Filmmaker Richard Linklater on Hit Man and whether people can change
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Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Laila Raptopoulos. There's this idea, maybe a trope, that the best film directors are constantly remaking their own movies, trying to get this one thing out of themselves or more perfectly articulate some vision. At first glance, this may not feel like it applies to the director Richard Linklater.

His long list of films include fun commercial hits like School of Rock and thinky indie classics like Slacker and Waking Life. He also has got a category almost exclusively to himself, projects shot over many years, piece by piece with the same actors, like the Before trilogy and Boyhood. But these films do have a lot in common. There are a lot of men figuring out what it means to be men. There's a lot of philosophizing with characters talking through ideas. There are a lot of people who change.

His most recent film, Hitman, stars Glenn Powell as a philosophy professor named Gary who moonlights as a police informant that's pretending to be a hitman. Gary's a pretty boring guy, but as an undercover hitman, he springs to life. It explores philosophy and masculinity and whether people change, and it's also just a very fun watch. I'm thrilled to have Richard Linklater with me today to talk about the film. Richard, hi. Welcome to the show. Hi, how are you doing? I'm doing great.

Good. How are you? Good. It's just men trying to figure out what about Julie's character? What about Patricia Arquette in Boyhood? I thought, you know, I have some... Anyway. That was the first question I was going to ask you is just like, I have this grand theory for you and feel free to disagree with it. Well, that was it. I'm wondering if like, do you think you're someone who's continuously trying to get the same thing or a few things out in your films or no?

Uh, you know, I don't consciously think about it film to film. I mean, in my own life, I'm always interested in exploring or, you know, see where your interests and instincts take you. I've been lucky every film I'm just trying to, um, you know, you get obsessed with characters or a story and how to tell that story, but.

there is probably a commonality that would make you interested in it in the first place. So you can't help but be yourself. Totally. I think everybody, like an actor, oh, I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that. But then everybody says, well, you're still kind of playing yours. They see yourself in it. I always do. Like even on this film, I'm like, okay, this is kind of a thriller movie.

you know, and, you know, film lore and romantic comedy. And then I look up and Glenn's lecturing. I was like, oh, I couldn't escape it. I had to have this guy thinking about identity and self and

some kind of, you know, who we are and here we go again. How did that sneak in there? So yeah, we're stuck with ourselves for better or worse. Totally. It's kind of a theme in the film too. Yeah. Or are we, you know, that's, or are we, I was really examining that in this. I'm the guy who reads the latest studies on, well, you know, people actually can change. The personality is more, you can become someone else. I'm like, oh really? I've never really

I'm one of those people who talks about, oh, we're kind of in our fixed set points and our personalities are set by a certain age. And, you know, I kind of found some comfort in that. And now I found the freedom in a more recent notion that you could. So I'm like, oh, it's worth exploring.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Just for listeners, the crux of the story here is that this philosophy professor, Gary, inhabits these characters that are like a fantasy of what his fake clients want him to be so they can sort of incriminate themselves and the cops can arrest them. And it's so funny. I've been thinking about this, too. He meets this gorgeous woman who wants to kill her horrible husband, and he shows up as this sort of like hot

assertive smoke show named Ron. And anyway, she leaves her husband and they start dating and he stays in this character of Ron. And then over time, he has this kind of glow up and almost becomes Ron. He gets hot. And the central question there is kind of like, can Gary change or is he set? And how much can he change? And yeah, yeah.

What do you think? We sort of stacked the deck there, didn't we? By having him be the smoldering sexy guy. Well, you know, he's adapting his character, his hitman, to what he thinks they want. And on her, for some reason, he goes with the best sexy version. And good for the audience, too. We can play to Glenn's final colors a little more than...

Gary, the philosophy teacher, psychology teacher. Yeah. Yeah. The harder thing to believe was people that that Glenn Powell was this kind of nerdy, you know, academic birdwatching guy. Yeah. He went for a he went for a heavy side part. We're glad to leave that persona behind. I'm curious why that question was interesting to you.

How much can you change? Well, I think most people go through life wondering that. And, you know, I remember as a younger person just kind of feeling like, well, what kind of person am I? That guy? Am I this guy? You know, you kind of try on things. Even you go out with your friends and like, OK, that's not really me. Even you do behavior, you know, and you go, you know, that's not me. I'm never doing that again. You know, that's so so much of life is carving away all that you're not.

And then you're just stuck with what you are. Is that a default setting or is that something you willed or is that just who you are? So this is all interesting material to me and how to make a narrative out of it is something else. Yeah. I was thinking about this sort of main lesson that Gary has for his students, which is this

idea of like, seize the identity you want for yourself and whoever you want to be, you know, out of this classroom, be them with passion and abandon. And I felt like you're saying both things at once. Part of me feels like, can you just seize an identity outside of yourself? You're stuck. And then the other part of me thought, I mean, yes, it's good. Like, give yourself permission to be all the things that you have in you, but are kind of afraid to be.

