Yahoo News Richard Linklater On ‘Hit Man’ Premiering In Venice, Cinema’s “Existential Threat”, And Lessons Learned Over 30 Years Of Filmmaking
On its surface, a comedy about a college professor who becomes a phony hitman for the police department to catch criminals hoping to whack a stubborn spouse or bothersome business associate might seem an odd fit for a European festival noted for heavy dramas and extended runtimes. It helps, of course, that Hit Man, which premieres at Venice Film Festival this evening, is directed by Richard Linklater, a noted master of independent filmmaking for more than 30 years, and that initial reactions to it have been universally effusive.
Linklater was in a reflective mood when I met him on the morning of the film’s premiere, perhaps buoyed by word from the previous evening’s press and industry screenings of the film.
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Hit Man was a project Linklater had mused on for years, he told me, from the moment he first read Texas Monthly’s 2001 article about Gary Johnson, who had helped Houston police catch would-be criminals seeking a hitman’s services. But he hadn’t seen a path towards a satisfying feature film plot until lead actor Glen Powell resurfaced the story in 2019, and suggested embellishing a fictionalized “what if” around a particular case of Johnson’s: a woman he met who asked for his help escaping her abusive husband. As Johnson listened to her tell the story of her abuse, instead of allowing her to press ahead with her murderous plot and an inevitable arrest, he suggested that she seek a less criminal route out of the marriage, connecting her with social services and a therapist.
In the film, this true tale becomes the jumping-off point for an escalating affair between Johnson and the woman, Madison, played by Adria Arjona, allowing the movie to build to a satisfying crescendo. And when Arjona came aboard, she, too, became part of a leisurely creative process, crafting a journey and identity for their characters in a typically Linklaterian collaboration.
The film is for sale here in Venice, and all indications are that a deal for this accessible, hilarious, and well-crafted larger-than-life tale feels inevitable. Still, the industry seas are choppy, and as Linklater and I talked, the conversation almost inevitably turned toward the survival of independent cinema in the content era, as the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes press for much-needed change. Linklater is a filmmaker who has seen it all, so who better to take the temperature of the current moment?
DEADLINE: Give me a sense of the background here; what led to the film that Hit Man has become?
RICHARD LINKLATER: There are really two levels. I read Skip Hollandsworth’s article in 2001, and I thought about it over the years. I talked to him about it. There were other people, too, floating through the idea that there was a big movie here, somewhere. But it wasn’t until Glen [Powell] called me during the pandemic that it really started to become a thing. He said, “There’s this article about a hitman,” and I said, “Glen, I read that article when you were still in diapers.” [Laughs].
I told him the problem with it was that it’s really just the same thing throughout: Gary Johnson going out and catching people. Not much drama happens. But I give him credit for saying, “What if we loosen up the facts?” I’ve always been such a stickler for the facts; telling real stories exactly as they happened. Loosening up turned it into this fun thing with a fun character at the center of it. After he lets Madison off the hook, which really happened, the film becomes more fantastical.
And doing that deepened the whole concept of the movie, that this was about the notion of self-identity. Gary becomes trapped by his own choices in a way. He’s trapped in an identity that he prefers. Doesn’t that feel like it’s something that’s in the air right now, that identity—the way we identify—is very unstable?
DEADLINE: Absolutely.
LINKLATER: It can be whatever you want it to be. Truth can be whatever. I don’t know if it’s the virtual-ness of our era, but we’re definitely in something new. Politically, sexually… everything’s kind of up for grabs. This isn’t that specifically, but it’s the idea of that.
And when you meet the real Gary [who passed away in 2022], who I got to know, he was a teacher of psychology. He was a true Jungian, Zen Buddhist kind of guy who thought deeply about so much. It was interesting that he was a teacher because that also gave me the opportunity to have him lecture to us and say some things [laughs].
DEADLINE: We enjoy the lectures, and we also get vignettes of him meeting up with other would-be clients. Desperate people resorting to desperate acts, believing fully in the concept of Gary as a hitman, who shows up in a million disguises. Those must have been fun to write and—pardon the pun—execute.
