Yahoo Lifestyle "Gary Never Actually Killed Anyone" And18 More Real Life Facts About Glenn Powell's "Hit Man"
Glenn Powell's new movie Hit Man is a trip. Warning: Spoiler ahead!
He takes on a variety of different clients, whom he hopes will confess their murder-for-hire plans.
But once he meets an unhappily married woman named Madison, the trajectory of this gig changes significantly. She tries to hire him as a contract killer to take out her abusive husband, only for him to fall in love with her in the process. Then, he actually tries to help her take out her abusive husband.
What's even more shocking is that the movie is based on a real story.
Director and producer Richard Linklater partnered with Glenn Powell to write the script based on a 2001 Texas Monthly article written by Skip Hollandsworth.
With that in mind, let's dive into some of the most interesting facts surrounding the movie.
1.Gary Johnson was a staff investigator for the Harris County district.
Though the movie took place in New Orleans, the actual Gary Johnson was based in Houston. Johnson aided police in gaining evidence on people looking to hire a contract killer. According to Hollandsworth's article, informants would tell cops when they knew someone wanted to hire a contract killer. Johnson, who wore a wire, would be introduced to prospective "clients," whom he hoped to extract a confession from and hopefully, secure a conviction.
2.Johnson said that he investigated upwards of 300 murder-for-hire allegations between the late 80s and 2001.
Hollandsworth article states that Johnson's work led to over 60 arrests. Johnson said that many of the people who approached him were regular people who "have developed such a frustration with their place in the world that they think they have no other option but to eliminate whoever is causing their frustration."
3.While an undercover cop, he believed that his prolificacy was a result of his communication skills.
Johnson was described as one of the best undercover hitmen in Houston due to his self-assured nature and calmness when meeting "clients." "What I'm really there to do is assist people in their communication skills," he said in the Texas Monthly article. "That's all my job is -- to help people open up, to get them to say what they really want, to reveal to me their deepest desires." Ultimately, he was a good listener, which became the most critical aspect of his success rate on the job.
4.He told people that he worked in "human resources."
Considering the nature of his job, it was hard for him to elaborate on his career choices to others, whether neighbors or women he'd meet at a job, according to Hollandsworth. He often would tell them that he worked in human resources at a company downtown as a way to deflect having to delve into details about his professional life.
5.His ex-wife described him as a loner.
Though Gary's interpersonal skills were undoubtedly better than the average person, he reportedly had difficulty maintaining relationships. He had been divorced three times by 2001. His second wife described him as a loner. "He'll show up at parties and have a good time, and he's always friendly, but he likes being alone, being quiet. It's amazing to me that he can turn on this other personality that makes people think he is a vicious killer."
6.Gary never actually killed anyone.
While the film's conclusion suggested otherwise, Gary never actually murdered anyone in real life. At the end of the movie, they clarify, "We made that part up."
7."All pie is good pie" was a real line.
Gary was a big fan of Denny's, apparently. So much so that he would meet clients at the establishment. In one excerpt from the article, Hollandsworth explains how Johnson had once met with a chemical plant worker whose ex-wife's new boyfriend was mistreating their daughter. The Texas Monthly article reads, "When Johnson suggested they meet at a Denny’s to discuss the details of the murder—defense attorneys say Johnson is so fond of meeting his clients at Denny’s that the restaurant should name a plate after him—the worker wanted them to have a secret code to recognize each other. When the worker saw Johnson sitting at the counter eating pie, he would say, 'That looks like good pie.' Johnson would reply, 'All pie is good pie.'”
8.Gary Johnson passed away in 2022, according to Tudum.
He died before he got the chance to see the movie. A tribute in the film reads, "Dedicated to Gary Johnson, 1947-2022." His cause of death remains unknown.
9.He used a multitude of aliases and adjusted his persona for each client. However, Glenn Powell dramatized it with absurd disguises.
Johnson used several alter egos, including Mike Caine, Jody Eagle, and Chris Buck, and even used disguises to fit each persona. Powell, however, decided to take it further with wild costumes and accents. "It was Glen who really ran with those false identities that Gary creates for each of his cases,” Linklater said. “The real Gary did slight disguises, but not to the extent that we see in the film. 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."
10.Glenn Powell chose not to speak to Gary Johnson in the early stages of filming.
Speaking to Cosmopolitan UK, Powell explained, "Gary was such a chill guy, it wasn’t like he thought ‘I need to talk to this guy who’s playing me.' They were like ‘Gary they’re making a movie about you; and he’s like ‘OK’.”
11.Madison (Adria Arjona) is based on a real woman, but there's no confirmation she had an intimate relationship with Johnson.
An unnamed woman enters in the last few paragraphs of Hollandsworth's article and approaches Johnson for his service in an attempt to end an abusive relationship. However, Johnson had already done a bit of research on her prior and discovered that she was a victim of abuse. Rather than stick to his usual script, he helped her get the resources, namely social service agencies and a therapist, to assist in leaving her boyfriend.
