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It makes perfect sense that filmmaker Richard Linklater and actor Glen Powell found each other. Powell hails from Linklater country — Austin, Texas — and has the movie-star looks and Texan swagger that the director’s always been drawn to (see: Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke). In the new film Hit Man, directed by Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Powell, the actor delivers his most charismatic turn yet as Gary Johnson, a university professor who moonlights as an undercover cop posing as a hitman, arresting the lost souls who hire him. When he falls for one of his prospective clients (Adria Arjona), things get messy.
The film, which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival and is still seeking distribution, is based on the Texas Monthly story of the same name by Skip Hollandsworth. Linklater came across “Hit Man” over a decade ago, even before he’d read the Hollandsworth yarn “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas,” which inspired his Bernie. But it was Powell who brought the story back to him in the spring of 2020, just as the pandemic had taken hold, the filmmaker revealed during its Venice press conference. (Powell and Arjona could not attend due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.)
When Rolling Stone asked Linklater about his muse/collaborator Powell, and how he compared to his longtime collaborator McConaughey, who was famously when he got into a drunken argument at a hotel bar in Austin with Don Phillips, the casting director of Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, Linklater said, “There is a McConaughey quality.”
He continued: “Actually, I knew Glen as a teenager. He had a small part in the film Fast Food Nation in 2006. He was in high school. He was a kid, and I knew him then. But the big leap he made was when he came in for the audition for Everybody Wants Some!! He was a man at that point, and I was like, ‘When did Glen Powell get…’ I mean, he was so smart, and funny, and charming. He’s obviously a star… Glen’s special. And if the world doesn’t know that yet, I hope this movie [shows them].”
During the presser, Linklater — a member of the DGA and WGA — was also asked about the ongoing strikes in Hollywood.
Calling himself “a proud union member,” he said, “Everyone’s feeling it. I think no one’s happy, but that’s kind of the problem: when you’re in an industry and no one’s happy, maybe it is time to recalibrate and come forward with some things that would be fair to everyone? I think something’s gotta give.”
