The Big Picture - ‘Hit Man’ With Glen Powell and Richard Linklater!

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Sean and Amanda discuss the unconfirmed casting news that Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, Harris Dickinson, and Charlie Rowe will be the leads of Sam Mendes’s quartet of biopics about the members of the Beatles (1:00). Then, they have an in-depth (and spoiler-filled) discussion about Richard Linklater’s 'Hit Man,' starring 'Big Pic' favorite Glen Powell (15:00). Finally, Powell and Linklater join the show to discuss the genesis of the script, striking a unique tone, their creative partnership, and more (1:02:00). To watch episodes of ‘The Big Picture,’ head to https://www.youtube.com/@RingerMovies. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Glen Powell and Richard Linklater Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wake up, babe. Bandsplain is back. That's right. Your favorite extremely long music podcast has returned. And this season, we're talking grunge. As usual, there's goss, there's tea, there's an excessive amount of facts and info. And you know what? There's nine hours on a band that rhymes with schmurlschmam, plus much, much more. Listen to new episodes of Bandsplain with me, Yossi Salek, every Thursday. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings.

Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture A Conversation show about Hitman. Today on the show, we are digging deep into Richard Linklater's latest film, the twisty, sexy rom-com thriller Hitman. Amanda and I will break down the movie, and then I will be joined by your goddamn right, movie star of the moment, Glenn Powell, and the writer-director of the movie, Richard Linklater.

Glenn also produced and co-wrote this movie. Glenn is a listener of the Big Picture Podcast, which he told me when we hopped on the video call. He's a fan of Amanda Dobbins. Amanda, how are you feeling about that? Did he actually say that? I know Bobby sent us the clip, but I was a fan of Amanda Dobbins. Amanda, how are you feeling about that? Did he actually say that? I was, I know Bobby sent us the clip, but I was too embarrassed to listen to it.

He said, I'm willing to throw it all away for Dobbins right now. I think people are misunderstanding my motivations and trying to get Glenn to come draft. Like, Glenn understands what we're about at the big picture. And I think he understands how drafts work and would bring the competition.

And that's what I'm going for. I would love for him to do it. We didn't talk before this, so I didn't suggest that idea to him. But he definitely acknowledged that we have been supportive for a long time, which is true. It's true.

It's all kind of happening for him. And we'll get into the movie and we'll talk about his centrality to the story. But first, we have a piece of news that I wanted to discuss with you. Okay, so this isn't confirmed. It's unconfirmed. It's unconfirmed.

It's like quite unconfirmed. Quite unconfirmed. And it's in the Venn diagram between this piece of rumor and Twitter fan casting is like 75% overlap. Yes, but there is one detail that makes me think there is some truth to it. Okay. And I will get to that. Okay.

So, of course, we learned earlier this year that there's a big project happening at Sony with the director Sam Mendes. It is a quartet of biopics, each about individual members of the Beatles during their time with the Beatles. Of course, those members are John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison.

There was a rumor yesterday, a casting rumor, a bit of reportage about who those, who the actors could be playing those characters. Right. Do you want to read those names for me? Sure. So it's Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Meskel as Paul McCartney,

Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. And Charlie Rowe as George Harrison. So I don't know who Charlie Rowe is. I just Googled him before, like literally as you were doing the intro, I pulled up Charlie Rowe. I don't think I have seen him. He's in something called Gigi and Nate,

which rings a bell. Okay. In terms of, I guess it wasn't a Netflix thing, but. Is anybody here, Bobby, Jack, Alea, anybody know who Charlie Rowe is? No. No one's heard of this person.

So this is the reason why I believe this rumor. That is true. He was apparently in Rocketman and Never Let Me Go. Okay. I like Never Let Me Go. He's on Slow Horses as Ben. Okay. I'm not caught up.

I'm not a Slow Horses watcher. I'm not caught up on... My husband watched it without me. Okay. Just total, total betrayal. Okay. George is an interesting, like, that's a big one. It's a big part.

It's a complicated, he's a complicated character. They're all pretty big because they each get their own. They are big. So, obviously, you and I are big old Beatles dorks. Did we ever actually talk about this happening on the podcast? I thought we did. Maybe you were out when it broke? No, because you texted me when it happened, and you were like, don't say anything.

We're just going to have our emotional reaction on the podcast. And I can't remember whether we ever went there. Here's your chance. How do you feel about Sam Mendes doing four movies about the four Beatles? I guess we did talk about it because I said I was really nervous until everyone on Twitter kept being like, Harris Dickinson, Paul Meskel, Barry Kogan, and Jacob Elordi. And I was like, well, now you have my attention. Jacob Elordi's Aussie, right?

He's not English. Yeah, that's true. I mean, he's played English before and he, you know, he has the hair. If anything, he's just too tall. I feel like it's, I feel like you can't really go outside of England or Ireland for the Beatles is that blasphemy to say that I feel like I mean if were I English or Irish I would feel the same way I don't even know if I were Irish I would feel the same way you you can speak to oh Paul is an Irishman you know John is an Irishman too I mean sure but you know um is John an Irishman too. I mean, sure, but you know, um, is John an Irishman?

I think he is. It's, it becomes complicated very quickly. Anyway, I would agree, but being an American, I don't really care as much.

Yeah. It doesn't matter as much to me. I mean, it's just, it does feel like fan casting. I mean, these are three of the most exciting young male actors

in Hollywood right now. These are huge parts. It's also a huge commitment. This is basically an MCU level commitment in terms of time that you would have to put into this project. Now, I hate music biopics. Right.

I love the Beatles. I love the Beatles more than I love all but like three living humans. So this is a tricky one. Where are you on the casting in terms of who's who mescal as paul mccartney is crack it's so good it's terrifying but like i can also see the lenin i don't think he has any rage or anger in him you don't i don don't. I think Paul Meskel is very gentle to the point of solipsism, much like our beloved Paul.

Harris Dickinson, I'd like to see him dial it up. We get a little bit of a taste of that in The Iron Claw when he grabs the mic early in the film and you see him as the center of the show, which Lennon, of course, could command. Barry Keoghan, I don't know.

I'm a little down on Barry Keoghan post-Saltburn. Rude, why? I just think he's kind of a goof. But I guess Ringo's kind of a goof. He committed to the part. Uh-huh. And he's, as far as I know, still debating, still dating Sabrina Carpenter.

Don't care. She of The Song of the Summer. For whom? To whom? For literally, like, all of America. Tell it to Kendrick Lamar. You know, just tell it to Kendrick. I mean, that is true.

Okay. One half of the song of the summer. The song of the summer for... I mean, I hope he's personally happy. Yeah. I guess Ringo is a goofy guy. So it could be a fun part for him. I mean, this is a lot.

This is a huge thing. You're very muted right now. It has disaster written all over it right but so Sam Mendes it can go great or it can go he's like the will the giants win the world series if Taylor Swift releases an album thing where like

every other Sam Mendes movie is a movie I really like and the last one wasn't good I can't believe the last one happened it's great Empire of Light is crazy and the most COVID shit of all time and it was so bad that we never even really talked about it and I remember watching it on a screener and texting you basically every time Colin Firth and Olivia Goldman had like awkward sex in the closet of the movie theater just like why is this happening to me

yeah yeah and also is that why they don't have sex scenes in movies anymore because that because of in power of light you know on paper that's another thing where it was like two of our two my favorite actors and a love letter to movie theaters yeah you know and you're just kind of like okay well i also love movie theaters and then whatever the hell that was yeah it didn't it didn't work. You know, his movie before that, 1917, a movie I liked a lot, which was a huge hit. What was before 1917? Was it Spectre?

Yeah, that was tough. That movie stinks. Skyfall. Fucking masterpiece. Absolute classic. You know, American Beauty, your favorite movie in the 90s. He's done some interesting work. I love Road to Perdition.

That's a really good movie. I'm the rare revolutionary road guy. Right. I stand for that movie. That's a really good movie. I'm the rare Revolutionary Road guy. Right. I stand for that movie. It's pretty dark, yeah. Jarhead? Are you into that? Have you seen it?

I have seen it. That was like 2005, 2006. Yeah, long time ago. Jake Gyllenhaal being really hot. So I saw it more as like a... I don't think I was taking it seriously as like cinema

and an investigation of war films. What about the midlife crisis movie, Away We Go? Oh my God, I have seen that. I saw that in Brooklyn by myself. And that was really tough because obviously it's set in Brooklyn. I think I saw it at that decrepit Prospect Park Theater before it was shut down for bedbugs and other things. Are you at all impressed that I can just recall every single Sam Mendes movie without looking at anything?

I really am. Because I was just... Because I'm impressed that I just just recall every single Sam Mendes movie without looking at anything? I really am. Because I was just... Because I'm impressed that I just did that. I can't even believe I remembered all those movies. Yeah. Did I forget one?

I must have forgotten one. He did a TV movie of Cabaret. No, that doesn't count. Okay. And then I'm seeing a couple fashion movies here. And then, I guess, films of plays.

Yeah. I know he did the Lehman trilogy yeah yeah yeah and also apparently a King Lear so yeah that's all of his movies and it's a real mixed bag some of the movies I think are darn good some of them I think are literally my least favorite right but so just in terms of this project he's making four so our odds already aren't great that's true you know like best he's best, he's going to bat 500. Yeah.

I mean, three out of every five movies stink. And this is a subject matter where we can't accept like a 500% batting average. You know? I mean, just remember yesterday. I mean, whose movie are you okay with being the worst? And whose movie will you not accept being the worst? And whose movie will you not accept being the worst? It's unfair to Ringo. I really do.

Ringo really... I knew you were going to say that. Well, we're all going to say it. But also Ringo is an incredible drummer. Integral to the band. Yep. Yellow Submarine, really important in my house right now. You know what I've started playing is Good Night from the White Album, sung by Ringo.

You know, beautiful lullaby. Written for, I think it was written for Julian Lennon by John. Okay, that's beautiful. Yeah, great song. I mean, the Paul movie, I would have to riot if it's done incorrectly. I don't understand the scope of the stories. Is this Paul's entire life? Is it just up until he's 25?