Glenn Powell explained that the film was inspired by that particular excerpt.
"[Linklater] goes, 'I don't know what to chase there. It's a really interesting guy, but I don't know where it goes.' And I said, 'There's this really interesting part of the article about this woman that he meets who is essentially trying to kill her husband because she feels like she's really in danger. And he let her off and they started this friendship. What if we chase that?' Because I assume he's still the hit man to her," he recalled.
12.The movie was initially supposed to be set in Houston, where the real Gary Johnson worked.
During an interview with Friends On Film podcast, Linklater explained that they had to move the shoot and change the set to New Orleans due to tax credits. Describing it as a "painful subject," he detailed spending much of the film trying to portray Houston's culture. But since they were independently funded, they couldn't afford shooting in Texas. "Hollywood didn't really buy into what Glen and I were trying to do here," he said. "The financing was being priced together, and incentive programs really do play a part; if it's like $1.5 million more on a low budget, that means a lot."
13.Johnson was once shot on the job.
While he landed his first gig as a fake contract killer in 1989, Johnson reportedly worked smaller cases as an investigator for the D.A., where he'd help with car theft cases and gathering evidence. However, in 1986, he got shot during an arrest, sustaining injuries to his leg and foot, which left him out of work for a week.
14.He was described as "the Laurence Olivier of the field" in the Texas Monthly article.
Michael Hinton, a lawyer in Houston, had nothing but praise for Johnson's talents as an undercover cop. Hinton previously served as a Harris County prosecutor and was one of Johnson's supervisors. "He’s the perfect chameleon,” Hinton said. “Gary is a truly great performer who can turn into whatever he needs to be in whatever situation he finds himself. He never gets flustered, and he never says the wrong thing. 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."
15.The highly publicized arrest of Lynn Kilroy appears to be referenced during the sequence of arrests in the movie's first 25 minutes.
Though not explicitly named in the film, the wealthy woman (portrayed by Jo-Ann Robinson) seems to be based on the case surrounding the former vice president of the Houstonaires Republican Women, who tried to procure the services of a contract killer to murder her husband, Billy Kilroy, the heir to an oil fortune. The Houston Chronicles reports that she received a five-year probation sentence after pleading no contest to the charge of soliciting murder.
Several characters were based on real stories from the Texas Monthly article, including Monte (Jonas Lerway), who offers Gary PS5 games to murder his mother, and Tammi (Morgana Shaw), who proposes to exchange her boat for the murder of her husband. Monte is based on Shawn Quinn, described as a " brilliant kid with an IQ of 131” who offered video games in exchange for the murder of a classmate who was flirting with his crush. He received 10-years probation, the L.A. Times reports. Meanwhile, Tammi is an amalgamation of two people from the Texas Monthly article: Roberts Holliday, an oil rigger who wanted his wife dead, and an unnamed bookkeeper who wanted someone to blow up the house of her employer, a prominent Houston surgeon.
16.Johnson worked as a professor at a community college twice a week.
Hollandsworth revealed that Johnson taught at community college twice a week. He taught human sexuality courses and general psychology. Hollandsworth wrote, "His students, no doubt, think of him as just another mild-mannered professor, albeit one who has a tendency to drone on in his lectures about human beings’ lack of coping skills during times of stress."
17.Interestingly enough, Johnson initially wanted to be a psychology professor.
While he was a clearly talented investigator, Johnson never had much of a desire to pursue a career in law enforcement. In fact, Hollandsworth states that his "dream was to teach psychology in college." The article continues, "He thought he would be happiest analyzing human behavior from a safe, academic perspective." Johnson received a master's degree in psychology after taking night courses at McNeese State University in his home state of Louisiana. However, once he moved to Houston in 1981 with aspirations to enter the University of Houston’s doctoral program in psychology, he was denied and began working for the D.A.
18.His experience in law enforcement began during the war in Vietnam.
As mentioned earlier, Johnson already had experience in law enforcement before a prolific career as a fake contract killer. He served as a military policeman overseeing convoys in Vietnam. When he returned home, he worked as a Sheriff's deputy in Louisiana, then relocated to Port Arthur, Texas, where he started his work as an undercover officer trying to bust drug dealers. "I don’t think the drug dealers ever suspected I might be a cop because my personality was so weird to begin with,” he said, displaying an innate skill in his undercover work.
19.Gary Johnson personal life was much less exciting than his professional one.
By the end of the film, where they clarify that Johnson never killed anyone, the filmmakers also revealed in the title card that he was a Buddhist who loved animals and a Vietnam War vet. Similar to Powell's claims about Johnson, the title card also refers to Johnson as the "chilliest dude imaginable."
Though the Texas Monthly article doesn't state that he practiced Buddhism, Hollandsworth said that Johnson meditated and had two cats, whom he named Id and Ego. His evenings often consisted of reading, gardening, meditating, or watching Discovery Channel documentaries on animals.
