DEADLINE: Give me a sense of the background here; what led to the film thatHit Manhas become?
RICHARD LINKLATER: There are really two levels.
I read Skip Hollandsworths article in 2001, and I thought about it over the years.
Glen Powell as Gary Johnson inHit Man.AGC
I talked to him about it.
Not much drama happens.
But I give him credit for saying, What if we loosen up the facts?
Ive always been such a stickler for the facts; telling real stories exactly as they happened.
Loosening up turned it into this fun thing with a fun character at the center of it.
After he lets Madison off the hook, which really happened, the film becomes more fantastical.
And doing that deepened the whole concept of the movie, that this was about the notion of self-identity.
Gary becomes trapped by his own choices in a way.
Hes trapped in an identity that he prefers.
LINKLATER: It can be whatever you want it to be.
Truth can be whatever.
I dont know if its the virtual-ness of our era, but were definitely in something new.
Politically, sexually… everythings kind of up for grabs.
This isnt that specifically, but its the idea of that.
He was a true Jungian, Zen Buddhist kind of guy who thought deeply aboutso much.
Those must have been fun to write andpardon the punexecute.
LINKLATER: Very much so.
A lot of those vignettes are based on real people.
Glen went to town with that, especially with the disguises and the voices.
DEADLINE: You wrote the movie with Glen.
How did that work?
LINKLATER: It didnt start off that way.
It was like, OK, Im the writer/director, hes the actor, lets make a movie.
But we were working on the phone during the pandemic.
Im in my library and he was with his family, or traveling for work.
We just talked and talked.
At some point, I just said, You know what?
Were already working on this together.
Im going to start sending you pages, and youre going to send them back to me.
I prefer that approach too when the whole movie is hinged on a performance.
And when Adria came aboard, she jumped into that process too.
Is it harder to work like that than it once was?
We arent financing that.
My timing and the industrys timing arent always in sync [laughs].
Look, it has never been easy.
This film was no exception.
Glen and I wrote it on spec; we didnt have a corporate parent.
We just did it.
We set out to write a good script, in the hope we might get to do it.
DEADLINE: The good news is those entities are clearly still out there because sometimes I wonder.
LINKLATER: Yeah, its definitely different [than it used to be].
Things are shifting, and sometimes you feel like youre under some kind of existential threat.
Does indie film even work anymore?
DEADLINE: Thats the question Ive come here to ask you!
LINKLATER: [Laughs] I really wonder.
What place does film have in our fractured culture right now?
To me, thats the deeper crisis; it isnt just film, its modern life.
Does anyone really care about anything enough to support it, including democracy?
Lets start with that.
Where does it fit economically?
I dont think so.
Its not good for anybody.
Its not good for writers, nor for the community, so why are we doing it?
you might say that about the film industry too.
But at the end of the day, nobodys happy with that arrangement.
Even the tech people are screaming that theyre losing billions of dollars.
Its like, this is their world that we adapted to andtheyrenot happy?
Theyre the monolithic overlords who put everyone else out of business!
And as our industry has chugged along, really, nobodys beenhappy.
That we can live with.
Its not working, nobodys making money, and nobodys happy.
You think, maybe we should retrench and look at what worked before.
Is that so bad?
What was that company whose motto was, Move fast and break things?
Yeah, well thats where we are.
Go create a village for yourself in New Zealand.
The times require a more cooperative understanding.
We need a bolder mindset to solve 21stCentury problems.
Instead, weve got a hands-off, libertarian, selfish model that just isnt working for the world.
LINKLATER: [Laughs].
That fits the theme.
Its a perfect encapsulation of everything you gotta know about today.
We had a reality TV president, now we have billionaire cage fights.
When I was a kid, there were only a few rich people you knew about.
Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty… completely blank, mysterious guys who you never heard anything about.
DEADLINE: Do you look at YouTube at all?
LINKLATER: I dont know how you’re free to avoid it.
When you go online, it pops up.
Its an amazing tool.
But I saw Alex Winters film,The YouTube Effect.
DEADLINE: I have been meaning to see that.
And rather than that stuff putting off their audience, their view counts go even more stratospheric.