LINKLATER: Very much so. A lot of those vignettes are based on real people. We had a lot of research, a lot of material to draw from, that were just the facts of the people Gary met. There’s a rich society lady, a teenage boy who tries to pay in pennies and video games, and stuff like that, which Gary really came across. Glen went to town with that, especially with the disguises and the voices. Gary did do a little bit of that, but not to that fun a degree—I don’t think he had the budget to be working with wigs and prosthetic make-up.
DEADLINE: You wrote the movie with Glen. How did that work?
LINKLATER: It didn’t start off that way. It was like, OK, I’m the writer/director, he’s the actor, let’s make a movie. But we were working on the phone during the pandemic. I’m in my library and he was with his family, or traveling for work. We just talked and talked. At some point, I just said, “You know what? We’re already working on this together. I’m going to start sending you pages, and you’re going to send them back to me.” It felt natural.
I prefer that approach too when the whole movie is hinged on a performance. And when Adria came aboard, she jumped into that process too. We started working on it together as a trio, and that’s just how I like to try and make it work.
DEADLINE: That was very much the case with the Before series… What you’re describing is a leisurely creative process, which seems to be your preferred approach; let it percolate, and when it’s ready, shoot it. But I do wonder whether that approach has become more challenging as the industry has turned over the past decade or so. Is it harder to work like that than it once was?
LINKLATER: Well, I do have projects where I go, “It’s time,” and the industry says, “No, it isn’t. We aren’t financing that.” My timing and the industry’s timing aren’t always in sync [laughs].
Look, it has never been easy. This film was no exception. Glen and I wrote it on spec; we didn’t have a corporate parent. We just did it. We set out to write a good script, in the hope we might get to do it. And all it takes is one entity prepared to take that leap, but we’re still lucky to have got it done.
DEADLINE: The good news is those entities are clearly still out there because sometimes I wonder.
LINKLATER: Yeah, it’s definitely different [than it used to be]. I’ve made films where I go, “OK, if this had been the ’90s, a studio would have made this.” Things are shifting, and sometimes you feel like you’re under some kind of existential threat. Does indie film even work anymore?
DEADLINE: That’s the question I’ve come here to ask you!
LINKLATER: [Laughs] I really wonder. What place does film have in our fractured culture right now? To me, that’s the deeper crisis; it isn’t just film, it’s modern life. Does anyone really care about anything enough to support it, including democracy? Let’s start with that. Where does it fit economically? Is there a new model that’s negating the old, but not replacing it with anything stable, like typical newsrooms going out of business and being replaced by ad-based clickbait? Is that a step forward? I don’t think so. It’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for writers, nor for the community, so why are we doing it?
You can say that about the film industry too. Tech companies came in, and we went from film being art, with value, to it becoming content that you click on. But at the end of the day, nobody’s happy with that arrangement. Even the tech people are screaming that they’re losing billions of dollars. It’s like, this is their world that we adapted to and they’re not happy? They’re the monolithic overlords who put everyone else out of business!
And as our industry has chugged along, really, nobody’s been happy. But, like a good democracy, even if everyone’s a little pissed off, it’s still all moving forward. That we can live with. But not anymore. It has stopped. It’s not working, nobody’s making money, and nobody’s happy.
You think, maybe we should retrench and look at what worked before. Is it against the law to try to craft a greatest hits of the past and go back to a paradigm that used to work? Is that so bad? What was that company whose motto was, “Move fast and break things”? Yeah, well that’s where we are. It’s broken. Thanks. I hope your stock price went up a bunch and that you made a lot of money that you selfishly hoarded in some offshore account. Go create a village for yourself in New Zealand.
It’s such a trainwreck because the personalities behind it are these libertarian, selfish guys who just have the wrong mindset. The times require a more cooperative understanding. We need a bolder mindset to solve 21st Century problems. Instead, we’ve got a hands-off, libertarian, selfish model that just isn’t working for the world.
