The Texan actor has proven his versatility on screen in both TV and movies, whether he is a romantic or ridiculous villain or hero; With Everyone But You, which opens in theatres on Thursday, finds him donning the “savior of the romantic comedy” suit after he portrayed Tom Cruise’s opposite in Top Gun: Maverick.
Maybe the first thing that comes to mind when Glen Powell’s name is spoken is the picture of the arrogant president of a golf club who dated Emma Roberts’s character in Ryan Murphy’s blockbuster Scream Queens. With a prideful gesture towards his muscular frame, Chad Radwell remarked, “Everyone wants a little of this.”
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Broadway musical with Powell
“Probably women, men, animals, and even plants.” In the perspective of Murphy, who is this year creating a Broadway musical with Powell in the role of the affable Radwell as its new star, that display of friendly stridency set him apart among a group of people clamoring for recognition, led by Lea Michele.
Then, in 2015—before his highly anticipated transition to Netflix—Murphy’s fiction combined a certain pop air with a strong sense of self-confidence and a strong need to make fun of himself. The young actor was most receptive to that sensation and used it to his advantage, using his sense of humor to create the ideal romantic comedy heartthrob for the new era.
The upcoming Thursday, the 25th premiere of With Everyone Except You validates the ceaseless efforts to revive a genre that has contributed so much to the film industry and that, in these cynical times, appears to gather the illusions of those who still believe in love stories.
Shakespearean Comedy
This romantic tale, however, is not new; writer and director Will Gluck (Friends with Benefits, It Is Said About Me) repurposes the Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing to suit the times: After a one-night fling that ends in miscommunication and separation, Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Powell) reunite six months later on a flight to Australia to take part in a wedding celebration.
Following the guests’ matchmaking attitude, what starts as a romantic spoof could wind up being true. Travels across Australia’s Outback and evenings in contemporary Sydney adorn a romance with humor serving as its primary engine, deftly appropriating the greatest traditions of the 1990s.
Glen Powell was born in 1988, therefore one of my all-time favorite comedies is My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997). My family and I would constantly listen to the soundtrack when we were on a road trip. I believe I could sing along to every song word for word.
Interview with Vogue Magazine
Romantic comedies are full of delight, and My Best Friend’s Wedding is a great illustration of that. In a recent interview with Vogue magazine, the actor said that he also makes a love-related statement. The recent release of Powell shares several similarities with the success of Australian director PJ Hogan, which starred Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, and Dermot Mulroney.
These include the story’s use of a wedding as its framework, the protagonists’ game of heroes versus villains, and Mulroney’s involvement in both casts. “They showed My Best Friend’s Wedding to the whole cast before we started filming. Dermot hadn’t watched it since its debut. “There is no greater privilege than representing love on film,” he subsequently informed me. That gave me the motivation I required.
Powell doesn’t seem to require much encouragement to become more confident at first. The characters he has portrayed on television since making his breakthrough with Ryan Murphy serve as evidence of this.
John Glenn in Hidden Talents
His roles as astronaut John Glenn in Hidden Talents (2016) (available on Disney+), a frat jock in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) (available on Prime Video, Mubi, and Movistar TV), and a heartthrob in a tuxedo who is rejected by a book club after receiving a marriage proposal (The Literary and Potato Peel Cake Society of Guernsey, 2018; available on Netflix) are just a few examples of his notable appearances.
Small roles in significant casts that provided the best opportunities for him included a long-term partnership with Linklater, which is updated in the upcoming police comedy Hitman (2023), in which Powell also contributed as a scriptwriter.
Powell then jumped into action films, which saw its pinnacle in the recently released Top Gun: Maverick (2022) -available on Star+, Paramount+, and Movistar Play – serving as a formidable rival to Tom Cruise, who encouraged him to finish his pilot training. Lastly, he triumphantly entered the romantic comedy genre with the first successful film Set It Up: The Imperfect Plan (2018), available on Netflix, and the upcoming release of With Everyone but You.
Vogue Interview
Powell acknowledges in the Vogue interview that her parents and siblings provide the most stability in helping her stay afloat in the success-driven storm. He splits his time between New York and Los Angeles for publicity campaigns and filming, but he always sets aside a few months of the year to spend at his family’s ranch in Austin, Texas. “I feel most like myself there.”
