Glen Powell and filmmaker Richard Linklater stopped by The Hollywood Reporter's studio in Park City to chat about their action comedy 'Hit Man.' The pair opened up about co-writing the film that stars Powell as Gary Johnson, a killer for hire who's actually an undercover cop. Linklater and Powell also spoke about shooting the movie in New Orleans. Plus, Powell weighed in on a viral THR tweet mistaking the 'Top Gun: Maverick' star for 'This Is Us' actor Justin Hartley.
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00:00 It was that moment when he stepped out of the van as that character that the whole crew would just stop and go, "Holy shit, what is that?"
00:07 You know what I'll say did actually surprise me about you on this one?
00:13 Is your work ethic, your hours.
00:17 Because you went through a hoop on this that you'd never gone through.
00:22 No, like we actually were never in the same room.
00:24 We were right over the phone.
00:25 So then when we got to set and we were kind of in pre-production and kind of bringing the cast together and rewriting and stuff,
00:32 I was surprised by Rick's hours because I think you thought I was driving you into the ground.
00:38 I thought you were driving me into the ground.
00:39 Yeah, well that was what this film needed.
00:41 We both need to work all day and then work pretty much into the night, you know, or all weekend.
00:46 What did you like about filming in New Orleans?
00:48 The only time I ever really went out was your birthday that Saturday night.
00:52 That's right.
00:52 I showed up at a dinner.
00:53 That was our one dinner out.
00:55 You know, that was like a kind of a wonderful blessing actually, I think, is the fact that we were looking at different places to shoot this.
01:02 And, you know, Louisiana and New Orleans really stepped up.
01:05 And New Orleans is just such a quilt of culture.
01:08 And, you know, with all the, you know, parishes and the difference in people, like you really have like such a vibrant color to that place that makes it really interesting.
01:17 With an undercurrent of like lawlessness.
01:19 Yeah.
01:20 You know, that there's a little bit of anarchy in the streets.
01:23 You know, kind of vibe, which fits this movie perfectly.
01:26 Would there really be these people out there who wanted to, you know, bump off a loved one or a former loved one?
01:31 It's like New Orleans kind of has that little vibe in a good way.
01:35 It's got like the anonymity of like New York where like no one really knows what you're up to or where you're going.
01:40 But also like there's...
01:41 It's not in your business, but it's still kind of a small town.
01:43 Yeah.
01:44 There's a swamp you could get away with it.
01:45 We were sort of short on time early on where Rick and I, we didn't really get a chance to rehearse it ever.
01:52 So like we never really talked about each of those characters.
01:56 And I never like put that in front of Rick before game day.
02:01 So the funniest part was I would literally get out of the cast van and onto set and Rick was kind of seeing it for the first time.
02:08 The full makeup.
02:09 Yeah, the full makeup.
02:10 On a computer, you know, we kind of made up.
02:13 It's like, okay, they each had names.
02:14 They were each different people, different accents.
02:16 Yes.
02:16 He's like got like orange hair.
02:18 It's the freckles.
02:19 Yeah.
02:21 There's something like he's got no eyebrows.
02:23 He's kind of got this like recessed dead eyed look and he looks like, you know.
02:27 And that accent.
02:28 My thought with this character, this one character, I call him Dean.
02:31 My thought with Dean was that something really tragic happened to him when he was young and he was stuck in this like sort of period of like infancy.
02:43 You know, or he's like almost like he wanted to be in like an ice cream shop for the rest of his life.
02:49 Just this like weird.
02:50 And so it was so funny because that was a character that like we really, I liked Thor.
02:55 I was like, I don't know if this is going to work.
02:56 This is going to freak people out.
02:57 But that was my favorite.
02:58 The good thing about we gave ourselves an excuse like there wasn't no not working because it's all kind of ridiculous.
03:05 Yeah.
03:05 Kind of real.
03:06 You know, the real Gary Johnson would alter his appearance to kind of customize it to the client.
03:12 But nowhere near what we do in the movie.
03:14 I mean, this thing's a comedy.
03:15 Of course.
03:15 They were sells permission to go way out there.
03:19 While I've got your guys' creative minds going, I'm curious if you have any ideas for Glenn.
03:26 I think you pitched this in response to our Twitter post in which we called Justin Hartley, Glenn Powell.
03:34 Did you see?
03:35 You had it.
03:35 I heard about the most boring body swap comedy of all time.
03:39 Yes.
03:39 Have you been spitballing any plot ideas?
03:43 Yeah.
03:43 Rick, do you want to direct the Glenn Powell, Justin Hartley body swap movie?
03:47 Yeah, sure.
03:48 Sign me up.
03:48 We know we haven't we haven't really riffed on on, you know, we're talking about getting into the trenches again.
03:55 We haven't figured out exactly what that is or what it looks like.
03:57 But I think this could be a lot of powerful people.
04:01 I think you get story by credit technically on that one.
04:04 You know, I think it's clear you're the body swap guy of this generation.
04:07 He's in Paris right now shooting.
04:09 Yeah, I got so much.
04:10 You know, a body swap with Justin Hartley movie.
04:13 I want to be in development and be in production in the fall.
04:17 Totally.
04:17 On a body swap movie with Glenn.
04:21 Justin.
04:21 That is so funny, by the way.
04:25 That was such a...
04:26 Dude, when this thing hit, I can't tell you how many people said that.
04:30 It was so funny.
04:31 Dude, I ran into him that night.
04:33 That's funny.
04:34 I ran into him that night.
04:35 Oh my God, really?
04:36 Yeah, we laughed about it.
04:37 I never met him before.
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