Or, you know. Is it all during the Beatles? Can you do like a post-Beatles? I don't know. Like 70s in Scotland? Maybe it's just about his time dating Heather Mills. Oh my God. That was really tough.

They didn't just date, sir. They got married. Yes, they got married. And then and then they got divorced so that is it's not what you want not idea what was the deal there she was a charlatan what happened um i don't i i think that he didn't think through it or they didn't think through it and then it was unhappy uh and there was an ugly law legal proceeding for. Two tickets to all four of these movies for me. Yeah, of course. I'm very excited. What's the release schedule going to be?

I don't know. I don't know. Do you want them, like, all at once? Should it be 26, 27, 28, 29? I mean, are we going to be alive that long? I don't know. You're putting 29 on the table? I mean, this is what marvel

did that's why i'm saying that and the idea of committing or are they all being shot simultaneously and are they all one hour and 40 minute films and that there's an interconnectedness in the scenes that will recur throughout the film or maybe from different perspectives you could see that too right how complex is the writing going to be? I don't know. I think I would prefer to have them as a complete set fairly soon to compare and contrast. Well, we know how great that's going to go for Horizon. I know, but I was going to say, but Horizon is about to just absolutely keep that strategy from ever happening for everyone again. Four years is a long time. I think from a marketing perspective, you kind of need at least six months between a movie.

And if you're... The idea... Okay, so how about this? What's the release order? Because you can't open with Ringo, but you also can't close with Ringo. I think you got to open with Paul and close with John. I agree. Yeah, I agree. There we go. So then what's two and three? Ringo getting stuck in that third slot. Yeah, but that's freeing because then you can really swing for it. You know, you can do something different. You can like revive Ringo. Because here's the thing. The Singer one is like they got to fucking nail the George one.

Because George is the most complex. Yeah. And not even misunderstood, but like least developed of the Beatles. So that has to be like, that's probably your Oscar run is the George one and the Paul one just has to be good and it's Paul Maskell I think it's like this Paul is the Avengers George is Captain America Winter Soldier something that's can we have something that's just us Ringo has to be Captain America Civil War oh that's just us. Ringo has to be Captain America Civil War. Oh, that's the 70s movie? And then John is Endgame and the big conclusion.

Well, now I'm not excited about these anymore. I should just compare everything to Marvel if I want to just fully deflate you. What if we had a nice thing?

What if we had our own shared IP enthusiasm which are these four movies? We have those. Come on. We have Mission Impossible. Yeah, And this. You think there'll be like a lot of stunts in this movie?

Did you see that the Academy is exploring adding a stunt Oscar this morning? I didn't. They're exploring it? That is the fucking power of the fall guy. You put them on blast. Yeah. And then it makes it to the VOD where all the Academy members actually watch it. You know what they should explore?

Yeah. Giving Goodfellas best picture. Have they considered exploring that? Have they considered giving it to Pulp Fiction? Okay. Why don't we redo some of these Oscars if you're exploring things? Do you want them to actually do that?

Sure. That would be a great television special. Okay. The We Fucked Up Oscars. That sounds awesome. All right. You want to talk about that, man? You blew the branding special. Okay. The We Fucked Up Oscars. That sounds awesome. All right. You want to talk about him, man? You blew the branding.

It should be the You Blew It Oscars. We've done this before. I know. I know. Well, you see De Niro outside of the Trump trial every day doing

You Blew It to America. It's amazing. Him yelling at MAGA people is just fascinating shit. Between him... Who thought that was a good idea? Between him dismembering Trump and Amanda taking apart Hillary Clinton, it's over for 2016.

That's right. That's right. That's why I stand behind Sleepy Joe. It's going to be a long fall. There's only one hero left in this civil war. It's going to be a really, really, really long fall. Please subscribe. Like and subscribe.

JMO. Thank you. It's like, we're not going to make it to November. Yeah. That's a really good point. It's so cute that they think that there's going to be a movie about Ringo Starr in 2027. Come on, guys. This is like bottom to the V.

Yeah, great. You fools. Okay. Hitman. Let's discuss it. So this movie premiered at the... Venice Film Festival. Was it Venice?

Yes. But it was... I had to leave. You didn't see it. Okay. I thought it was TIFF for some reason. Was it Venice? Yes, but I had to leave. You didn't see it. Okay, I thought it was TIFF for some reason. It also played TIFF, right? And New York. Yeah, but it definitely, it was kind of later in the week at Venice.

And when the film premiered, it was unacquired. And was it out of Venice that it got bought by Netflix? Or was it later than that? I think it was later. Which is fascinating because the movie opened to, I would say, pretty rave reviews out of the festivals. Now, obviously, there's always a kind of festival inflation for most movies, especially very winning crowd-pleasery type movies.

And those festivals, especially TIFF, are known to inflate the expectations of the movie. Movie got bought by Netflix for $20 million. I would say it's great that a lot of people are going to see this movie. It does really feel like a movie that I wish people could see in a movie theater

because when I watch the movie with another person as I did last night with my wife, when great moments happen, there's the like, you turn and you look at the person and you're like, whoa, that was fun.

You can also watch movies at home with another person. What? I had the same experience with my husband. And we reserved a Saturday night and sat down and watched it. And here's what I'll say. Netflix was willing to pay a pony of them money. It was on sale to everyone.

No one else was buying because our studios don't exist yet. You're right. What can you do? How did you and your husband enjoy your date night watching the film hitman it was delightful yeah yeah we really liked it um and it did even though we were watching it at home felt like a real movie a little bit of like a throwback like you know bigger budget with a movie star going through some stuff and pulling out all the stops. It was just like a great Saturday night film.

And then when I was rewatching it to prepare for this, he was like, oh, maybe I'll come watch it again. Watch it again. Yeah, which, again, is something that you can do on Netflix, but also speaks to the pull of this movie. Yeah, I've actually watched it three times now. Not because it's The Godfather, because it's not, and it's not aspiring to be. But boy, is it watchable. And it's a movie of great scenes. And movies of great scenes, of course, are very rewatchable. It feels like it is in the mold of the kinds of movies that we talk about all the time that we like so much because of that. Because it's very easy to kind of take apart into its component parts. It has some moments

where you're like, maybe I'll check out for a minute. Maybe I'll take a look at my phone. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Netflix kind of, it doesn't encourage that, but it's sort of like, it feels like it insists upon it in some ways when you're watching movies in that format. But it's also very easy to get locked into the very best parts of the movie when you're watching it that way too.

It also has that Linklater, just a great hang vibe of it. So you want to be spending time in this world, even as this world is like very incrementally just being totally turned on its head in a way that is like very fun and fascinating so it does reward paying attention a little bit more than your average just like manic netflix movie yes um but no matter what you still want to spend time with these people which is really a testament to the performances and the movie by the end of it and and certainly to glenn powell yeah he's got it i mean i know we've said that a million times and we said that at the

beginning of this podcast but my guy has it yeah this is really the first movie i think the first movie that he's made that is entirely built around him. You know, he's obviously terrific in Top Gun Maverick. You know, set it up as kind of a two-hander. Anyone But You is a two-hander. Everybody Wants Him is an ensemble piece. Most of the things that he's done, he's been opposite someone.

And he is opposite Adria Arjona in this movie, who's terrific, but she doesn't even show up for 35 minutes for the film. It's completely designed around him. He co-wrote it. He produced it. And he carries it. And it works. Like if you had some doubts about whether or not he was the guy, like this is the confirmation. He's the guy.

It's great. It's a very specific kind of guy too. I kind of want to talk to you about that, about what kind of a movie star he actually is relative to whatever we've been proclaiming we think he could be. Because I think he's maybe more unique than his classically handsome, brown-haired tall guy might indicate. Right. But I think that's a good thing too. Yes. So the movie, of course, directed by Linklater,

who we did the Hall of Fame for last week. We did put this movie in his Hall of Fame. I feel pretty good about that. I think some people were quibbling about whether Bernie should have been in that spot. I think I ultimately just like this movie more than Bernie, but it's pretty close. They're somewhat similar registered.

They really are. They are of a kind. And I like this more than I like Bernie, even though Bernie has some of the stylistic flourishes. The small town chorus is a very cool Linklater achievement, but I like this performance a lot better. And I like what Glenn Powell does with this type of character a lot more than what Jack Black does. And I think it says a lot about him as an actor, to your point.

I agree. The other thing that this has in common is I think both of those films are based on Skip Hollinsworth stories from Texas Monthly, legendary journalist who wrote a piece in 2001 called Hitman that this is based on that Linklater years ago wanted to adapt. were stories from Texas Monthly, legendary journalist who wrote a piece in 2001 called

Hitman that this is based on that Linklater years ago wanted to adapt, couldn't get made. And then I guess a few years ago, Glenn Powell approached him after they had built up this partnership over three films and said, I've always wanted to do something with this story. And Linklater's like, yeah, I know what this fucking story is. I'm friends with Skip Holland's work. I'd like to do it too, which is, I love that little origin about them. You know, they've taken what is a true life story and significantly expanded and convoluted it.

A lot of what happens in this movie is absurd. Some of it is extreme. It seems like Gary Johnson, who's the subject of the story in the film, was a very interesting eccentric character, but not to the lengths that this character goes to. There's a really great addendum at the end of the movie,

like written in cursive, that we are going to spoil it at some point, but we won't go there quite yet. Yeah, they embellished. And it seems like with his understanding and acceptance. I hope so. Yeah. Otherwise, it's got to be really alarming when you sit down in the movie theater to watch that.

It would be a weird thing for your great-grandchildren to discover and not realize. So the movie effectively follows a philosophy teacher who moonlights as a part-time staffer with the New Orleans... He's a professor. He's a professor. Is he a full-time professor? Yeah, at the University of New Orleans. And he has enough time to moonlight for the NOPD? It sure seems like it.

