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FunTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 My name is Richard Linklater, my film is "Hitman"
00:07 and it's a kind of true story.
00:11 Takes place in New Orleans,
00:13 about a college instructor who kind of doubles as a,
00:18 you know, works undercover,
00:21 mostly posing as a hitman
00:22 for people who want to bump off people.
00:24 So it's a dark, dark romantic comedy, I guess.
00:27 It's based on an article in "Texas Monthly" from 2001,
00:30 something I read a long time ago.
00:33 So, I don't know, kind of a unique character,
00:36 stayed with me over the years.
00:39 And then Glenn Powell and I got together
00:41 and worked on the script.
00:44 That's where it originated.
00:48 Well, I mean, it's always such a elusive thing.
00:54 Who's a character, what's a story or situation
00:56 that would make you want to make a film, you know?
00:58 Of all the stories and fiction and nonfiction
01:01 that come at us all the time, why that?
01:04 So that's one of those, I ask myself,
01:05 it's like, why did I find that character so interesting?
01:08 So something funny about that situation.
01:11 I don't know, it's always something,
01:12 is something worth exploring for years of your life
01:14 and putting in all the time and effort.
01:15 So it's a hard question to answer,
01:18 other than, I guess I was just compelled
01:20 by the character and the underlying kind of situation
01:26 that is this movie.
01:29 So it felt like something that would be worth exploring
01:31 and kind of darkly funny and strange.
01:35 Glenn Powell plays a guy named Gary at his core.
01:40 He's just kind of an introverted,
01:43 thoughtful college instructor, married once,
01:46 loves his cats, a birdwatcher,
01:48 kind of a nondescript guy.
01:51 But in his undercover operation,
01:54 he has to adopt these personas.
01:56 And Glenn just totally knocks it out of the park with this,
02:00 playing these different characters.
02:01 And he kind of lands on this one character
02:03 to go meet this young woman
02:05 who's kind of wants to bump off her husband.
02:09 This all really happened.
02:10 But he plays more of a swaggering guy.
02:13 And he talks her into not actually doing it.
02:17 He has some compassion for her.
02:18 And then later she calls him up
02:20 or just gets in touch with him,
02:22 kind of to thank him for realigning her life.
02:25 But then he realizes he's to be with her
02:28 or to spend any time.
02:29 She knows him as that hit man.
02:31 So he's kind of trapped in that persona.
02:33 Not trapped, he sort of embraces it, enjoys it.
02:36 He kind of thinks he likes that guy more than himself.
02:39 So he slowly becomes that character.
02:41 So the whole thing is a,
02:42 it's kind of an examination of self,
02:47 the idea of, are you who we think we are?
02:52 Is the self mutable?
02:55 Are we fixed?
02:57 What does it even mean?
03:00 Notions of identity are pretty,
03:04 I don't know, it's pretty unstable these days.
03:08 I would say it makes it an interesting subject to take on,
03:11 even in the kind of comedic form.
03:14 But Glenn really went to town with that,
03:17 had fun with him.
03:18 Audria Arjona, I just met her and was like,
03:22 okay, that's Madison.
03:23 You just meet someone just vivacious,
03:26 smart, funny, sexy, all those things.
03:29 And she and Glenn got together and it was like,
03:31 oh my God, chemistry.
03:33 You can't kind of create that.
03:35 It either is there or it isn't in between them.
03:37 It was like, I remember my editor calling me up
03:41 as we were shooting, just looking at dailies
03:43 and piecing footage together.
03:45 Initially says, oh my God,
03:47 I think the screen's gonna melt or something.
03:48 I was like, good, I feel it, I feel it.
03:51 These two are really lighting it up.
03:54 But Audria is just, she's so great.
03:58 I don't know, she really became our,
04:02 even though Glenn and I worked on the script together,
04:04 she came aboard and became our third collaborator.
04:07 We rehearsed a lot and she really took that character
04:10 in a special place.
04:12 And without her, we don't really have a movie.
04:14 She's the secret sauce that makes it all work.
04:17 We don't really know what makes Madison tick
04:19 'cause the movie is relentlessly from Gary's point of view.
04:24 So we do that as a narrative device.
04:26 You don't really know what she's doing
04:28 when he's not around, you don't know.
04:29 So that makes her kind of mysterious.
04:31 We don't know her motivations a lot.
04:33 Audria had it all inside.
04:34 She knew, kind of, she had it all figured out.
04:37 I couldn't ask a question about the character
04:39 that she hadn't already,
04:41 that Audria hadn't already kind of thought through
04:44 and determined.
04:45 And I was very impressed with her thoroughness
04:47 and groundedness in this character
04:50 who's really out there.
04:51 I mean, the character's doing some things that you would,
04:54 (laughs)
04:55 in any other movie, any other person,
04:57 you go, "Okay, that's really questionable.
04:59 "That's pretty, you know, perhaps illegal behavior."
05:04 But I don't know, it's all fun.
05:07 And yeah, she really took it somewhere.
05:11 I mean, I think people think they're the hitmen in the world
05:13 that you can hire to kill some people.
05:15 It's a myth, it's a pop culture myth.
05:18 But I think we're glad that we have law enforcement.
05:21 And when someone's shooting their mouth off
05:22 about wanting to murder someone or have someone murdered,
05:26 that the word tends to get back to homicide.
05:29 And they tend to send someone out to record you doing that.
05:32 And they tend to put you away.
05:33 So I'm kind of glad of that.
05:35 I think we all should be.
05:37 But you know, you never see it the other way around.
05:39 Like a hitman was arrested today in New York.
05:41 He looks like he has killed nine people.
05:43 You never hear like, "Oh, you know, this guy was found dead.
05:48 "We think it's a hitman who professionals are involved."
05:50 It's just a myth, it doesn't exist.
05:53 But the movie's really a deconstruction
05:55 of the hitman myth, you know?
05:58 So seen from an undercover perspective.
06:01 So, I mean, there are gangs and there's drug cartels.
06:05 There's definitely killings, I'm not saying that.
06:08 But the retail hitman that you can just buy it
06:11 from someone you don't know, have no affiliation,
06:13 they don't have any affiliation, you can pay them.
06:16 I mean, that's what's kind of ludicrous.
06:19 And yet, you know, we wanna believe it so bad, you know?
06:24 (dramatic music)
06:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]