Um, yeah. I wonder what you were thinking around that. He's saying seize the identity you want for yourself, not necessarily outside of yourself. I think most people are reaching for things they feel are them, but they're just trying to be that. And hopefully the best version of themselves, you know, it's a better world when people are in sync with themselves. You know, you get people who don't know themselves and are

out of sync and then that person's more likely to do harm or to just, you know, but someone who's kind of actualized and knows themselves and is, you know, you can be a better person to others. You know, you've slayed your own dragons of your own personality or who you are. And I think you can contribute more potentially. I think COVID kind of shook out a lot of people, um,

out of, they really had to confront who they were and their relationships. And you saw a lot of people either break up or get together or, you know, it's like, you know, you pair away everything. It's like, you're sitting there alone going, okay, who am I now? What did I want to do? I really want to be with this person the rest of my life. Or do we, what are we compatible? You know, you really, when you paired everything away, all the distraction and all the things we fill our lives with down to your essence, then it's, it's, it's much more confrontational.

You have to really acknowledge a lot of stuff. There's an autopilot-ness to just being a human. You can float around and not confront things or think too much. We can all ride that. So when something makes you actually confront who you are instead of who you think you are, who you want to be, that's an interesting area, I think.

Yeah. And makes sense that this was written during COVID. Absolutely. You know, you took issue with this a little in the beginning when I made this case that you that that your movies are about masculinity. And I'd love to ask you about that because I find this character interesting and I partially because I think you're so good at exploring masculinity.

masculinity in your films. Like, Dazed and Confused is like one of the best movies ever about American high school boys at that time. And Before Sunrise, the whole Before trilogy, Ethan Hawke's character is such an interesting knot. And Boyhood is obviously literally called Boyhood. I'm curious what the questions are that you find interesting about masculinity and boys. Maybe those questions have changed. Maybe you don't agree.

Well, it's personal. It's grown out of my own experience. I have that to go, wow, why was I acting like, you know, I think my most specific study or deconstruction of young man masculinity is probably my college comedy. It's called Everybody Wants Some. And it's a bunch of college guys playing the role. They're athletes too. So it's even hyper-masculine

But I'm looking at that as kind of a love letter critique to a certain area, stage of life, a guy of a certain kind might find themselves in. And it's just for a while. It's sort of fleeting, you know, this kind of apex moment.

everything they are is being rewarded by the culture. I even told the actors, you know, this is temporary. You know, you don't know this yet. Your character doesn't know. All this is going to end shortly and the real world's going to just slay your ass. But for now, you're kind of riding high. You're the king of the school. It's all being rewarded. I mean, this will be punished at some point, probably. A lot of the befores and boyhood too, you mentioned, it's like how to be

We could say how to be a man, but it's how to be yourself, you know? It's like, who am I kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. I was just re-watching last night before sunrise and I forgot about this moment with the, there was a palm reader reading Julie Delpy's hand and she says, you need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life. And I thought, yeah, that is... Yeah, yeah.

Over and over again. Tell ourselves that every day. Exactly. Yeah. I have to resign myself to the, you could feel it. Just change that word. Awkwardness, cruelty, randomness, arbitrary, you know, every day there's a new word in that sentence, but.

Yeah. Totally. You do. Yeah. I don't know about the word resign though. That's so passive. Like you need to maybe reconcile yourself. I don't know. Maybe enjoy it. Yeah. I try to, it's like, Oh gosh, you know, we're. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard, I want to ask you, this is a little bit of a different question, but I know we only have so much time. I'm curious how you approach making kind of a quick hit movie like this versus something like

that was made over 12 years or the before trilogy. Is it coming from a different part of your brain in some way? Is there a different way that you approach those two types of films? No, I mean, every film's its own film. Like the before trilogy, I wasn't making three films at one time. I made one, I was all in on one film and then nine years later, we made another film and nine years after that. So you're only in your moment, you know, even we're filming those three days this year and that's all we're doing.

A film, I usually have these lengthy gestation times. In this case, I read a story about Gary Johnson in 2001 and got to think about it all these years and then eventually collaborated with Glenn and we created it. So there's nothing kind of quick about it. There's a different genre. You can't not do the work. So I don't think about that at all. I don't know if that answers your question, but you're just...

making what you're what you're working on you know however however you can now there's different storytelling methodologies you're telling you know different things in different ways for different reasons maybe but it's also similar in my mind as you can imagine you know

If you talk to a painter and they're trying a different thing, but they're still sitting in their studio with the paintbrush. It's so similar, the process. The only difference in the final thing could be kind of vast, but from the

kind of manifesting it physically in the world part, it's so similar to everything else. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking recently about how a painter, they spend just as much time and then you just take it all in just all at the same time, which is such a different way to receive a piece. Yeah. No, I'm fascinated with that, you know, and film is, it's such a unique art form and the way we take it in in real time, unlike other, you know, you can put a book down and, you know, music has its own

to listening to it. That's in real time. But film is unique in the way that it can sculpt in time. It can go back and forth. And what it can do within itself with time is unique to its art form. So I'm forever fascinated with it.