I mean, he starts just as a technician, you know? So I don't know how demanding being an undergrad philosophy professor is, respectfully. I've often thought about this. I married into a family of professors. Yeah. And there's a little bit of like what would you say you do with all this free time going on right it's a i also married into a family of professors congratulations to my mother-in-law who just retired but it's like congratulations

to jane i didn't know that yeah that's great yeah um but it was when you're in like when they're in session when you're in a semester you have to be there at like a specific time to teach the classes. There's not like a lot of flexibility, but then the rest of the time seems like you're researching. Yeah. You know, my father-in-law is a math professor and he wrote a number of textbooks. That's what he did with his free time. So he's written many textbooks about geometry and algebra and things like that. And I guess when you're a professor, moonlighting for some extra dough is something you need to think about. And in this case, Gary Johnson starts working for

the cops. Kind of weird. Interesting nevertheless. You see, in addition to being a person who's interested in the mind and human behavior, he's also somebody who's a little bit of like a tech wonk. And so he gets started building things for them and then ultimately becomes a key participant in is kind of a difficult side business

to wrap my head around, which is effectively busting people who are looking to hire murder for hire hit men. Yeah. I didn't know that this was the sort of thing

that police departments were doing. Well, some of it does seem specific to the state of Louisiana and or your local legal rules about entrapment. Yes. Which aren't fully investigated in this movie. New Orleans for this purpose, the cops are allowed to and regularly set up potential quote unquote clients of hit men, people who think they have been connected with a real life hit man who's going to take care of a problem for them. And then they record the conversation and get enough in order to arrest the person.

They have to receive payment and confirm that they want to have someone killed. And like on a recording, they are often not just audio, often also visual recordings of these people in public places, which I'm not an expert and I'm not a legal official, but I don't know if we could do that here in California. How many hit men have you hired? Well, this is a, this is,

I think like a great part of the, the voiceover, which starts it. And this movie is like very sly. It starts, you think you're in one kind of movie and so do the characters even. And then by the end you're in like three different ones, but I love that about this movie. It's so smart. And it is the characters even. And then by the end, you're in like three different ones. I love that about this movie.

It's so smart and it is so naturally done. But so Glenn Powell, as Gary's doing his voiceover, and he's like, so hitmen don't exist. And I was like, you know what? That's a great magazine lead. I was like, I meant to Google the Skip Hollinsworth article to be like, I hope that that was just, that was the lead because frankly, I didn't know that. and it's you know he and they do a whole thing about how especially

pop culture has led us all we'd like to believe that there is some magical person out there who can take care of all your problems uh but for the most part you're just getting routed to uh local law enforcement yeah there's something amazing in terms of Netflix being the home for this movie, the home of so much true crime documentary, so many stories that are telling us these tales of people

who've been brought in to do these grisly murders. In addition to being the same studio that hosted The Killer, David Fincher's movie starring Michael Fassbender, about an operative like this.

Right, but even there, it's like, that is part of a secret conglomerate. a world beyond a world a world beyond a world and only like very fancy people are have access to it and this is this is really feet on the ground yeah low level blue collar hit men for hire this is a guy asking around at a strip club for a recommendation and then being funneled to the local police. And really to Gary, the Glenn Powell's characters, like second phone, which is his police phone. the person who had been operating for the police department, a detective on the force who was acting as this hitman as they were setting up these traps, not entrapment, but traps in New Orleans, was caught on video beating up teenagers.

I love this little detail. This movie is not a big fan of police officers. No, it's not. Quite amusingly. And this dirtbag cop was beating up teenagers. So he was suspended for four months. And so in a jam at the last minute, this Gary character, who's basically a tech for the NOPD,

needs to step up. And freelance. Needs to step up. Now, I would say this strains a little bit of credulity. I'd like to hear a little bit more about Gary Johnson's experiences. I think putting a man in the position of being a fake hitman in front of a violent criminal, feels like some liability issues

potentially there nevertheless I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on that one because Gary takes to this like a fish to water he's really good at this

and then what I like about this is the entire theme of this film is if you're not really happy with who you are or your station in life

can you change it? can you change yourself? can you change who you are? can station in life, can you change it? Can you change yourself? Can you change who you are? Can you change your circumstances? And as a person who is constantly shifting character throughout the film, he gets to confront that question while also acting as a philosophy and psychology professor where he's also asking those same ideas. Can you change it?

And also, how much determination do you have over who you are or how much understanding and can you surprise yourself and or do you really have have any idea what you're gonna be up to until you find yourself in this particular position yes fate versus destiny is an interesting way to think about this there are are other ways to think about it. The first 30 minutes of the movie is, and I mean this as a compliment, is sort of like Glenn Powell does Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor, where he's just playing like between six and 12 characters across 30 minutes. And the movie, it feels like is telling you,

even though it has this kind of voiceover that have these disquisitions about identity and the history of the hitman. For the most part, it's kind of a goofy comedy. It's a lighthearted comedy. It's character-oriented comedy. Right. You don't really know where the story is going.

Like, it's not building towards any narrative momentum. It's actually quite episodic of showing us, you know, potential hitman hire after hire. Right. And the Glenn Powell character committing fully to the bit of each character so it is almost like little snl skits they're very funny and netflix has been using them really well i mean here in los angeles like every billboard bus are like the local bus stop with the used to have a picture of a baby that my son liked to visit is now a picture an advertisement from one of glenn powell's hitmen oh um that's the poster that mom likes to visit now yeah yeah like oh look noxian interested in this um but and and

in the very like la billboard style of like instead of an injury lawyer it's like you have a problem and here's like glenn powell Glenn Powell in a wig with a Russian accent. So of all of the Gary Johnson hitmen, which is your favorite? I really enjoyed the American Psycho. That's my favorite. Yeah, that's very funny. And they don't even, it's just like a visual cue. You like notice it immediately or you don't, but it's spot on.

And I was like, oh, interesting. Glenn Powell could do that. Yes, the non-acknowledgement of the inspiration if you had seen him at home watching American Psycho you wouldn't feel as good about that joke as when you hear his voice and you're like huh okay he's just he's just suited up but the exact tie the tie clip the hair is back to so I also like the mostly silent Glenn Powell with a lot of freckles and the sort of like camel hair coat zipped all the way up. And he has like a little page boy Bob that's like very. This is later in the film.

Later in the film. When he's outside the oil rig. Yeah, you know who I'm talking about. But it's just very visually funny. Yeah. He seems to be having a blast he has said that he did not reveal

any of those characters to Richard Linklater before they started shooting so he would show up on set in full costume and ready to do a voice or have mannerisms

and he was surprising Linklater every time which seems pretty risky I would say that this stuff is very fun but very broad and

like to the point of goofiness in a way that is not necessarily out of place in a Linklater movie that this stuff is very fun but very broad and like to the point of goofiness in a way that is not necessarily out of place in a Linklater movie but is ultimately not what it really kind of

wrong foots you for what at least wrong footed me for what kind of movie I thought this was going to be and I would say I was a little like dubious of it

honestly through the first 30 minutes it's fun but I was like I thought this was going to be something different and maybe that's just me reacting to the pre-release hype and then the

second act starts well then ron shows up right so so one of his characters is ron who just turns out to be the hottest person alive and it's really funny because it as the movie goes on and he's alternating between gary and this ron character that he's inventing and it's happening, it really is just like a little bit of hair pomade and the right fitted shirt and like a necklace, a pendant necklace. But it is... Are you saying there's a Ron inside us all? Wouldn't that be nice? This is something I talked about with my wife last night. So Glenn Powell, the way he's framed originally in the film when he's playing Gary, his hair is floppier.

Yeah. He's kind of in his face a little bit. He's wearing glasses. He's very poorly dressed. He's just kind of like a doof. He's got two cats named Id and Ego. Yeah. He's kind of like a loser-y, nerdy guy, but, you know, a nice guy, but just kind of ordinary. Yeah. And

in seemingly the span of like four minutes he transforms into a credible Tom Cruise-esque movie star hitman well but he has

all of those like in-betweens where he's inventing all these people and the character is like takes to it

very quickly he has there's this one amazing the first scene his first hitman scene he gets thrown in because Jasper the old guy finally gets suspended yep um and you kind of see something click on in his face first he has to trade pants he's wearing jorts so he trades pants with one of

his fellow police officers sad as hell jorts are big no-no and he's also wearing fisherman sandals which are like also a big no-no. And he's also wearing fisherman sandals, which are like... Also a big no-no. Actually, they're like incredibly fashionable right now. Do not care. But it's like he's not wearing the fashionable ones, you know? Yeah. That's like saying like a bright green unitard is incredibly fashionable. We'll never wear it.

And you cannot tell me otherwise. You would look terrible in them. And you shouldn't wear them. But there are a lot of fisherman sandals out there right now that i would love to own so he changes clothes just he changes pants in the parking lot and sits down and it's like this part of him that he didn't know was there and that certainly no one else listening who was there jumps out and then pretty quickly he's just like googling like you know how to do a fake beard with makeup and how to do a russian accent and is like this is a person who definitely once it's unlocked like throws himself into the character work pretty quickly so you know that like

something's going on there yeah well there's a critical scene in the first stages of the movie where he meets up with his ex-wife who's pregnant and they've remained friends and they have this conversation. It's kind of casual in the college square. Right. Did Eileen clock who this actress is, by the way? She she's from younger. I think she said, yes, Molly Bernard. And she plays like a publicist, just incredibly, incredibly over the top, big personality. So it was like very confusing to see her in the like rational therapist. It like took me a minute to place her.

She's very good. She is very good. And she is sort of confronting the Gary character about the stagnation of his life. The fact that he lives with these two cats. He's not really moving forward in any way. You know, his ex-wife is now pregnant and on to the next phase of her life. The fact that he lives with these two cats, he's not really moving forward in any way. You know, his ex-wife is now pregnant and on to the next phase of her life. And she starts asking him about like how he's going to fix things. And she's like, I think you should see someone. He says, you mean a therapist? She says, no, I mean a woman.

