Matthew OdamAustin American-Statesman
Attempting to categorize Richard Linklater as a specific type of filmmaker is a fool’s errand.
The 63-year-old founder of the Austin Film Society has spent his almost-40-year career navigating genres and exploring various filmmaking techniques, while staying true to his independent roots.
The unassuming and prolific writer-director, with more than 30 titles to his credit, has created some of American cinema and the Lone Star State’s most enduring coming-of-age stories, autobiographical pieces like “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Boyhood” and “Everybody Wants Some.” He has used documentary filmmaking to spotlight subjects ranging from a collegiate baseball legend (Augie Garrido in “Inning by Inning: Portrait of a Coach”) to the weighty shadow cast by Texas’s justice and incarceration system (“God Save Texas”). He has deconstructed and puzzled time and space with works like “Tape” and his “Before” trilogy and blazed a trail with rotoscope works like “A Scanner Darkly.” He has also created more mainstream Hollywood movies with Hollywood stars like Jack Black in “School of Rock.”
Related: Linklater advocates for changes in Texas prisons
Of course, none of his titles fit in one tidy phylum, with many touching on several of the categories mentioned above, thought almost always wrestling with philosophical ideas centered around identity and the impact of time.
At first glance, Linklater’s latest, “Hit Man” appears to fit into the “big star, mainstream” box. But, despite centering a meteoric Hollywood star (chisel-jawed Austin native Glen Powell, who is coming in hot off of “Anyone But You” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” and working with Linklater for the fourth time, dating back to 2006’s “Fast Food Nation”), the at-first-blush rom-com explores philosophical ideas nested inside a deconstructed genre film that is shaded with Linklater’s trademark dark humor. Think “Slacker” meets “Bernie," with the condensation from some steamy foreplay wetting the seams.
“Hit Man” is based, rather loosely, on a 2001 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth (the film’s origin story mirroring that of 2011’s “Bernie”) about Gary Johnson, a psychology professor recruited by the Houston Police Department to help identify people looking to hire a killer.
Powell’s Johnson is relocated to New Orleans (due to filmmaking tax incentives at the time) where his detached, observational nature is disrupted by the gravitational pull of a distressed married woman named Madison, played by Adria Arjona with a simmering mystique and easy charm that mark her as a sure-bet future star.
The movie, which opened in a few dozen theaters May 24, including the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (where it's still playing), makes its premiere on Netflix Friday. We caught up with Linklater, who recently inducted Powell into the Texas Film Hall of Fame, via phone to discuss “Hit Man,” the former college athlete's personal evolution (Linklater played football and baseball in high school and baseball for a season at Sam Houston State), his thoughts on the current state of Hollywood and more. The interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
American-Statesman: Whenever I’ve been asked by a friend to describe you, I identify you as an “art jock,” a rare combination of a guy who engages intensely in the world of sports and competition, but is also an observant and sensitive artist. Is that a fair, broad-strokes description?
Linklater: I totally buy it. Even talking about working with actors, we “train” a lot. And shooting is like "game day," you just relax and do your best and you don’t think about the rules of the game or why you’re on the "field." I’m Mr. Sports Metaphor and all that stuff.
But I think my art sensitivity is starting to bleed into sports, which I don’t mind. I don’t miss the competition in my own life. I always say, "Oh, that’s not the better me." But even when “my team” wins, I feel sorry for the people who lose. Maybe sports is closer to a war mentality. Maybe it’s not so healthy.
Do you find yourself softening with age?
I’m very much softening to the enjoyment of winning. I still pull for the Longhorns. I want them to win. I don’t want anyone to lose, I guess.
It reminds me of a quote from Glen’s character in the movie: “If the universe is not fixed, then neither are you. And you really can become a different and hopefully better person.” Given you co-wrote the movie, I take it that line resonates with you.
Yeah. Absolutely. More now than ever.
Is it something in which you find comfort?
I like the idea that we’re open to change. The idea of, ‘’Are you just stuck with yourself to just have to wallow in your selfhood and do you not have to try? Like, oh, that’s just the way I am" — well, if you’ve pissed off everybody, maybe you could change. Plus, just the idea that there’s something to live for, or there’s discoveries to be had, I think it’s optimistic. Twenty years ago, I probably thought we were a little more fixed. Like, here’s our personalities and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
I even talk about this a little bit in "Before Sunset;" there’s a little digressive conversation where this comes up: we’re kind of fixed in our personalities. Like in "Hit Man," there’s been a lot of research. It’s always great when someone puts forth a study and there’s some new therapy, interesting theories out there, interesting fields of study out there. To me that’s all interesting and worth thinking about.