Were still being sold the unachievable dream and we lap it up.
LINKLATER: Its horrible.
Great, but are they actors?
No, but theyve got so many followers.
They havent studied acting, theyre just big personalities.
Its a capitalist, consumerist death spiral.
DEADLINE: And it created itself.
LINKLATER: Oh, completely.
Movies created movie stars.
TV created TV stars.
And social media created social media stars.
I guess its 100% predictable.
And you cant escape it.
I mean, I have two 19-year-olds, and theyre both wonderful, smart, and politically engaged.
But Im like, Quit looking at that st and read a book!
This is not filling up your soul!
TikTok is coming for you, and its coming hard.
Its like weve abdicated our brains to this stuff.
DEADLINE: Im really sorry for leading us down this garden path.
Its not even 10 AM and I feel like Ive ruined your day.
LINKLATER: Its a little early in the morning for it [laughs].
But were all talking about it, and its important to at least acknowledge it.
Thats what Alexs film is all about, really, so I highly recommend it.
DEADLINE: I will definitely seek it out.
But thats the other thing, which is the great promise of streaming was
LINKLATER: Everythings available.
Except for what you want to see.
I wanted to see it again, and it cant be found anywhere.
It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, but its like, nah, not available.
So, what is available?
Thousands of titles Ive never heard of, from nowhere.
There are times where Im like, Is this a sign of depression?
I have to go, No, I just dont want to see another cooking show.
DEADLINE: Where do you put the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in that context, then?
LINKLATER: Its definitely an offshoot of that world and a response to what weve been talking about.
Hey, can we just go back?
Can we take a step back to when it used to work for everyone?
Were on the shoulders of people who went on strike 60 years ago and finally worked it out.
And our guilds said, Give us just a little piece of that pie.
Im in the Writers Guild and Im on strike.
The only time I ever get a check is when it comes through the Guild for the residual.
You never get profit.
But that residual check is real.
DEADLINE: Do you wonder if streamers are reluctant to disclose data because its smaller than we might expect?
LINKLATER: But if not, then why are they paying for it?
We just dont know.
The algorithm will tell us.
Thats what they say.
If you ask them a question, theyll say, The algorithm.
But even more frightening is the heads of all studios are excited about AI.
You ask them about the downsides of it and theyll still say, The algorithm will let us know.
Theyve put all their faith in the algorithms.
I think about my 30-year career.Dazed and Confusedwas a studio movie.
The head of Universal gave this punk kid $6 million and said, Who knows?
Maybe itll be a hit, maybe it wont.
They had 25 movies.
Every studio had its slate.
It got so expensive to penetrate the psyche of an individual whos so distracted that theres no room.
Anything else is not the business these guys are in.
Now, the marketing guys are greenlighting the movies by going, Yes, we can sell that.
They dont have the huge bombs they used to, so its sort of market-proof.
We dont care about reviews, we can sell this preexisting franchise.
DEADLINE: What youre describing is also the disruption of a filmmakers path.
The trajectory of a career.
LINKLATER: I dont know how it happens anymore.
I have to go, I dont know.
Maybe the best thing it’s possible for you to do is a series?
You used to have an incremental climb; thats what I did withSlacker, thenDazed and Confused.
The budgets got a little bigger, and no one held you to account.
The goal, now, is to get out of Sundance and then get hired to doSpider-Man.
Whereas when I did it in the 90s, everyone would have said you were selling out.
Hes made a studio film with a movie star.
Remember when the Coens didHudsucker?
Folks were like, What the fk is this?
No, its a great movie.
DEADLINE: If only it were so easy to bedisappointedthat you gotBefore SunriseandThe Hudsucker Proxy.
LINKLATER: [Laughs].
Yeah, we were in such trouble for selling out.
But now, theres no other game in town.
Its a good thing if youre able to align yourself with a franchise.
LINKLATER: Its not the proper place in their development.
Only by then did I feel confident I could make a good film out of it.
I think I know what Im doing here.
If I had done that as my second film, I dont know what I would have done.
And now, I dont think they offer you those two or three films.
Its tough to curate your own life in this world today.
