Hit Man | Deadline Studio at TIFF - video Dailymotion

Deadline

Connect with Deadline online! https://www.facebook.com/deadline/ https://twitter.com/DEADLINE https://www.instagram.com/deadline/

Transcript

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]

Hit Man | Deadline Studio at TIFF

Category

Transcript

Recommended