That reflects on another line where he discusses “the eternal mystery of human consciousness and behavior.” That seems like something you’ve been grappling with since at least "Slacker."
That’s why it was so fun to create a character. Well, Gary Johnson was this Jungian psychology instructor at community college and he was that guy. So it was a great platform to throw out these ideas and have a lecture. I haven’t done that in awhile. You can be examining your themes or putting them forth via the lecture. This is the first film that I’ve had that opportunity. It’s pretty fun. Between voiceover and lectures, it’s a pretty good forum for that part of Gary.
It seems very Linklaterish to have a movie that wrestles with the battle of the id and superego nestled into a noirish romantic comedy and hitman movie.
Well, it was a lot of fun to be mashing up these things. It felt perfect. Because we’re kind of deconstructing the noir and the hitman movie, specifically, within the crime genre. It felt perfect to be in both those worlds and have them colliding, the way Gary and his worlds were sort of in opposition.
You wrestle a lot with the theme of identity and reconciling who we are with the world around us, and the arc of time and its influence on us and our memory. What do you consider the themes that keep you up most at night or that you are working through in your art?
You know, I don’t really think of that. It’s as simple as: get obsessed with a character and a story. What is worth that effort to try and find the form to make a movie about this? You can spend years and years thinking about that and trying to crack the story and how to tell it. To me, it’s always a cinematic challenge and a character- and a story-architecture challenge. But youcan’t help but be yourself and circle back to things you’re interested in. But I’m really trying to do different things and push myself, and have a general curiosity and a certain promiscuity as far as what I can see myself making a movie out of.
I’m not that strict with myself. I found my way into Dewey Finn in "School of Rock" and Billy Bob’s character in “Bad News Bears.” I feel like I’ve got my feelers out pretty wide in terms of who I can make a story about. I don’t feel hemmed in. I can go wherever my curiosity and impulses take me.
What was it about Gary Johnson that made you want to tell this story on film?
What an interesting character. What a complex guy and what an interesting milieu. I think movies do occupations pretty well, like “Taxi Driver,” and this is the weirdest job ever, being a fake hit man for people who want someone dead. It’s so darkly funny. I kind of have this default dark comedy tone in terms of my views of the world, and this was just so bizarre. And it was more about the myth of the hit man. And these things don’t exist; hit men are created by movies. It’s a pop culture delusion. So, I’m kind of interested in that too — about people’s beliefs. I kind of enjoy deconstructing and debunking.
You’ve said in the past that you watched 600 movies a year when you were younger, and now some kids are watching 600 hundred quick video clips a day on their phones. Attention is so scattered and the media landscape is so fractured, and it’s hurt the film industry and that kind of storytelling. How worried are you about the future of film as you came to love them?
Wow. When you put it that way. (Laughs.) I feel like this: when you go to the Austin Film Society and you watch a film and you see how many young people are there, it does give you hope that young people can discover the pure joy of sitting in a theater communally and watching a great movie. Hollywood has completely failed because they’re just not delivering what you’d consider great movies. They’re not really interested; they’re in the amusem*nt industry.
But the whole indie world hasn’t changed at all. That’s what the goal is: to show challenging adult-ish movies to people; they just have to go find them. I’m always of two minds: part of me is optimistic — more films are being made; it’s easier to make a film; it’s a good time to be a filmmaker. But on the other hand, I’m also, like,, ‘Oh gosh, we’re doomed,’ because technology has finally swamped us. It’s like what you said: everyone’s distracted; we’re all addicted. Huxley thought it would be government-issued soma in “Brave New World” that would just kind of amuse us to death or just placate us, but it came in the form of …
Corporate facism.
Yeah, exactly. But, it’s here. We’re being kind of lulled and amused to death. Vaguely amused.Those 600 videos a kid watches, I don’t know how amusing they are, but at least they grab your attention. I would ask everyone to up their aesthetic quotient. There are a lot of people out there who have spent years crafting a fiction for consumer enjoyment and have for the last 125 years. They’re called movies — and they put a lot of effort into telling a well-told story. And it’s a little more involved, so it’s maybe a better way to spend your time. But, who knows?