DEADLINE: Rather than fix it, they’re poking one another on social media about setting up a cage fight.
LINKLATER: [Laughs]. That fits the theme. It’s a perfect encapsulation of everything you need to know about today. We had a reality TV president, now we have billionaire cage fights. When I was a kid, there were only a few rich people you knew about. Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty… completely blank, mysterious guys who you never heard anything about. Some oil guys with a little more class, who were selfish and did their own thing, but they weren’t trying to restructure the way every business on the planet works.
DEADLINE: Do you look at YouTube at all?
LINKLATER: I don’t know how you can avoid it. When you go online, it pops up. It’s an amazing tool. You’re sitting there talking to someone about some athlete you remember at the 1972 Olympic Games, and two seconds later you can watch that race on your phone. That’s magic.
But I saw Alex Winter’s film, The YouTube Effect. It’s worth watching.
DEADLINE: I have been meaning to see that. I only bring it up because I find it fascinating that you have this democratized platform where any niche interest can be catered to—that’s great—but curiously, as creators get bigger and bigger, the videos start to center on their new mega-mansions and their new lime-green Lamborghinis. And rather than that stuff putting off their audience, their view counts go even more stratospheric. We’re still being sold the unachievable dream and we lap it up.
LINKLATER: It’s horrible. In the past 10, 15 years, as I’ve been auditioning actors, I noticed people coming in for auditions and you look at their resume and there’s nothing on it beyond, “Oh, they’ve got their own YouTube channel,” or, “They’ve got this many millions of TikTok subscribers.” Great, but are they actors? “No, but they’ve got so many followers.” So, they’re asking me to put them in a movie, and then you look at this stuff and it’s horrible. They haven’t studied acting, they’re just big personalities. They all seem nice enough, but it’s like all they’re doing is trying to make other people envious of their rich lifestyles. It’s a capitalist, consumerist death spiral.
DEADLINE: And it created itself.
LINKLATER: Oh, completely. Movies created movie stars. TV created TV stars. And social media created social media stars. I guess it’s 100% predictable. But at least when we were creating TV and movie stars, they were really funny, or great at acting, or had some real, actual skillset that made them popular. Social media stars are just like the kids you went to high school with who were just narcissistic and self-absorbed.
And you can’t escape it. I mean, I have two 19-year-olds, and they’re both wonderful, smart, and politically engaged. But I’m like, “Quit looking at that s—t and read a book! This is not filling up your soul!” [Laughs]. TikTok is coming for you, and it’s coming hard. It’s like we’ve abdicated our brains to this stuff.
DEADLINE: I’m really sorry for leading us down this garden path. It’s not even 10 AM and I feel like I’ve ruined your day.
LINKLATER: It’s a little early in the morning for it [laughs]. But we’re all talking about it, and it’s important to at least acknowledge it. That’s what Alex’s film is all about, really, so I highly recommend it.
DEADLINE: I will definitely seek it out. But that’s the other thing, which is the great promise of streaming was—
LINKLATER: Everything’s available. Except for what you want to see.
DEADLINE: Yes!
LINKLATER: I saw a clip recently from Truffaut’s Day for Night, which is one of the great movies about making movies. I wanted to see it again, and it can’t be found anywhere. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, but it’s like, nah, not available. So, what is available? Thousands of titles I’ve never heard of, from nowhere. Filler. Just filler.
There are times where I’m like, “Is this a sign of depression? If I’m clicking on all this stuff and I’m not excited about any of it, does that mean I’m depressed?” [Laughs]. I have to go, “No, I just don’t want to see another cooking show.”
DEADLINE: Where do you put the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in that context, then?
LINKLATER: It’s definitely an offshoot of that world and a response to what we’ve been talking about. Hey, can we just go back? Can we take a step back to when it used to work for everyone? We’re on the shoulders of people who went on strike 60 years ago and finally worked it out. As with actors, it used to be, “Sorry, you did the thing, and you won’t ever get paid for it again.” And our guilds said, “Give us just a little piece of that pie.” They mandated this little residual that made life so much more predictable and better for so many people, and [now] they want to take that away. And I mean, it’s Hollywood anyway, so the funny accounting has always existed, but the per unit residual was hard fought, and that’s real.
