Grown-up films ‘out of fashion’ in Hollywood: Texas-based School of Rock, Boyhood, and the Before love dramas with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy were directed by Linklater. Hit Man, his latest feature, proved challenging to sell to “traditional” companies despite strong critical and audience reception last year.
Grown-up films ‘out of fashion’ in Hollywood
Hit Man is a romantic thriller comedy starring Glen Powell and Adria Arjona about a stuck-in-a-rut professor, Gary, who moonlights as Ron, a false hitman for a city police department and falls for the woman who hires him.
The film was inspired by Houston police bogus ‘assassin’ Gary Johnson, a community lecturer. An piece 20 years ago introduced Linklater to him. Johnson died in 2022 before filming.
Linklater and Glen Powell intended to shoot “passion”. “I said, it’ll have sex, passion, carnality, the desire that drives everything,” Linklater tells BBC. Glen starts out emotionless, but by the end he’s found passion, and the movie has powerful chemistry and sexuality.
“I think what’s out of fashion, people say there’s no sex in movies anymore, but there’s no ‘adult’ in movies anymore, as sexuality equals adult,” the filmmaker explains. Being 13 and watching movies, I thought the adult world was fascinating and enjoyable, and I thought, ‘I can’t wait to go there!’ Both their sex and maturity were issues.
Hollywood reversed it. They said, ‘we’re going to make films where you can stay 13 forever, you stay that little kid with little kid concerns’, so its complexities didn’t fit popular filmmaking. Powell worked with Linklater three times, starting as a child in Fast Food Nation in 2006.
Relationships don’t really crackle any more in movies” and that he, Linklater, and Arjona discussed “about what’s actually sexy” while filming. Despite working with an intimacy coordinator, the film’s sex sequences were based on their conversations.
‘What is actually exciting to our audiences?’ Latest news Powell says the three of us trusted each other to address his difficulties. “We knew each other well. I suppose our honest conversations created those movie scenes. I think fans are emotionally invested like never before.”
The mainstream summer blockbuster season has started nervously for Hollywood, despite Kristen Stewart’s bodybuilding thriller Love Lies Bleeding and Zendaya’s tennis drama Challengers. Miller’s lavish Mad Max sequel Furiosa earned $144m (£97m) and underperformed.
A $157m (£122m) stuntman romcom starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, The Fall Guy, flopped.
Deadpool & Wolverine and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator sequel with Paul Mescal are potential hits.
“You don’t get fired for doing a sequel or an origin story, something that already exists,” Linklater replies when asked if studios fear commercial risk-taking.
You don’t get in trouble for obvious and commercial. After marketing approved, films were safe.
He says, “I think of Hit Man as a movie to have fun with, there should always be room for some sexy couple movies, these are cinema standards of what people want to see often.”
The film was written by him and Glen Powell during the COVID-19 pandemic, but “the industry really didn’t want to make the film initially The picture was our goal, therefore Glen and I wrote it speculatively without pay. We had a good crime-comedy film noir idea, but the crew wanted to focus on one.
Also See:
The Best Fried Rice Recipe – Step by Step Guide
Studios wanted Ron to be a real hitman they’d seen before, which was difficult. After filming, it was highly received. Netflix always loved it, but some doubted they could sell it. Wendy Ide of The Guardian wrote that Hit Man “takes Powell’s amiable, supporting actor appeal…and hones it to a star quality of such laser-beam intensity, you start to fear for your eyesight.”
The film’s spiral into romantic drama wouldn’t work without Powell and Arjona’s crackling chemistry.” After Powell appears in Twisters, Linklater joked that 2024 may be a “summer of Glen” for movies.
“No one who’s worked with Glen would doubt he’s a star,” Linklater says. Without sex, movies lack adult breakouts, making it hard to discover new talent. This is especially true for Marvel movies with established comic-book characters. Glen is old school and has performed terrific supporting roles, but roles must develop and there are fewer.