But then, you know, it becomes clear that he's using this hitman, these hitman personas to work through some questions of identity and who he's going to be in the future. And then he gets a new assignment. He discovers who the potential client is going to be. And he comes up with Ron. Yeah. You think if you had Ron in you, that might be one of the first places you go? He does very specifically go through her Instagram and Facebook page. And he's like like this girl is a smoke show I need to tap Ron one of the most beautiful women I've seen on screen

in some time which is how I feel about Adria Arjona and have since I watched the Father of the Bride remake but it's but it's so it's like Gabe recognizes Gabe

and then suddenly Ron is unlocked some of us have been here since Six Underground and Triple Frontier just on the Adria Arjona oh yeah I yes okay yeah she's she's been doing good work for a long time this is a bit of a breakthrough Some of us have been here since Six Underground and Triple Frontier, just on the Adria Arjona. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. She's been doing good work for a long time. This is a bit of a breakthrough, though, because they have this meeting and something funny happens, which is that Ron effectively, after a bit of flirting and some natural chemistry between them, encourages her to back out of the deal. And she is also in this.

It's a sad story. Everyone else who is trying to hire the hitman, does he go by Ron for all the other names? Or we just, we only know the names of Ron. Ron Burgundy for all the other names, yeah. Well, all the other people who meet with his various hitmen are also comedic in their own way and what they're asking for.

Yes. And you know, um, and the situations and also their understanding of what's going to happen versus what does actually happen, which is them with a mugshot. Um, so she's presented very sympathetically and it's just like clearly in a,

at best controlling worst abusive marriage there's a suggestion that there's domestic violence in the house she's made you know as he looks at her history he sees that there's been domestic disturbance calls so she says that he doesn't let her work she asks for some of his pie because her husband has her on a diet and also the pie is just that the pie is the signal for every um every hitman encounter the person is supposed to say is that pie good and then glenn powell says all pie is good which is true and i enjoyed that detail how is zach's diet going you've been keeping him on that it's everything he's eating well so he gets to eat pie um yeah but you know he this is the thing is

that like he doesn't really like dessert that's true so and i i love it careful revealing this yeah this is well i think controversial take from zach what my brother who i'm having dinner with tonight maybe i'll force feed him some pie yeah what's that your brother oh no he's my brother i was like i was like oh you're my other brother no not kyle my other brother my brother from another. Yeah. But it's tough. Whenever there is any sort of dessert in the home, it's like suddenly I know exactly how much dessert I'm consuming over a period of a week because I know that Zach didn't have

any of the pie. How often will you house an entire pie? That's the problem. It's like once it's in the house, I'm like, wow, we got this on Tuesday and now it's Saturday and there's a lot gone and there's no one else who could be responsible. Who could have done this? Like, where is it? It's quite sobering.

Really, I think you should leave energy wearing the hot dog costume. Yeah. But other, you know, otherwise he's lots of vegetables, lean proteins, you know. He's very fit. Mediterranean diet. He started doing Pilates, so. That's great for him. Yeah.

Anyhow, you know, it becomes clear that this woman, Madison, and Ron have a chemistry. He encourages her not to go ahead with this decision to have his wife, have his husband, have her husband murdered. The force looks down upon this decision because that's not something hitmen are supposed to do. Because they're listening and watching and they're like, what are you doing? Yes. Particularly Jasper, who is the suspended police officer who's come back to work, but is now observing and not participating in some of these acts because they don't want him to be public facing after his incident beating up teenagers. Right. And you know, a bit of a red... Nine million people have watched the video. Yes. The police chief shares with us.

Bit of a red flag there on Ron's part, though. Or Gary's, I should say. Although we do learn that, you know, Retta and Sanjay Rao, who play his kind of co-conspirators in this NOPD work, they also really respond to Ron. Yeah.

We all want to fuck Ron. That's really what this movie is about. We all want to fuck Glenn Powell. Like, every Glenn Powell movie now is kind of like, I want to fuck that guy, but that's movie stardom. Yeah. You know? And I respect it. I think it's a good, I think, you know what? And if you can write that character for yourself, all the better. Madison clearly also wants to fuck Ron and she texts him. She invites him to the dog rescue fair that she's sponsoring. Yeah. You sponsor one of those. What are they like?

I do think that if you're going to acquire a dog, rescue is a great way to go. Okay. And then I just hope you're prepared to take care of your dog and not leave it outside barking all the time or running up and attacking me. Those are my hopes. Not a dog person. I'm not a dog owner person. I actually really like dogs and i think most dog owners are irresponsible maniacs interesting that's another pod um anyhow it's not the dog's fault it's the dog owner who's just not taking responsibility well the dogs in this film don't have owners which is what makes this such a sweet scene and they uh the chemistry is clear between madison and ron you know and then he goes off and plays football with a bunch of kids. Right.

Also, like, God, fall in love with me, please. Just fall. I'm good with kids. I've got a good arm. It's also like a real Tom Cruise playbook. You know, he's like cuddling a puppy and then he turns around and then just launches it. Yeah. But Glenn, I mean, you know, Glenn is from Texas.

He's like, he's an athlete. You can tell. It's great. It's good stuff. I mean, it's very, all that stuff. It's like, he's an athlete. You can tell. It's great. Yeah, it's good stuff. I mean, it's very, and all that stuff, it's cliche in the way that you want it to be.

And the movie, for the next 30 minutes or so, becomes this, I would say, ultimately steamy romance. Like it is really, it shifts its tone pretty significantly

and becomes focused on Madison and Ron falling in love and then trying to keep secret their love affair. Because she wants to get a divorce. She wants to hide from her ex. He, of course, doesn't want to reveal his real identity.

Right. To her or to his employers because he's now dating the woman that he saved from arrest. So she's clearly... Like, not ideal. she's turned on by the fact that he's killed people yeah in fact she has a lot of questions she's inquiring she's interested is that appealing to you oh someone that kills people yeah no not even a little bit no i don't what about the mechanics of it because she does she has some questions about how it works right where should i shoot and this becomes the first time watched this, I didn't pick up on this. But then as you're watching the movie, you're like, she's asking a lot of these questions for a reason.

Yeah, and they're all like, they're in a bathtub while she's asking it. So, you know, it becomes foreplay. You're a little distracted. Yeah. think a spy i would have a ton of questions about logistics you know secrets like you know does all of this really exist was john lecrae right like how do you do it like tradecraft the actual just like a hitman who's just waiting to shoot someone i guess you would be interested in logistics but i'm not really a true crime person, you know? And it does seem to me more an indication of like,

psychopathy than, you know, sexual prowess, just personally. Interesting thought. Haven't really considered it. I've not murdered anyone yet. I think that this part of the movie is where the movie comes alive for me. I'm in the bag for Adria Arjona. Who is that? I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, this is kind of an important one, I think, for her going to the next phase. But they are very, very good together. And you believe the sexual chemistry between them for sure. And that's a big part of this part of the movie. And then at a certain point, as they're out one night, they encounter Jasper, who is already frustrated by, well, actually, you're right.

They encounter her ex-husband first. Have a bit of a face-off. Right. That sets a series of events off into motion. Then in the same night. Encounter Jasper. Because, you know, movies do sometimes rely on coincidences. Yes.

At the local Frosty Freeze, whatever it's called. I think Frosty Top. I just, I need one of those on every corner. I enjoy them as well. Foster's Freeze, that's your brand, right? Yeah. I mean, that's what we have here. And there's one in my neighborhood, one near Salazar, my son's favorite restaurant in Los

Angeles. So I go there a lot. I recently got the chocolate dipped cone and the chocolate was like a little thicker than I wanted it to be. That would be my one Foster's freeze note right now. What are you talking about? I just, you know, I should have gone with like the blizzard, the twisty type thing. I know next time. Thanks for sharing that. I think at the frosty top in the film, they're sharing an ice cream. Yeah. A banana split. That sounds right. Do you like a banana split? I do like a banana split. Jasper shows up. He's in there. He's getting some takeout.

I think I have a lactose intolerance. I haven't been tested for that. I do think that as well, based on how you yell about how dairy is evil all the time. Yeah. I mean, I think ice cream is delicious. Have you considered that maybe it doesn't feel good? I have no philosophical quarrel with ice cream. No, I know. Remember the time when you just ate the scoop of ice cream in front of all five of us? Like it was no problem. Yeah. You know why? It was my birthday and it wasn't your birthday. Never forget. It actually was like two days later, but that's fine. I would have happily driven to wherever you wanted to go and I would have watched you eat ice cream.

But unfortunately for you, you had to watch me. Jasper is suspicious, curious. Now, Austin Emilio plays Jasper. I'd like to draw attention to him. I first saw him in Everybody Wants Him. He's a fucking genius. He's a genius in this movie. He's the superpower of the movie.

And he is someone who can play both broad and sly. And that's ultimately the kind of movie that this is. This is a broad comedy and it's also a sly noir. And him seeing Madison and Ron together, or Madison and Gary, as it were, gets his wheels turning a little bit. Because he's looking for a way back into the force. And that really

sets off like the chain of events for what happens next well sort of one other thing happens yes so if you don't feel like you've been spoiled already we're now going to officially spoil the final 30 minutes of this movie which is that spoiler warning it becomes clear at a meeting of uh the detectives working on these cases that after a meeting between madison's ex-husband and ron to potentially kill madison after that meeting madison's ex-husband has killed himself in a reported drug deal. Right. When in fact, it's fucking Madison who's been getting all this info from this hitman, has killed him

and moved the body the way that he has trained her to insinuate that this is a drug deal gone wrong. Yeah. Everything's gone awry in this world. But the scene where she reveals that to him, and then he reveals that he's not a hitman. Second best scene in the movie.

Yeah, it's a very, very delightful scene because she's not even, he comes to check on her, but he knows that Jasper was like sort of on his case already. And he's like, have you figured things out? You know, are you okay? Did, you know, what have you heard? Trying to feel her out and then she like very sheepishly confesses because she thinks that she is confessing to a guy who does this all the time and was someone that she's going to be with for a long time yeah and also she she thought that she was in danger she was like you said he was going to come and kill

me so i went to kill him and then And then Glenn Powell has like a really great, you know, just like, I'm not a hit man. I've never done this before. He goes from Ron to Gary in real time. And it's great. It's really special. Very, very funny.