Powell does not yet feel like the heir of a whole lineage of heartthrobs that defined the romantic comedy throughout history, from Cary Grant or James Stewart in the screwball comedy to the neurotic Woody Allen of Annie Hall (1977) to the verbose Billy Crystal of When Harry Met Sally (1989). This is aside from the flashes that already announce him as one of the promises of the future of Hollywood.
“I attempt to avoid the demands, as the company operates on the basis that you are admired one day and demolished the next. I only produce films that I want to watch. It’s also pointless to take yourself too seriously when it’s a comedy. You have to be prepared to seem foolish.”
90s Filmmakers
Filming Everybody Wants Some!!, the fictitious follow-up to Rebels and Confused (1993), which sent Linklater back to his childhood world and gave Powell some of his fondest recollections of his career in show business.
Similar to the majority of 90s filmmakers, such as Noah Baumbach with Kicking the Board (1995) and Nicole Holofcener with Confidences (1996), Linklater envisioned his first feature film as an autobiographical period piece with a hint of period drama, but he also saw it as a declaration of the kind of film he wanted to make, one that could blend the voice of his generation, the struggles of his city, and the love of a particular stage of life.
Everyone Is In Desire of Some! From an adult perspective, it was a throwback to the late 1980s, full of a certain sorrow but not without joy. Powell was most infected by that fictitious fraternity, which he refused to let go of once the cameras were switched off for good. “I was crying while shaving my mustache when filming ended.” Fortunately, the two of them were reunited quickly.
Los Angeles
In the interview with Vogue, he emphasizes, “Hit Man was something that Rick and I invented during the pandemic.” “My favorite subject in school was creative writing, and I used to write movies.” While I composed poetry and prose, the rest of the class prepared pages of screenplays to be read aloud.
I sold a few of them when I relocated to Los Angeles, which helped me get by for a while. Though they weren’t very good scripts, they were nonetheless good enough concepts to keep me employed and out of trouble. Amazingly, Linklater is where I got my first writing credit. To apprehend a criminal organization that orders a murder, the movie follows an investigator who takes on the role of a hitman.
The concept originated from a Texas Monthly article about New Orleans Police Department officer Gary Johnson, who dresses as a hitman to foil contract killings. Gary was an intriguing professor of psychology who was enthralled with the question of why some people murder others.
Venice Film Festival
One of the high points of what appears to be Powell’s final year in the industry is working with Linklater on Hit Man, a movie that played at the Venice Film Festival the previous year and will have a local debut in May. The release of Twisters (2024), the postponed follow-up to the smash disaster film starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, is the top priority on his schedule.
This new version of the tornado, which is based on a story by Michael Crichton and is directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the man behind the 2019 independent film Minari, aims to reinterpret that apocalyptic atmosphere in the present rather than being a straight sequel.
An impact that Crichton’s creation projected in an analog key about thirty years ago, and about which we shall soon learn whether or not it can be reconsidered in light of contemporary circumstances. “[Tom] Cruise said something interesting when I was working on Top Gun,” Powell goes on.
“You have to figure out what can connect with everyone around you,’ in every corner of the world if you want to make movies of a certain size, scope and scale [a blockbuster].” Additionally, the theme of humanity versus the climate is quite universal, emphasizing our helplessness in the face of these frequently catastrophic forces.
Sydney Sweeney
Glenn Powell seems to have an endless supply of charisma. He can be the hero of a historical achievement, the villain of an action movie, the love interest of a romantic drama, the athlete of a fraternity, or someone who makes a fool of himself to get the girl he wants, even if he isn’t ready to confess it.
Together, he and Sydney Sweeney create a stylish fictional pair that exudes sensuality and magnetism, and their future in romantic comedies appears bright. Unknown to him at the time was his brief partnership with Lynda Rosen Obst, producer of romantic comedies like Nora Ephron’s Sintonía de Amor (1992), George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer’s A Very Special Day (1996), and the recent classic How to lose a Man in 10 Days (2003).
“Working for Lynda in Hollywood was a real education. And her ability to create incredibly captivating romantic comedies is one thing that truly sets her apart. Day in and day out, I was sitting in the Sony parking lot reading scripts. Alongside her, I started to understand the emotions that the great writers of the genre evoked, as well as the necessity of respecting her spirit, her tales, and her characters. “Comfort food is like romantic comedy—you can return to it with endless pleasure but without any surprises.”