I’m in the Writers’ Guild and I’m on strike. The only time I ever get a check is when it comes through the Guild for the residual. You never get profit. But that residual check is real.
DEADLINE: Do you wonder if streamers are reluctant to disclose data because it’s smaller than we might expect? It’s not a choice of three or four movies on a weekend at the multiplex anymore, it’s hundreds of new shows and new movies every week. Is anybody watching?
LINKLATER: But if not, then why are they paying for it? We just don’t know. “The algorithm will tell us.” That’s what they say. If you ask them a question, they’ll say, “The algorithm. The algorithm.”
But even more frightening is the heads of all studios are excited about AI. You ask them about the downsides of it and they’ll still say, “The algorithm will let us know.” They’ve put all their faith in the algorithms.
I think about my 30-year career. Dazed and Confused was a studio movie. The head of Universal gave this punk kid $6 million and said, “Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a hit, maybe it won’t.” In that same year, they had the big Tom Cruise movie, they had an action movie, they had some comedies, they had some family dramas. They had 25 movies. They released a film every couple of weeks, some really big, some really small, and they had what was called a slate. Every studio had its slate.
Since that moment in the ’90s, I’ve seen every studio brush that all away to just those big movies. It became so expensive to release a film, so at some point, they had to say, “If we make a movie for $6 million it’s going to cost another $20 million just to let anyone know we made it.” It got so expensive to penetrate the psyche of an individual who’s so distracted that there’s no room. So now it’s three huge movies, and at least one of them has got to make a billion dollars. Anything else is not the business these guys are in. Now, the marketing guys are greenlighting the movies by going, “Yes, we can sell that.” They don’t have the huge bombs they used to, so it’s sort of market-proof. “We don’t care about reviews, we can sell this preexisting franchise.”
DEADLINE: What you’re describing is also the disruption of a filmmaker’s path. The trajectory of a career.
LINKLATER: I don’t know how it happens anymore. You come out of Sundance with your first film—and I have all these young filmmaker friends who are making their first movies—and they’re like, “What’s next?” I have to go, “I don’t know. Maybe the best thing you can do is a series?”
You used to have an incremental climb; that’s what I did with Slacker, then Dazed and Confused. The budgets got a little bigger, and no one held you to account. The goal, now, is to get out of Sundance and then get hired to do Spider-Man. Whereas when I did it in the ’90s, everyone would have said you were selling out. I mean, I can show you reviews of Before Sunrise, which was a smaller budget than Dazed and Confused, but it was distributed by Columbia Pictures, and people were saying, “Oh, he’s sold out. He’s made a studio film with a movie star.” Remember when the Coens did Hudsucker? Folks were like, “What the f—k is this? It’s too big! We hate it!” No, it’s a great movie. F—k you.
DEADLINE: If only it were so easy to be disappointed that you got Before Sunrise and The Hudsucker Proxy.
LINKLATER: [Laughs]. Yeah, we were in such trouble for selling out. But now, there’s no other game in town. It’s a good thing if you’re able to align yourself with a franchise.
DEADLINE: It feels like those directors who jump straight from Sundance to superhero are being set up to fail.
LINKLATER: It’s not the proper place in their development. I was working for more than 10 years before I ever did a project that came from outside me, which was School of Rock. Only by then did I feel confident I could make a good film out of it. “I think I know what I’m doing here.” I had done that many films by then to feel I could shield myself from any studio pressures, which fortunately didn’t materialize. If I had done that as my second film, I don’t know what I would have done.
Tarkovsky says if you take one step off your path—whatever your desired path is for your career—and you make a film that isn’t in your heart, it takes two or three films to get back there. And now, I don’t think they offer you those two or three films. It’s tough to curate your own life in this world today.
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