Very fun. And then that necessitates trying to protect each other from this scam that they have been running. Ron slash Gary goes back to the police department. They're trying to figure out how to determine whether or not Madison is responsible for this crime, which then leads to, I think is probably the movie scene of the year short of riding the Shia Lute. That's like, those are the two scenes. I guess there's some Challenger stuff too, but those two scenes

are really, these are my favorite. This is, and when I was watching the movie, I was like, this is a fun movie. And then when this scene comes, I i was like this is a fun movie and then when this scene comes i was like this is a great yeah they did it yeah and it's a scene where effectively jasper joins ron on a trip to go visit madison at her home they all do to right they all do to interrogate her in real time to get to the bottom of whether or not she could be responsible for the murder which i mean again just like does not seem like great police work but part of the knowing joke of this movie is that they're not very good. Not good cops.

Yeah, they're not good at being cops. And so he goes to her front door and he has to get her to play along with their ruse inside of a ruse. And so he does that with something that we always say most modern filmmakers don't use. Yeah. Because they don't want to make contemporary movies

because they don't want to deal with cell phones. This is the first time in a while where I thought, what a great use of a cell phone in a movie. It was perfect. So it's Notes app. And he knocks on the door and he has the first Notes app prepared and effectively says like, they're listening. We're on the same team. And he keeps prompting her. And so he's prompting her with the Notes app and the things he really wants to say to her and then they're both doing a performance for the team that's listening but then they're also you know acting to each other with the visual cues and glenhouse so i mean they're both so good at it and the energy turns like 45 times and it's also fluid it makes perfect sense i mean it doesn't make sense because like

why are these cops behaving you know why why is this how quote-unquote law enforcement works but you're following the narrative of and the motivations of the scene spot on um staging blocking choreography writing of this scene in addition to those two performances this is off the charts it's just like, and it's small, obviously. It's small stakes. It's just a character movie, but so exciting.

It's so fun. Just clever. Just really clever. And they pull off their scam. They get out of it effectively. Jasper is just stymied and bewildered. He kind of can't figure out how they pulled that off.

But we learn very quickly thereafter that after ron thinks he's in the clear he does the thing that you know you just don't do in a movie like this and this is when the movie is like fully a noir film at this point he just goes back to the house later that night yeah you just can't yeah you can't do that and when he arrives jasper's way you can't really be sleeping with the woman that you like very obviously on camera we're like don't don't do this you also can't be a fake hitman you know there's so many things you can't do like i mean i guess this is based on the real life so some police departments are doing this but i guess yeah let's call them now okay um this leads essentially to the last scene of the movie before a kind of epilogue.

Right. Where Jasper has caught them. It's as soon as Gary knocks on the door of Madison's house. He knows you guys were in cahoots the whole time. You managed to pull the wool over our eyes. And he's going to blackmail them for the insurance money that Madison's going to get from her ex-husband's death. Except,

and did you see this coming? She has effectively been poisoning him, drugging Jasper throughout this conversation where he's explaining his grand plan. I saw it once

she offers to get him another beer. His beer, exactly. And he passes out. And then they make this pretty bold choice. Well, not even even I mean really they it's really Gary

it's really Gary he just gets up with like an eerie amount of calm and rifles to that same under the sink cupboard that we all have and like very calmly pulls out a plastic bag and goes and puts it over Jasper's head and she says like

what are you doing? Or what is this? And he was like, this is commitment. And then ties the plastic bag and they have a romantic, you know, reunion interlude at the kitchen Island as Jasper is like, dies.

Love to make out while killing a cop. Like literally, but he's back in the shot. He's in the back of the shot it's hilarious and weird and fun filmmaking

yeah the into focus out of focus background foreground is really really good uh so he killed this cop made it look like a suicide

yeah and then hard cut we get one sequence where he's teaching his class again which is something that is sort of interspersed throughout the film is him delivering

these kind of disquisitions about ideas of identity and whether or not we have the control the ability to control who we are in the world uh funny moment right at the end of that where or no that's in the previous scene where like the two co-eds realize that their professor is hot yeah you know because he's channeling more ron than gary in that sequence which i thought was a fun little note and then we cut away to like basically happily ever after so i wanted to talk to you about the happily ever after part they are married they have two children yeah they're class parents um gary is still burning burning teaching his daughter

about birds you know he's probably found a kind of equilibrium between gary and ron right they are murderers yeah well that's true and the first time i watched it i was like i mean i was surprised throughout and the whole time you know that that phone scene is so exhilarating and then the last scene is um both so matter of fact and also like wait what's jarring yeah um and then the epilogue you're like oh okay but i like that they play it really straight i like that because they do it is like a true it is presented to you as happily ever after and then it's on you to be like okay but wait a second you're all murderers there's's this funny moment where Madison is talking to another parent or a teacher at the class. Yeah.

And she says, the teacher says, thanks so much for stepping up. You know, Jane bailed on me at the last minute. I could literally strangle her. Right. And then there's a cut and the camera holds on Madison's face where she's realizing that, you know, she has asphyxiated a person. Sure, yeah. And also murdered her husband. Right.

And so, you know, she does have to live with the fact that they've murdered them, but also, they have like the 2.4 kids in the cool house in New Orleans, you know? The movie does know.

It's not... Definitely. It just wants you to do the work, which is, I think, like a very good, cool choice of you just being like, huh, okay, rather than, you know, and this is when i was thinking about bernie where like jack black is like really amping up the fact that

he's like i'm the nice guy but also i'm capable of horrible things and isn't that isn't that funny and strange and like shouldn't you know shouldn't, we all spend a lot of time being like, huh, this is fascinating. And this is just, this is so straight to the point of like, this is what they did. And now they're fine. And how do you feel about that? One thing I like about it,

obviously this is not something that Gary Johnson in real life actually did, but- Yeah, so that's the thing, the asterix is like, there were no murders. Yes. He was just an eccentric guy who did work for the police department in this capacity, but the movie identifies something that a lot of true crime identifies in a much different tone, which is that like murderers go home to their families and have a nice dinner. Yeah. That happens all the time.

Yeah. And sometimes they live with terrible crimes for years and years and years, and they otherwise seem like super nice people. Great little evocation of that. I'm curious to see how audiences react to this. Maybe they'll be like, yeah, I was rooting for those guys. But then when you really unwind it, you're like, maybe don't shoot your ex-husband.

I was like, huh, really? And then the more I thought about it, the more I was like, wow, that's bold and kind of funny. I agree. I'm glad that they didn't do some sort of heavy-handed, I don't know, whether it's like some big speech

or act of contrition or even something even more winking because that is what's funny about it is that it's not even that winking. I guess there's that last moment where the little kid is like, how did you two meet? And they're like, but they don't milk it.

There's a place called the Please You Cafe. So what do you think about Nietzsche's proclamation to live dangerously? Is it correct? Because, you know, Gary suggests that this is a pertinent idea at the beginning of the film. Right. And then at the end, he gives,

in that little epilogue, he gives the speech about how I used to think that, you know, truth and reality were objective. And now it's like an amalgamation, which obviously serves his current... His moral relativism.

Yeah, exactly. Whatever you need to get through the day, I guess. But what do you believe? What do I believe? His moral relativism. Yeah, exactly. Whatever you need to get through the day, I guess. What do you believe? What do I believe? About living dangerously? Are you the author of your own fate? I don't know. Am I?

By asking me that question, you're confirming that you're not. You know, you could draw... Don't you think I am, sort of? I think you have assumed a persona that announces that you are, while also realizing that there are things that are out of your control. Yeah, but the things are out of my control. I really try not to have much to do with, you know, I do feel like. For example, the presidential election. What am I going to fucking do?

Honestly, I vote in California. What the fuck do I get to do? You got to build back better. You know, that's what you got to do. I mean, I know, but like, do I feel great about it? I don't know. I can't say. Is life a performance for you? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just one more thing. Who is it? Is it Zachary Levi who is in Harold and the Purple Crayon and is also a big RFK Jr. guy? I'm just looking forward to that episode of JMO. Is he an RFK Jr. guy? I saw that on Twitter last night because that is just going to be a very special very special time for us well

we'll have to review his work more closely and see if we can see some of those ideas are crossing over into the shazam films in any way uh is life a performance that's something this movie is very interested in which i think is a good idea uh what does it mean to accept someone else's flaws? Yeah. I like that part of this too. I do too. It is not always knowing in this movie,

which I think is very true to life. It's just kind of like, oh, okay, well, now here we are. We're going to find a way to make this work. This has a great version of it though where it's like, what if you met a baddie

but she was just killing guys? How would you feel about that? Would it be okay? Would you be able to get through it? So Glenn Powell I think stands to benefit greatly from this movie. I think

I wonder if just more living humans will see this movie than the movie Twisters which is the other big movie that's coming out next month. It does seem so, right? I wonder, I don't know.

Just in terms of Netflix and Netflix Reach. Does this feel like a big number one on the charts kind of movie, though? I sure hope so. I mean, we didn't construct the Glenn Powell bubble, but we do tend to its upkeep. We've cleaned the exterior. So we're mixing the solution, the bubble solution. It's non-toxic.

So we are like extra exposed, you know, but it does. He's working so hard. He's everywhere and I'm thrilled for him. And people do seem aware of that, at least outside the bubble. And I just, people can turn it on on netflix you know it really it really is that simple so i really think it should have come out last weekend on netflix sure there really was just nothing on the board i know it's easy to say now yeah but and i know it was released in theaters prior to this in a small number of theaters but you know

it is going up against the new bad boys movie right the watchers is also coming out there are a couple of like wide release films that it's theoretically competing against but it is an interesting test i mean in the run of our schedule i was like we're doing hitman first we're doing bad boys for second yeah because it's helpful because i haven't seen it yet well same um but i think do you want to go tomorrow we can talk about this i'm already going what time i'll see you at the burbank 16 what the the fuck? Why don't, why can't you, why? I text you and I'm like, here's my plan. And you just do your own thing.