Richard, I want to ask you, this movie was released not for very long in theaters and then released quite quickly on Netflix for streaming. And I'm curious whether you think differently about movies made for streaming than you do about movies that'll have like a big theatrical release. I heard Hans Zimmer in an interview recently say that

Basically, that he would have done the mix differently for Dune if he knew that it was going to be dropped simultaneously in theaters and on streaming platforms. And yeah, I'm wondering if there's anything like that that you think about. I don't know if I even believe that, you know. I just, you know, we feel like we're in this kind of binary. But it's always been that way for...

You know, even when a film has a theatrical release, this has been going on 30 plus years. It's like, well, most people are going to watch this on cable. Most people are going to watch this on VHS. Most people are going to watch this on DVD. Most people are going to watch this streaming. You know, I've seen that change, but I don't know. You know, we've always been adaptable to the commerce and technology. That's that's the engine underneath our storytelling medium, right?

And you just roll with it. On the upside, I've gotten so, I got so many notes from people like, hey, I saw Hitman from old friends who I know don't go to movies. They don't go to movies. They got kids. They got like, you go to one movie a year, you go see

you know, whatever the biggest, you went to see, you know, Barbie or Oppenheimer that year. Right. You're not seeing anything else, but you saw Hitman because it's so easy. You push play. I hope you darkened the room and watched it and paid attention, but you know, you get what you get. I'm, you know, I enjoy making movies. I really do. I love it. How it gets consumed and where and, and,

You know, you just can't be a purist about that. It's not, it's out of your hands, you know? Yes, if I could snap my fingers and we all...

Three times a week went to the movie theater and watched movies. And, you know, it's not 1939, you know, there's a lot more going on in the world. The world has come to you. The average American went to one film, at least one film a week, sometimes more, you know, that's all there was.

Totally. I was with my father in Greece. He grew up in Greece and we were walking around the city and he was going, oh, that was a movie theater and that was a movie theater and that was a movie theater. And we were like, whoa. And he was like,

That's all we did. That's the only way. Because you got your news there, too. You got a cartoon. You got the news. Because this is a long time ago before nightly news TV. So of a certain era, that was just... My dad, yeah. We went every Saturday. We'd go to the movies. Cost 15 cents. And you'd watch a couple feature. You'd watch the news reels, find out what's going on in the world. The whole world, you went to it. That's how people communicated.

Film doesn't communicate to people in the same way it probably did socially, but it's still there. It's still, you know, still storytelling. Yeah. I try not to. There's a lot of soul searching, but, you know, it's kind of beyond all of us, I think. Right. Can I ask what you...

feel sort of hopeful or excited about? I mean, I'm sure a lot of people ask you to speculate about the future of movies and where it's going and all the concerns around it. But is there anything that you're sort of feeling hopeful

Good about? Yeah. What are you hopeful about? Well, I feel good every year when I watch the handful of what I consider really good movies. It's like, well, yeah, every year worldwide, there's a lot of good movies made. So enjoy those and seek them out. And there's been a lot of great movies made through history that no one person will see all of them. So if you're so inclined, we got this nice hundred plus year history.

of wonderful movies. So someone could sit around twiddling their thumbs saying, oh, there's nothing to watch. But that's just, that's like saying there's nothing to read. There's nothing to listen to. I think the limitation is you, not the incredible vast body of work that exists, that people put a lot of time into over these many years that await you if you were so curious. So I don't know. I feel...

I'm at an age where, oh my God, I'm never going to see every movie that I wanted to see. I'm never going to read every book or get familiar with things. You know, it's like we're very limited. So the challenge sits in front of all of us though, you know, what you spend your time doing. Yeah. So, yeah. So spend it wisely. Yeah. Well, spend it interestingly, you know, how about realize what makes you happy and what kind of gets you going and,

and pursue that. Don't, you know, I don't know. Don't be a victim to manipulation, you know, like, is it your life or is it your, the algorithm telling you what your life is? So I think that's the battle that's happening in the human psyche right now. So it's always your choice to, to dial that down and dial up yourself. So I think that's the challenge of our, of our age. So you have to be protective and you have to curate

what you're allowing in. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck. You know, it's, we've never met a more formidable opponent, you know, the human, not ready for it. You know, it's, it's a theme we think about. It really is. It's a theme we think about all the time across everything, film, music, TV, art, just kind of how do we fight the algorithm a little? How do we feel a little like,

The modern world. What we're doing is deliberate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's coming at you, but I mean, it can be your friend or it can be your foe. You know, it's like sometimes the algorithm has a great suggestion, but I don't totally trust it. I was like, yeah, I liked word of mouth. I like friends saying, Hey, have you ever been, you ever heard of it? Whatever. Right.

Well, as someone who just spent a lot of time going through your back catalog, I highly suggest that our listeners do it too. Thank you so much for being on the show. This was a real honor. Oh yeah. Really nice talking to you.

That's the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a look through the show notes. We have some good links in there, including where you can find Hitman, which is on Netflix globally, and where you can find me on email and on Instagram, where I'm at Lila Rapp and love chatting with all of you about culture. We

We also have the link for the FT Magazine's ongoing call-out about who you think are the most influential women of 2024. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and here's our wonderful team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smith is our producer. Our sound engineers are Joe Salcedo, Sam Jovinko, and Breen Turner, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forges is our executive producer, and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.

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