The number one film on Netflix right now was inspired by two things.
The first is that every idea you have in your head about ‘hitmen’ is probably from films, and that type of hitman simply doesn’t exist.
The second? A real-life guy who worked for the police as a fake hitman, preying on that exact fact to lock away criminals.
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Hit Man dropped on Netflix last Friday, June 7, and was met with rave reviews – receiving a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and shooting to the top of the charts in the UK.
It follows Gary Johnson, a teacher who moonlights as a tech guy for his local police department, until one day he takes on a new role – pretending to be a fake hitman.
Opening with the message ‘what you’re about to see is a somewhat true story inspired by the life of Gary Johnson’, you will be asking yourself… well who the f**k is that?
Hit Man was born in 2001, when director Richard Linklater read a profile in the Texas Monthly about a man who pretended to be a hitman.
Gary Johnson, who the film is based on, was hired to ‘kill’ more than 70 people – all while spending his days as a college professor.
Johnson was a Vietnam war vet, an animal loving Buddhist, thrice divorced, and lived alone with his two cats when he wasn’t putting on disguises to pretend to be a killer for hire.
If you read that description of a character in a film, you’d think the writer had overdone trying to make them ‘interesting’ – and if anything, the character in the film is a less wild version of the real man in some ways.
Speaking exclusively to LADbible, director Richard Linklater told us the aspect he thought was wildest about the character.
He said: “As far as this story goes, it was really just as the dual life of a teacher and that kind of narrowed it down.”
He went on to say that, although Linklater first tried to make the film when the article first released, co-writer and star Glen Powell came to it much later.
Richard said: “We both came across it... 19 years apart, maybe 20? I read it in 2001 when Glenn was probably still in junior high.
“I thought about it then like what a weird character. I called up Skip [Hollandsworth], the writer, and talked about it had a couple of meetings over the years. Yeah. It's such an interesting world.
"So, Glenn calls me during the pandemic and says, ‘Hey, I read this story’. I'm like, ‘Yeah, Glenn I read that’.”
The article refers to Johnson as the ‘Lawrence Olivier’ of fake hitmen, with the college professor taking the time to dress up in elaborate disguises based on exhaustive research of the people hiring him.
The more you dig into him the wilder his life story is – which is just another reminder that sometimes, real life is crazier than fiction.
Topics: Netflix, Film, Crime, TV and Film
Michael Slavin