That's right. I am the author of my own fate. See, I've brought it around. Adria Arjona, will she get a bump? I hope so. She's also dating Jason Momoa, who hard launched her like two weeks ago, which is just, that's really great boyfriend behavior. Big W.

Yeah. thank you to Jason Momoa for that Lisa Bonet to Adria Arjona he's got it is apparently what we're learning we salute you sir

congratulations Austin Emilio I hope he gets a lot of work I do as well he's funny he's great any other thoughts on this movie

I hope people watch it me too I think they will yeah I hope you watch it before you made. I think they will. Yeah. I think that they will. I hope you watched it before you made it to this part of the podcast. Tell your friends about it. Yeah.

And if you want to hear more about it, you should stay tuned to my conversation right now with Glenn Powell and Richard Linklater. In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really? Yeah. There's the sausage bacon and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour.

They sound amazing. Bet they taste amazing too. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax at participating McDonald's restaurants. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. What a joy. Richard Linklater and Glenn Powell are on the podcast I'm very excited to be speaking with them about Hitman this is actually your fourth collaboration Rick I was wondering if you remember first setting eyes on Glenn Powell what hey yeah hey as a grown man when you set eyes on 14 year old Glenn Powell what was that yeah wow yeah my life has never been the same um

um it's been a while hasn't it but yeah no I remember working with Glenn you know he's a young guy um people ask well what was he like I was like he was a good young actor I don't know I've worked with a lot of them I I wouldn't have you of them. We had fun together. We got some pictures to document the time. It was like you, me, and Paul Dano. If you want to find Glenn, look for Paul Dano in the movie and you're kind of standing next to him. You're the guy with the cast on your arm.

I always say, Glenn must have had something. So many people want those parts. There's so many young actors. I cast you, Robert Rodriguez had cast you in Spike, Ethan Hawke had cast you. So you were getting cast in a lot of things. So I would think teenage Glenn Powell had something. You had some charm. You were, you were just a younger, much younger version of yourself, but I didn't really get to know you. I feel the adult you tell everybody wants them. Obviously that's where this story really begins.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the fun part about fast food nation though, is I broke my arm, my wrist,

uh, playing like, I was like, I think I slid into a base and I like kind of tweaked this like tiny little bone in my wrist. And, but I had to have this like full arm cast. So I had to call Rickick i'd already been cast

in fast food nation so i had to be like hey i have a a cast now a broken arm and rick i was like i should have said you're fired i literally thought i was like okay i'm gonna get fired from this damn movie and rick and rick literally goes you know there was always a kid in high school with a cast he's like yeah that's perfect that's even better that's great it's you know it's like and and that just shows like rick's sort of like you know process he's not like you know stuck in his ways so my definable attribute that movie is having a pink cast it's really we had our own version of that on this movie when molly calls up and says oh you know i'm pregnant that's right the woman playing your molly bernard your ex-wife didn't know it when she was cast but did in a did in a month or so later.

I'm pregnant. I'm going to be showing. And we both went, oh, cool. That makes it even more complex. You got to roll with that. That's a really good point. Have you seen the movie? I have, of course.

Yeah. But yeah, so the woman who plays my ex-wife, that was a thing that she was not originally supposed to be. It's a real thing that Gary Johnson was actually like friends with his exes. And it was very close, very close, like kind of in a way that you're like, Oh, that's kind of compelling that,

you know, his ex wife is like his, one of his, one of his ex wife is his best friends. Yeah. And, and, but this idea that she was pregnant added this whole kind of other complex,

like part to that relationship that her life was moving on that. Yeah. That's really the departure point where it's like, you can't really be best friends with your ex-wife once she's like a mother. And, you know, it's like,

it just changes things. So adds a poignancy and a little sadness. Yeah. You know, you know, so it was like, yeah, it was a fascinating thing.

How sometimes like life, like if you don't fight it life can kind of give you a better creative solution I've always approached filmmaking like that well if the world's

throwing at you you just gotta incorporate into your thing best you can you know because it will be throwing stuff at you that's for sure

I wanted to ask you guys about that you know that Skip Hollinsworth story is at least in my weird journalism circles is pretty legendary like who's

was it you Glenn that had read it? Like, had you guys talked about this when you were doing Everybody Wants Some? Like, how did this actually come about? Rick had read this article when I was in seventh grade. He actually reminded me of that. When I brought him the article 20-something years later, I was like, Hey, I read this really great article. Yeah, it's really cool.

I said, Glenn, I read that when you were in junior high. I know it really well. I'm friends with Skip. I read everything you write. So I immediately started putting toppers on you. But the bottom line was you had read it, even though it was years apart. And I finally had someone to talk to about it, about how the hell to make it a movie, because I was sort of alone all those years thinking about it and it didn't quite work it was so cool to talk to you as a creative

person as an actor who might play the part you know it's like oh now the log jam kind of broke in our many hours of conversation starting during the pandemic you know yeah that was very early in the pandemic and like yeah that's another kind of of weird opportunity that kind of put in front of us this like feeling that everybody in the pandemic was kind of going through like an identity crisis. Like everybody was like doing hobbies and activities they would never do before. And they were kind of acting out of character because they didn't know if the world was going to end and like they didn't know what was on the other side and and so and like you know the relationships they were they were in you know did they say murder for hire cases went up during the pandemic and didn't we say that i'm not sure breakups went up a lot definitely breakups i wonder if people felt stuck i wonder i don't know what it feels like i feel like there's a stat there that we need to look into that is a nice uh yeah indicator oh the solicited murder for cases went up during this era yeah well it does it does follow recessions yeah yeah you know it's

like everything else yeah so so but the interesting part about um i think the interesting part about the pandemic was how people were kind of following their identities. You realized how malleable they were. They felt stuck in their identities. And that was a thing that I think was on a lot of our minds at the time about who are we and who are we going to be on the other side of this thing? Are you stuck with yourself? Can you become a different person?

Can you willfully make yourself a different better person or whatever so yeah that was all in the air and then so like that these sort of concepts of like identity were already in the air and then we were talking about when we looked at that article the the hitman article by skip hollingsworth i think what we really like zeroed in on is there was obviously a compelling character here there was a guy that was like you know he was a, a psychology teacher and he was moonlighting with the police department. He was like an amateur ornithologist. He was like all these things that you're like, what,

what is this guy? Right. It was like all these different things. And in addition, he was putting on the mask of all these different people in order to, you know, embody their fantasy of what they thought a hit man was because real hit men don't exist.

So there's all these things like you were just like this is the most fascinating character ever so really what we i think really zeroed in on there was this this paragraph in that article about this woman that he met that was trying to kill her husband and he sat down with her and he as opposed to all the other people where he was like you're a criminal criminal, like I'm going to put you away. He really met this person who was like, I think she's actually in danger. And I think that this is more complicated than it is simple. And he, and then we kind of took it from there and like, you know, talked about, okay, well, if he let this person off, and became friends with her like was he still this hitman like was he stuck in that we made that we like okay the article ends there basically we're

not even we're about a third of the way through the movie or whatever um yeah it's like well what if she called him up just to thank him yeah as ron and then what if she called him up and invited him to some event what would it be you know You know, like, oh, a dog charity. Oh, how sweet. You know, it's like, oh, but she thinks he's Ron. But wait, you like Ron. So it becomes this kind of body switch, you know, story of identity. That's when it got really deep.

And it also got, you know, genre-y. That's where we kind of entered film noir. Like, well, what if she asks you more? What if her husband goes, like, oh, she's setting you up what's going on there and then we made the big leap because oh we're not going to make her some black widow who sets him up to kill you know that's the trope of a lot of noir you know it's like well what if what if they're kind of meant for each other what if you met your soulmate it was like the weirdest meet cute you know you could have like you're going to kill somebody but you know and now what if you're meant for each other,

then that makes it a screwball comedy. What's keeping you apart? What do you have to do to truly be yourselves and be together? Well, that's a long gauntlet to run there. So I don't know. That's when I think it all kicked in, but that's when it got really fun. I like all the wrong footing and kind of shaggy dog 70s movie vibe that it has in general too i always like to interview uh screenwriting duos because i think in our head we picture like two guys back to back banging at typewriters but that's not usually how it works so you wrote this together so what does that mean back to back just elbowing you know this one was unique because we

never once were in the same space no this is a completely virtual good thing we had known each other for years but we were never once and never feeling the lack we were so done with this by the time we even remember we yeah you were in austin we sat down and like oh we haven't really been with you the last year but you we haven't actually been in person. So it's a modern era. Yeah, it was kind of crazy the fact that most of this movie was broken over calls. We just outlined this entire movie by just... During the pandemic, we both had a lot of time, so we'd just kind of be riffing and talking.

And whenever he felt inspired, whenever I felt felt inspired there was just sort of no barriers we just sort of bat bat send of the bat signal and just hop on the phone and and we were pretty systematic we got to it once we really decided what it was we you know very methodical yeah outline then we started writing the script you know working on dialogues and simultaneously to, we were doing a lot of research too. There's a lot of research to be done into something that doesn't exist, like retail hitman. He had a ton of journalistic work. He had all these bad VHS, hidden camera things from the 90s, really shitty looking video and a lot of audio and just how banal these conversations are, how bizarre it is.

