Taking a Stab at “Hit Man”

As a teacher of screenwritingthrough UCLA Extension’s The Writers’ Program, I’m always interested in what genresaspiring writers choose to concentrate on. I love the variety: romanticcomedies, action adventure, heartfelt dramas, police procedurals, family fare.For a while, a good proportion of my advanced screenwriting students seemed towant to focus on the physical and moral perils of being a hit man. To each his(or her) own, I guess. But the key maxim for writers has always been Write WhatYou Know. I suspect (phew!) that none of my students has put in time as amurderer for hire. That’s why these scripts, exciting though they may be, neverseem to have the ring of reality.

 Which made me doubly curiousabout a new film, released through Netflix but currently in theatres, that’sbeen getting rave reviews. Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater from ascript he co-wrote with the film’s star, Glen Powell, is based on a TexasMonthly article about a certain Gary Johnson. The  late Johnson was a mild-mannered collegeinstructor, specializing in psychology and philosophy, who took on a part-timejob posing as a hit man. His employer was the local police department: his goalwas to ferret out citizens angry enough to pay a stranger to commit murder,after which they’d quickly be arrested and sent off to prison. Like hisreal-life counterpart, the film’s Gary Johnson discovers he thrives on donningdisguises and dancing around the edges of actual mayhem. But, as the closingcredits make clear, the actual Gary Johnson never broke the law. His screencounterpart, though, is a more complicated creature.

  It all starts when he meets Maddy (thegorgeous Adria Arjona) who wants to get rid of her abusive ex by any meansnecessary. She accepts the killer-for-hire she meets at face value:  he’s sexy tough-guy Ron. He knows,though, that underneath it all he’s meek and mild Gary, who’s quite capable offalling for Maddy, and doesn’t want to see her under arrest. When thisirresistible force and this immovable object get together, sparks fly . . . andthe audience thoroughly enjoys seeing where they go from here. No, of course Ihave no plans to give away the ending.

 I knew Richard Linklater’swork from back in the Nineties, when he introduced Matthew McConaughey to theworld in Dazed and Confused.  Inthis century, he’s made successful studio films like School of Rock and BadNews Bears, while also experimenting with a romantic indie trilogy abouttwo young people in Paris that started with Before Sunrise. To date, hisbravest experiment has been with 2014’s Boyhood, an Oscar-nominatedcoming-of-age drama that was filmed between 2002 and 2013, allowing the mainactors to grow and change over time. (Patricia Arquette won the statuette forBest Supporting Actress.) Now, however, he’s committed to filming StephenSondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, a musical theatre piece which covers atwo-decade period in reverse chronology: he started filming in 2019 (with BenPlatt and Beany Feldstein in central roles) and—despite some key cast changesthat have required major reshoots—plans to devote twenty years to the project. Goodluck with that!

 Prior to Hit Man, Ihad never heard of Glen Powell. Now I know he has a long track record in TV, aswell as recent successes in screen romantic comedies like Anyone But You.His breakout film role was as Lt. Jake "Hangman" Seresin in TopGun: Maverick. Don’t blame me if all the flyboys in that film blur togetherin my mind.