Debuting to rave reviews on last year’s festival circuit, the biggest showcase yet for this newly dominant leading man is truly a bevy of riches for fans of the performer, a film Sam describes as “crazy funny, sexy and at times so fucking stressful.” Based on a 2001 Texas Monthly magazine article, Powell stars as Gary Johnson, a college professor who starts working as an undercover hit man for the police, luring would-be criminals into hiring him and swiftly placing them under arrest. His dedication to the job is tested when he’s enlisted by Maddy (Adria Arjona) to murder her husband, yet Gary is so disarmed by the woman that he lets her go… and then develops a relationship with her under his hit-man alias, Ron. That old chestnut!

Same with the film noir. I mean, we talked about it at the earliest script phase. It was like, “Well, is she setting him up?” We went down that path a little bit. But then you go, “That’s been done.” They lived under the Hays Code back then. They had to do that. You had to pay for your sins. We’re free agents now. What if they’re actually a couple that’s meant to be? We’re talking about a great love story. That’s what took us from noir to screwball comedy. Then it becomes something else, but you never leave behind the noir-thriller part. The hit-man movie, that’s the genre that hovers over the entire thing, and we’re sort of deconstructing that, so I don’t know. We had fun playing with that, but I’m trying to think of films we even referenced. I remember talking about Body Heat a little bit.

There are a lot of Letterboxd reviews of Hit Man that mention Out of Sight as a comparison point, which certainly came to mind for me because I think George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in the trunk of that car is the last time I saw the level of instantaneous, sizzling chemistry that, Glen, you have with Adria Arjona here. Was that spark with her something you guys could feel right away?
GP: I remember in script form, Rick and I were talking about [Adria’s] character sort of theoretically. This part in the article where Gary Johnson meets up with a woman who wants to hire him as a hit man to kill her husband, and he sees the best in her and decides to let her off. One of the interesting things, as we were writing it, was realizing that it was a character who was basically impossible to cast. It’s such a hard thing, sitting there and thinking about how this actress has to be absolutely everything.

You have to be willing to completely change your life and your personality, and divorce yourself from every piece of logic that defines you for this woman. Not only that, but the audience has to immediately get it. Just like Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight, it has to be instantaneous. Rick said it early on, and he’s said this on many movies he’s done, that it either is or it isn’t. Chemistry is not one of those things that you can manufacture. If one person is determined not to have chemistry with you, it’s just not going to happen.

RL: And you can have two charismatic performers and still kind of drain that sizzle out of them if you don’t nurture that atmosphere. I’ve seen charismatic performers be surprisingly flat. So yeah, you can’t create it, but you can elevate it. You can situate it where it maximizes itself, I think.

GP: One thing that Rick does is create an incredibly comfortable, empowering atmosphere. We both brought Adria into the writing room to really have a lot of accountability for that character and put her ideas into it. We were really lucky for how she breathed all this life into the film. I think what that also does is establish a sense of trust. It’s a sense of collaboration. It’s not, “Hey, act out these sorts of scenes.” Adria was the one who really took all those romantic scenes and took them to a whole new level. She was the one who was like, “Oh, no, we need to take it further.” When you have a filmmaker that gives you a long leash, that allows you to put your own stamp on it. It’s a really empowering feeling, and it makes those scenes very comfortable.

I was watching Everybody Wants Some!! again the other night, and there’s this wonderful line Zoey Deutch has where she says, “Art is all about having the guts to look fucking stupid.” Hit Man is a movie that would have gotten easy studio funding in the ’90s, but they don’t really make these anymore, and yet you guys wrote it on spec and made it without a distributor, just putting it out there and hoping people would get it. Was there something exhilarating about taking that risk?
RL: Yeah, we’re just lucky we got it made and the companies came aboard and pieced together financing. If it was the ’90s, you’re right, a studio would’ve made this film, but they’re just not in that business anymore. They’re not taking adult risks. For whatever reason, that’s just changed, and they’re not there. But we believed in it. We knew what we were doing, and you got to bet on yourself over and over.

Glen, you and Rick have been working together for more than twenty years now, starting with your one scene all the way back in Fast Food Nation when you were, like, fifteen, then having your big breakout in Everybody Wants Some!!, and now this new status as a leading man. Given that Rick is our greatest chronicler of time in cinema, I was wondering if you could speak a little to how you see these collaborations with him throughout the years in terms of not only your evolution as an artist but also your evolution as a human being?
GP: That’s a very good question. That’s a really good question. That one scene in Fast Food Nation, I remember I broke my arm—ironically, playing baseball—right before that movie. I had to call Rick and tell him that I had a broken arm and was in a cast now, and Rick just said, “You know, there was always a guy in high school that had a cast. I like that. That’s maybe even better.” [Laughs] Rick’s just zen. He just goes with the flow. And sometimes what you realize is that by not trying to force something, it ends up having more verisimilitude, more life in it.

Everybody Wants Some!! was such a coveted movie in Hollywood. I remember every guy in Hollywood was going out for this thing, and I was just so desperate to be back in the trenches with Rick. That was an interesting one, because I think you’re right—that was a moment in my life where I was coming out of that initial phase and things became more collaborative.

Rick is an athlete. He played baseball in 1980, and this was about that sort of moment in his life. It was a very similar moment for me in my life. None of us really knew who anybody on that team was, and it was sort of this team sport, you know? It was exciting for us all to be there. I do think that will go down as maybe the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me, because I got to be with one of my heroes on his ranch and we’re baking up the script together and we’re just having the best time with the greatest group of guys. But it felt like being in college, it felt like being on a baseball team.

RL: I made them all live together in the bunkhouse. Even though, at this point, a lot of them were older, a couple were even married, but we needed that sense of “No, we’re college kids and we’re all hanging out.” That was the great team effort. And Glen naturally kind of fell into the team leader from that angle because of his role. The character was a senior on the team, and Glen just took on that team leader part. There’s a distinction there, because that’s not necessarily the best player on the team—that was [Tyler Hoechlin’s character] McReynolds, but he’s a little dickish. Glen’s character Finn is there, the freshmen like him and he tells them to buzz off a little, but he’s also the cool guy.

Finn is the best character. We talk about Adria, what she had to do [for Hit Man]—Finn was like that, too. He was an athlete, but also really smart, really well-read, just quick, quick, quick. Glen came in, and I was like, “Holy shit, when did Glen grow up to be this guy?” I hadn’t seen him in a few years, and so it was like, “Wow.” Then we were off to the races. We just had such a great creative time, and that team environment was a great dynamic. You get everybody involved, leading from the top down. That team, everybody was in it for the right reasons. Just a very special group.