Here's someone making the biggest decision you could ever make. I'm going to end this person's life. They think they're making this decision. And it's yet so banal, so weird. It was just creepy, but really darkly funny. So I think the tone for the movie was was kind of there in that dark humor that's really true of these people it's like the desperation desperate people are kind of funny you know well but they're kind of playing roles and like the

the thing that i took from like a lot of that research yeah they're playing the role they're playing the role of a guy hiring somebody they're actually hiring them but they're kind of like they're feeling dangerous they're trying to fit into that world like oh i've seen this in movies it's so how you do it you know and you realize this whole thing is that really the movies invented the notion of these hitmen it's a pop culture myth meets the real world it's a fascinating little juncture and kind of yeah legally uh important i guess if someone's out there truly trying to kill someone but i'm not so sure i mean and then that's why we left in the movie the in court where they're kind of railing into you the defense attorneys calling you an entrapper and a

manipulator because you know there's there's an element to that i i agree with a certain percentage of that you know most people in prison you know they just need mental health services you know or something so well whatever um you guys are thought of as uh texas figures and the film takes place in louisiana and so it creates it's like great for the vibe it's great for the professor long hair and alan tucson and all the music and the Alan Toussaint and all the music and the energy of the movie but it I I why is it in Louisiana well Louisiana New Orleans in particular is the perfect place for this movie we we decided but uh you know there's a practical consideration too with movies you know it's like we were very independently financed you know international and for those you have to kind

of chase incentive money and if you can get a million plus in rebates, and it's not really our category, but you just have to... It was like, hey, Texas isn't offering any money and Louisiana is. It's like, well, New Orleans is even better actually for this. We're all kind of migrant workers in this business. You go where you're wanted, I guess. And at that moment, Texas didn't really want us. That's another happy accident though that happened. It's kind of fortuitous. We were actually starting to kind of,

I don't know if we were like really prepping the movie at this point, but we had definitely written a movie for New Orleans. I mean, for Houston. Yeah. And there was a moment in which we realized that that wasn't going to be feasible so we were looking at other places that could kind of you know set this film and then when you started like thinking about new orleans you realize like the the brain of gary johnson he was like all these different things and all these different personalities

and they all existed like he all existed in one man and we started looking at the metaphors of new orleans and you're like all these different colors and and people like and identities and socioeconomic it all exists in the same city and and then in addition all the characters that i get to play in the movie like they all seem feasible in new orleans like all those people like you're like in Houston, you're like, yeah, it's kind of a weird guy. And then you're like in New Orleans, you're like that guy is no one blinks an eye at that guy. So a couple of things that you guys have answered. Glenn, it sounds like you were actually like producing. Like I think you hear the word producer attached to a star's name.

You also hear that, you know, some stars will closely observe directors to learn how to be filmmakers. But producing is one of those jobs that is elusive. We don't really understand what people do. Some people who do it don't do anything. Some people do it, do everything. What was it? Why did you produce this movie? Why was it important to you?

How did you learn? Well, there's numerous producers on the movie. Make no mistake. Everyone does their different jobs. well i think well there's numerous producers on the movie yeah make no mistake yeah everyone does their different jobs you know glenn wasn't expected to negotiate the deal with the teamsters i do that though that was that was an ugly day when i brought it down on the speakers i felt so bad about that you wear a lot of hats i had to hold i held the paychecks that was a hard thing to juggle while yeah you were late i was late I was bad with payroll, I'll be honest.

No, but you're exactly right. Every producer has different functions, but I feel like Rick and our job is really the creative producers. To be thinking about the overall place where this movie is going to live on the screen, but also where it's going to be seen and all those things. Yeah, but everybody, our other producers, Mike Blizzard and stuff, everybody was in on the creative fun

we were having and what the movie was wanting to be. We had everybody in our groove on this, so that makes it a lot of fun. There was one sequence I really wanted to hear you guys talk about, which is late in the film when you come over to adria's house and you are doing a kind of audio heist while you're being recorded you're explaining what's happening as the cops are listening in you're showing her messages on your phone it's just absolutely

thrilling it's super funny super fun you're on the edge of your seat the whole time i was wondering if you guys could talk a little bit about kind of choreographing and designing that scene. Boy, that was the one. We knew all the roads kind of led to that moment, didn't they? You remember early on, we had in the script for a while, there's two big scenes that day. The first time you come over to find out her husband's dead, and then you leave and you come back yeah in an earlier draft we had it all in one that's right that's right all in one like to the very end of the movie she doesn't know you're it all piles on and we'd like well you know we don't really need to it's interesting if you know you're gary earlier it's even more of uh that that time to think about it but so anyway that's one i only bring that up to say that that

scene evolved a lot over the the many weeks we were working on it and thinking about it not only in script but then soon in rehearsals and that one definitely got a disproportionate amount of our time well i think what happens is also at that point in the movie, it takes on a certain momentum. And what I think, I feel like we really knew the first half of the movie. I think we really, in treatment form and script form, we kind of knew what that movie was going to be. And then I think as we sort of wrote Gary into corners,

that timeline started getting more compressed and more the pressure and tension around those set pieces became to a point where we're like, wait, is this happening in one day? Like, is this happening here? It's like, and so you,

once you start pushing over dominoes, what ended up happening is we started pushing Gary into corners that we had to kind of write ourselves out of. And I think what we started doing as it kind of evolved and is that we really like, we're like, okay, what's the most interesting corner we can push them to? Cause we're all these things are converging. The fun of that scene that you're talking about is that every,

every lie in the movie is sort of coming out simultaneously. Right. in the movie is sort of coming out simultaneously, right? And all of his ability to bob and weave around these things, he's troubleshooting in several different realities simultaneously and playing all these different characters and having to problem solve at the same time, not even knowing where he stands with her. So every character is so on their back foot, and you rarely get to see that in movies. So often certain characters have all the control in a scene. And to watch characters like when you walk into a space

and not knowing if they're on the same page and having to figure out where their allegiance is, where their trust is, and watch identities intersect simultaneously in an audio way, in a visual way, and then also trying to come up with that. That's where I think that scene really hits for people is that not only do I think on a sort of like thriller element, we painted him into a corner that people didn't know how he would get out of it. But I think it's the wish fulfillment of the movie is he's getting out of it based on his sort of superpower. That scene is overwhelming.

It's fun to hear audiences respond to that because they're just like, oh my God, because there's so much going on. On one level, there's performances happening on three different levels. They're acting within acting with that. There's three levels of performance going on. And then you mentioned it, but it's like, we we don't know they just broke up for all we know in the last scene you find out she's a murderer yeah you know why don't you just go to the cops and say hey

i was having a i didn't have nothing you could do that yeah you could go this guy's an asshole yeah so when the door opens but in real time'd like, just by you putting that phone there, you're gesturing to her that, you know, I got your back. Nothing's changed. I'm still in love with you. You're kind of saying that without saying that. And she's kind of having to react to that because she feels the same way, you know, so we got to feel our way through this in real time. You make one wrong step. You're both going to, you know, totally you're in trouble. Totally. So yeah, it's a tightrope walk, you know, obviously. So I don't know. That was fun to do. We actually shot that in a short amount of time. For all the time we put

into rehearsing and working on that, we shot it rather quickly, just like we did the rest of this movie. We were kind of on a tight schedule and budget, but boy, were we prepared. What can I say? Well, that was a fun one because that scene evolved so many times like leading up to shooting and rick and i i mean i gotta give rick credit for this like i have an unbelievable amount of energy uh it's really hard to wear me down and i got i got to like the end of this shoot because rick and i would like work up you know he would basically stay at my house and we just like we'd rehearse with people and then we'd like write and like change stuff and be like, all right, cool, cool, cool.

And then he'd go home late at night. We'd be up in the morning, like prepping stuff. And then, you know, and we just kept doing that. And I was like, damn, I was like, Rick's been doing this job forever. And this guy is the hardest working guy I know. And then we got to the end of the movie and he's like, dude, you nearly drove me into the ground. I was like, you nearly drove me into the ground, man.

Yeah, we were like, yeah, seeing who was going to give out first. We never said it out loud. We were just, you know, I wasn't going to stumble. You know, I wasn't going to be the one to slap off. Like we both had our foot on the accelerator, you know, but that was exhilarating. You know, the way that we hope the movie is that's how we were making it you know one thing i wanted to hear you both talk about is um glenn you're developing a reputation for having excellent chemistry with your opposite in the film and rick you have kind of like a legendary methodology for building chemistry

among your casts and so obviously gl, you had the experience of watching Rick do this over the years, but I was hoping you guys could just both talk about how you think about that and making the connection with the other actor, making it seem like these people

are connected in a real way so that the scene like we just talked about actually works. You know, I don't know how anybody else does it, but it never made sense to me to just show up and start shooting. You know, I trained a little as an actor, not to be an actor, but it never made sense to me to just show up and start shooting. I trained a

little as an actor, not to be an actor, but just for the filmmaker I was becoming. And I knew how I wanted to work. I wanted all my questions answered. I wanted to talk it through. It was a real cerebral process as much as it had to be or you wanted it to be. And I always took that into actors and actors need slightly different things you know some want to but I really do demand that we break it down and spend that time and I've had actors resist too much rehearsal and I'm like hey I'm not even doing this for you I'm doing it for me you know just say the lines because I'm rewriting I'm I'm thinking of the movie yeah so it's not acting exercises it's not Stanislavski time it, it's just us getting to know each other and the material and filtering,

you know, putting it through. Cause to me, that's the alchemical magical moment in this whole thing is when these abstract things like words on a page go through an actor, that's when like, Oh, that's, that's the magical moment. It's like, Oh, it's music or like, Oh, that would need some work. It just doesn't like, we do we rewrite it or we change that word or what's not working or so to me it's always been this kind of laborious fun creative time where it can only get better so i i don't know how you know some of the greatest films ever they they show up and damn it, that script better be great or something. And they just make a great movie with great chemistry and everything. But I would feel very insecure working that way. Maybe it's my own, you know,

my own personality or insecurities, but yeah, I want to really have it going in. I want, maybe it's the athletic background. You don't show up to your first game of the season, having not practiced the last six weeks or two months or year round. You know what I mean? It's game time when we're shooting. Like by the time we're shooting that scene, we just described we're loose. We know it. Yeah. We can just find that last little 2% or something, you know? So we're not nervous about the scene. It's not about the lines. It's not about where I'm even going to put the camera. We worked all that out it's it's let's just make it even better i always say we try to go for this get to perfection what you would consider perfection like oh that's working and but you don't just leave it alone you keep you keep going you know you keep looking for stuff and you might

be crazy you know you'd be surprised what you might still find there's another layer there to be had but you're not going to find it if you don't go looking for it i think that's exactly that's exactly right i think in rehearsal it's so interesting i think when certain actors hear the word rehearsal they think that their job is being kind of put on trial to a degree like i, I think they're, they're sort of like, they get defensive, like, wait, you know, like it's not ready yet or whatever. And I was like, you're going to be judging me. Yeah. And I think that's so not your process, your process, the best part about it. And I, I, I I'm trying to bring this onto everything I do now because what it ends up doing is exactly like you're talking about with a sports team. You end up just finding your rhythm. You end up finding comfort and you end up finding trust. And

therefore the process becomes really fun. And then therefore game day in front of the whole crew, nobody's losing their mind, tearing their hair out, wondering what the scene's about. You're not wasting anybody's time. Everybody knows what they're doing there. And then it's just about executing. I've always liked the questions. You can get pretty far on a screenplay. You can finish the screenplay. The producers like it. You're financed. You're ready to go. And it takes an actor to go, well, wait, if I know this, why would I be here? Why would I know that? It's just the logic that an actor or it's my job too. I'm the half that the story has to filter through me. It has to make sense. But an actor is a partner in that saying, wait, now why would I do that?

