverybody Wants Some!!, but there’s Glen Powell himself in it explaining how for adaptive purposes they’re trying on different wardrobes. You know, we’re always adapting to our social conditions to fit in. You dress different when going out with friends than visiting grandparents... We have dress-up parties and costume balls. It’s wish-fulfilment. Everyone would like to escape themselves.” But to do it like Gary, don’t we need the movie-star charisma of Glen Powell? “But the real Gary changed his appearance regularly!”

WhileHit Manmay seem ludicrous, it’s adapted from a 2001 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, the same journalist whose writing inspiredBernie. In fact, many of the movie’s quirkier elements really did happen, such as Gary’s part-time job as a philosophy teacher whose classes offer meta-commentary in between scenes. In real life, though, Gary didn’t date Maddy. “We embellished the story,” says Linklater. “It became more of a study of identity and self.”

Despite its genre elements,Hit Manis often two characters chatting at a table. It’s an action movie without traditional action; an assassin story in a universe where assassins don’t exist. Still, it’s full of tension, simply through plot mechanics. “There’s comedy,” says Linklater, “but it also takes you to the edge of your seat, like, ‘Oh, sh*t, this could go bad!’ If you’re invested in this couple, you’re worried they might not survive this.”

“You dress different when going out with friends than visiting grandparents... We have dress-up parties and costume balls. It’s wish-fulfilment. Everyone would like to escape themselves” – Richard Linklater

At Venice,Hit Manwas recognised as a guaranteed crowdpleaser, the kind that theatres sorely need in a post-pandemic landscape. However, a streaming service won the bidding war. “Netflix just seemed to like it more than everybody else,” says Linklater. “In a parallel world, some studio picked it up, and it’d be playing on screens everywhere. But that’s not their business.” He adds, “None of us are complaining. It’s in theatres now. Indie films play in theatres so briefly, anyway. When I started, my films might play for a year at midnight. A year! Now you just take what you can get theatrically.”

Linklater claims he never truly knows whether a movie will be a hit or not. In 2017,Last Flag Flyingbarely touched the zeitgeist, while 2019’sWhere’d You Go, Bernadette?didn’t get a UK release despite starring Cate Blanchett. “You put as much heart and soul into the ones that no one sees as the ones that people do see. I like it when someone appreciates a film that others don’t care much about, because I care about all of them.” I reveal that I’ve seenMe and Orson Wellesfive times. “That andBerniewere fun comedies that fell onto hard times. There was no support. If Ihad to watch one on my own films right now, I’d doMe and Orson Welles.”

Recently, Linklater divulged that he was asked to direct another hitman comedy,Grosse Point Blank. “I should never have said that,” he admits, looking sheepish. “It’s not fair to the people who did it.” When Linklater declines to reveal other examples, I bring up the timeRuben Östlundtold me he tried to directPassengers, the big-budget sci-fi starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. “Keanu and I talked aboutPassengers!” Linklater exclaims. “Keanu developed that. There’s a parallel world out there.”

Instead, Linklater’s space movie ended up beingApollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood, an animated feature that skipped cinemas and went straight to Netflix in 2022. In interviews, Linklater was publicly critical of Netflix, tellingAssociated Press, “And then one day it showed up on a platform with no fanfare. It’s always kind of sad when you realise even your friends don’t know your film is out.”

Now, though, Linklater tells me, “The animation division had a kind of disconnect with Netflix proper. I was very happy to get that film made, but it didn’t get any kind of marketing. WhereasHit Manis coming with posters and billboards. They’re not dumping it. You can tell that Netflix is going, ‘We want everybody to see this.’” I note that the trailer is unashamedly highlighting the raunchier elements. Laughing, he says, “People are always up for a sexy movie.”

Otherwise, Linklater has already wrapped his next movie,Nouvelle Vague, a black-and-white retelling of how Jean-Luc Godard shotBreathless. “It’s my homage to the French New Wave,” he says. “It’s like with history – you have to remind people it’s cool to be in love with cinema, and to have that be your life.”

Hit Manis out in cinemas now, and will stream on Netflix from June 7