For writer-director Richard Linklater, timing is everything. The director of the Sunrise trilogy — starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy — and the groundbreaking 12-year long production of Boyhood often treats time as an additional character in his projects. This approach reveals all of the ways that time itself can sculpt and change people just as much as life’s more tumultuous events. Linklater’s varied and prolific career also includes films like the smash hit School of Rock starring Jack Black and the sprawling high school classic Dazed and Confused.
His latest is the thriller Hit Man, starring and co-written by Glen Powell. Linklater tells The Treatment about the importance of his characters feeling as real as possible, how he likes working with people who like to work hard, and how he loves living in a world where people can be who they want to be.