Yeah. That doesn't make, I just did that. And it reads great. Yeah. To the superficial reading eye and was like, you know, you're right. Yeah. We already know that. Wait, this is on the same day now. Totally. That makes no sense. So we got to fix that. So when you see here, a lot of movies, Oh, we were in reshoots. We had, we had two weeks of reshoots. It's because they found it out on the day. It's too late. Yeah. And then they had to go back and reshoot something or, you know, it was just confusing. Or you see a lot of movies that just don't make sense. You know, that drives me crazy when you have a plotty movie and then it's like, well, that's dumb. Cause why did they do that? I can't stand that. And so if we're going to, this is my plotty movie, damn it. If it's like well that's dumb because why did they do you know that i can't stand that and so if we're gonna this is my plotty movie damn it if it's not gonna all shake out it had

to make we had to bring our rationality to our our structure and everybody participated reda was particularly good in the police side of it all asking the tough questions and a lot of logic and thinking amongst the comedy it sounds like a dry process but you know you know questions and a lot of logic and thinking amongst the comedy. It sounds like a dry process, but, you know, you know, we have a lot of fun. A lot of humor is found in this process, too. You know, well, I think and going back to like just the idea of chemistry, I think chemistry is a chemical equation of trust, comfort and fun, you fun. And if you're having those with your co-star, if you feel those things with your co-star, it's very easy to have chemistry. That's what makes a good relationship. That's what makes something like Crackle. And then I think that's what you feel on screen.

But I think it's a hard thing to do early on in the process when you haven't talked stuff out because two people are kind of guarded. If you're if you're insecure and in protective mode like hey don't fuck up my character and what i'm trying to do here yeah you know you to have chemistry you got to be having fun together yeah and if you're defensive and you're un insecure that ain't gonna happen yeah it's like this you can fake it getting out of the other side of your brain you know you got to get to the right side get to the the passion side of your brain exactly this whole movie is really an examination of passion brought it all back sean yeah yeah you guys are real pros i appreciate it um speaking of chemistry just a couple more quick ones for you but speaking of

chemistry um this is really more of a comment than a question but i was really excited to see uh austin emilio back from the everybody wants some boys and like he almost walks away with the movie glenn i'm sorry to say to you that's why we wrote it for him man he's so good right he's amazing in the movie and you know glenn as you know we love we worship that movie here at the ringer and um i'm i'm curious how you guys think about it now because i know that it was not hugely financially successful, but I do feel like it has authentic cult status at this point. And it's nice to see you working together again.

Curious how you both think about it. I want you to know the entire Cherokee baseball team listens to your podcast. Yeah. Every time you guys mention everybody wants them, it's on the thread. I promise that the text thread goes live. No, I think what's so i mean i'll just speak for me and the fact that i that is that will go down as an

unbeatable experience uh as far as like making a movie goes we got to do that you know in austin texas and bass drop and we're we're playing baseball in 1980. We're doing it with a group of guys that are still some of my best friends. With mustaches. With mustaches. You were a fun looking group. One of my favorite moments of that movie. It's like, you don't realize, you know, you're shooting that movie. I think we shot in like 2016.

We're in our own world. We're in our own world, right? We shot at this amazing place. It was a blue hole, right? Yeah. Yeah. Jumping towards your blue hole and like wimberley yeah and so so they load us all all the guys you're on a long hair and mustache and stuff like that we're in the where and they load us on this white van but it's like this white panel van where you can't there's like you can like nobody can see in but you can kind of see out of it and so we're all just kind of packed

into this thing going to the next location but we just jumped in a blue hole. It's so cold. And, and all of a sudden, one of the guys, you know, it's, we got a bunch of single guys on this movie. We pull up at a stoplight and we look over and there's like this like really cute girl in the car next to us. And one of the guys go, wow, this girl smoking. And the guy's like, wait, I can't see her. I can't see her. They opened open the door the sliding door to the van and there's a bunch of guys with mustaches in white robes just cyber and the girl ran the light like they just released you from the asylum it was like the scariest thing a girl could experience stop i've been lifted that era i can attest that haven't lived through that era.

I can attest to that. That was so scary. But no, that was like, that was like just a magical experience. But the rehearsal time at your ranch will go down as like a time where I go, okay, this for me is what making movies is about and doing it at like how passionate everybody was, how invested everybody was. And we were. But in a complete 100% 24 hour a day work play. It was all work invested everybody was. And we were, but in a complete a hundred percent, 24 hour a day work play.

It was all work. It was all work. We're done with rehearsal, but we're shooting pool. Yeah. But we're working. We have that scene. So I pull Wyatt Russell aside and we're working up some things.

And Emilio, we're coming up with lines. So just work, play, work, play, work, play,

you know? So if we continue that, that's, that's when it's really really fun so apex fun that one just such a great cast and you know that's the team in my mind that you know we won the championship yeah it's hard to fully you know actualize your full potential but because of the team leadership and the effort and the best, the selflessness of that team, everybody in it for the common goal. Yeah.

I love the sports movie making. I always see metaphors and crossover there, you know, and I was a player at that time, but now I'm kind of like the coach, you know? So I know what it takes to, to, to maybe win that championship. And damn it. I think we did. In our way, you know, I don't, you know, whatever happened with Paramount at that time, they were sort of circling the toilet.

We finished the movie. We were all so happy with it. But our industry is so finicky, you know, we just hit that weird time and it didn't really get the, didn't get the release we were hoping. It's finding its fans now, you know, it's crazy. I have great faith in that. You know, Dazed and Confused,

it's spiritual progenitor. It was in a similar boat. It was kind of a studio-ish film, but it got kind of an indie release. Both these films are very similar in that way, that they had similar trajectories. So, you know, it's a different time, but you do have faith that

the audience that's meant to see it will maybe see it someday so well at austin amelio i think like when we were shooting that movie one of the things that i always like just watched austin with just like such a fascination because he was he just like he had this sense of play to him, you know, where he could be kind of demented and weird and like fucked up. And you were like, but you like, still were just like, I couldn't stop watching him anytime I was in a scene with him. I was just like, this guy is so fun to watch.

He's got that gift that few have. Like when he looks at you and says something, you go, or he smiles. It's not, it's like Bruce Dern kind of, I don't know if I trust that smile. I think there's something else behind it. I think I heard, I just heard what he says, but I think he's really means something else. He has this other layer to him. Just look at it.

And so, God, what a perfect guy to be playing cat and mouse with you. Once we thought of him, like we were riding this, but hang on, what about Amelia? It's like, oh, fuck. We never had anybody else in mind other than Amelia. We wrote with him in mind. So this was like, that was the fun part about it is from minute one. I mean, that was- Yeah. Which is great for the script and our process, but it does come financed. I was like, hey, that's a good part. We could offer that to someone. And then we're like, this is where I think experience comes in. i could explain to our low budget financiers just like you know

we wrote this with this guy in mind he's gonna be great i know he's not a household name yet or you know whatever but we're trying to make the best movie here and he's gonna be awesome and we know it and they're like okay you have a track record here you know yeah where if i was a first time second time filmmaker the studio might have plowed over you to get the name yeah kind of person i've always been very lucky in that way you know you nailed everything you get the right they respond to your passion like trust me we just want to make the best movie and this is the guy and they're like okay you nailed it with him and I think he'll probably book some jobs off of this part. Cause he's really great.

We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers. What's the last great thing they've seen. Have you guys seen anything good recently? It could be new or old. Anything. Just saw fall guy a couple of days ago. Oh, did you?

I've been in production in Paris. I haven't seen anything new in a while. I saw a nice Jimmy Carter documentary on the plane. It was really wonderful. I rewatched Sane in the Rain on the plane. There you go. When in Paris, I saw a Jean-Pierre Melville film I hadn't seen, Unflick, his last film before he died young with Alain Delon. Yeah, wonderful film from the early 70s. He's a cop. So it's not, no one thinks it's his best film at any means. I was just so glad to see it finally. Because I was in France and I could find it where it's not really available in the US. Are we answering your question?

Even that I didn't say was really great. I don't know. I saw The Mother and the Whore, the Jean Eustache film recently on Criterion again. I've seen that a lot over the years, all three hours. Just remastered and reissued, right? Yeah.

Coming back around. So that one's a, like I said, I was just in Paris. So I'm feeling close to all those French filmmakers. Guys, thanks so much for doing this. Congrats on Hitman.

It's fantastic. Great talking to you. Thank you, man. Appreciate you. Thanks to Glenn Powell and Richard Linklater. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner. Thanks to Alea Veneris. Thanks to Jack Sanders.

We're covering Bad Boys Ride or Die and Ashana Shyamalan's debut feature The Watchers what do you think is going to be better Bad Boys 4 The Watchers

you know I support director daughters and daughter directors yes you certainly do so I have hopes for The Watchers

okay intriguing you know well if you want to find out which movie has enjoyed more, tune in next week. We'll see you then.