Contains spoilers.
Glen Powell becomes a master of disguise in the new Netflix movie Hit Man, which is directed by Richard Linklater. The film follows Gary Johnson, a professor who moonlights as a fake hit man on behalf of the police department. While Gary is mild-mannered and meek in his everyday life, going undercover as a hit man allows him to explore multiple identities. During one meeting, he connects with Madison (Adria Arjona), and is unwittingly dragged into a life of murder and deception.
Co-written by Powell and Linklater, Hit Man is an action comedy about a regular man who discovers his true self by pretending to be someone else. But where did the inspiration for Hit Man come from?
Is Hit Man based on a true story?
Somewhat surprisingly, Hit Man IS based on a true story. The movie takes its inspiration from a 2001 article written by Skip Hollandsworth for Texas Monthly titled “Hit Man.” The article explores the life and unexpected career of Gary Johnson, a part-time human sexuality and psychology teacher who pretended to be a hit man for the police department in Houston. His official title was “staff investigator for the Harris County district attorney’s office,” with the article noting that Johnson was “on call, night and day.” Basically, Glen Powell’s juicy Hit Man role is based on a real person, which is almost unbelievable.
It’s also clear he was exceedingly good at his job as a fake hit man. “Gary Johnson is the most sought-after professional killer in Houston,” Texas Monthly explained. “In the past decade, he’s been hired to kill more than sixty people.” The article went on to describe many of the people he’d brought to justice, such as wealthy older ladies, unhappy employees, “scorned lovers, broke businessmen, and teenagers who are mad at their mothers.” Just like in the movie, Johnson recorded conversations with clients for evidence, getting them to order a kill and hand over payment in order to get a conviction.
Lawyer Michael Hinton told Texas Monthly of Johnson, “He’s the perfect chameleon... Gary is a truly great performer who can turn into whatever he needs to be in whatever situation he finds himself.” Hinton continued, “He’s somehow able to persuade people who are rich and not so rich, successful and not so successful, that he’s the real thing. He fools them every time.” Possessing such a unique ability, it makes sense Johnson’s life inspired a movie.
How true is Glen Powell’s portrayal of Gary Johnson?
The entire premise of Hit Man seems too wild to be true, but even the character of Gary Johnson is largely truthful. As well as being a part-time teacher and an exceptional fake hit man, Gary Johnson was also a solitary man living a quiet life. Texas Monthly describes Johnson as a 54-year-old three-time divorcé who lived alone with his two cats and some goldfish.
Much like in the movie, Johnson appears to have been somewhat of a loner who enjoyed reading philosophy and serious literature, and spending time in his garden. He’s described as having brown eyes, graying sideburns, and as wearing “wire-rimmed glasses that give him a scholarly appearance.” So the solemn square portrayed by Powell in the movie is pretty close to the truth, apparently.
Even though Johnson turned out to be a great fake hit man, he didn’t plan on carving out such a strange career. Per Texas Monthly, Johnson had a normal childhood in Louisiana, before working as a military policeman in Vietnam for a year. A job as a sheriff’s deputy followed, then he moved into undercover work for the Port Arthur police department. He started out conducting fake drug deals: “I don’t think the drug dealers ever suspected I might be a cop because my personality was so weird to begin with,” he told Texas Monthly.
He had hoped to become psychology professor, but was rejected from a doctoral program in the early ‘80s. Instead, he was hired as an investigator for the district attorney’s office, which led to his role as a fake hit man. Although the real Johnson was incredible at his job, he didn’t necessarily wear as many amazing wigs and costumes as Powell does in the movie. “The real Gary did slight disguises, but not to the extent that we see in the film,” director Linklater told Tudum. “I was like, ‘Should we really do a Russian accent?’ But Glen just pushed all of that to the max, and I love how it came out.”
Did Gary fall in love with a client named Madison?
The short answer to this is no. While Gary Johnson meets a potential client turned love interest named Madison in Hit Man, this never happened in real life. “Everything’s sort of true until he meets this woman,” Adria Arjona, who portrays Madison, told Today.com. As the character was a creation purely for the film, the team spent a lot of time deciding “what we wanted this woman to be and what we wanted this couple to be,” Arjona said. “All of that is fictitious.”
Even though Madison and her often shocking actions are totally made up, one of Johnson’s real life clients contributed to the character, per Tudum. Johnson received a referral from a Starbucks employee who’d heard a woman saying the only way she could escape her abusive partner was by having him killed, Texas Monthly reported. After looking into the case, Johnson determined she was in legitimate danger from her partner, and he wanted to help, rather than get her arrested. “He referred her to social service agencies and a therapist to make sure she got proper help so she could leave her boyfriend and get into a women’s shelter,” Texas Monthly explained.
Perhaps most importantly, the decision to place a romantic relationship at the center of Hit Man changed the film’s entire direction. “It’s about identity and self and passion,” director Linklater told Tudum. “But on a plot level, it’s just a guy who gets in a little too deep. His passions lead him in a direction where he’s deceiving someone he’s in love with, and being someone else. They have to deal with those repercussions.”
Why did Hit Man change Gary Johnson's story?
It took director Richard Linklater two decades to turn Gary Johnson's story into a movie. Having read the 2001 Texas Monthly article on which the Netflix film is based, Linklater told Today.com, “I never forgot it. But it was kind of on the back burner, as like, ‘How would that (movie) work?’”
Having worked together on several projects, including 2016 movie Everybody Wants Some!!, Powell approached Linklater about the possibility of turning the Texas Monthly article into a film. “And lots of people had optioned [the article] over the years and tried to do stuff with it, but nobody could crack it,” Powell told Today.com. “It was really interesting how effortless the process was. Rick [Linklater] and I just kept talking about it... and that’s when you know you have something special, when you can’t forget about it.”
As for why the Netflix film deviates from the truth in quite a significant way, Linklater told Tudum, “I remember Glen saying, ‘Well, what if we just don’t stick to the facts? What if we cut loose once?’” Instead, Powell and Linklater used Johnson’s incredible experience working undercover as the starting point for their movie, and then allowed their imaginations to run wild.
Most importantly, the real Johnson never actually killed anyone, and he didn’t cover up any murders committed with a lover, either. But for co-writers Powell and Linklater, ending the movie with Gary and Madison married, having gotten away with some serious crimes, was the most exciting option. “So we thought it’s kind of more darkly funny to get away with it,” Linklater explained Tudum. “More screwball comedy for sure... more hopeful, optimistic.”
What happened to Gary Johnson IRL?
Having been divorced three times, the real Gary Johnson remained single and seemed to like it that way. “I think it would be fair to say that I don’t let many people get too close,” he told Texas Monthly in 2001.
Johnson died in 2022 before Hit Man was made, but he was aware of Linklater’s plan to turn his life into a film. “I talked to him on the phone several times, and then his life was just kind of cut short,” Linklater told Today.com. “I was trying to get in touch with him, like, ‘Hey, the movie's happening, you got to come visit the set.’ I just thought he’d be happy and I wasn’t hearing back from him. He had this pulmonary condition [that] went downhill really fast.” The director also called Johnson “the chillest dude imaginable,” and suggested the former fake hit man was pretty nonplussed about the movie being made.
Powell, meanwhile, never got the chance to speak to Johnson before playing him onscreen. “I think Gary died the week before we started shooting,” Powell told Today.com. While Johnson never got the chance to see Hit Man, his incredible skills are now immortalized on Netflix forever, which is a pretty great tribute.
