And that’s a wrap on Hitman! What a production! What an experience!
This super crazy fun journey of a film started late last year, when I was approached to Department Head Makeup and help with the initial character design on Richard Linklater’s upcoming dark comedy Hitman starring Glen Powell, who is literally the nicest actor that I’ve ever worked with and am already missing dearly, Adria Arjona, and Retta. We ended up not going into prep until mid-Summer to shoot starting at the beginning of October, so it ended up being quite the extended adventure…….and now the film had moved to New Orleans as well. So, the fam (and my long-time, fabulous, right-hand assistant Nicole Schultz) and I packed up and moved to NOLA for a few months and made the movie……
It was the time of my life. It really challenged me to use almost every single one of my skills as a makeup artist, and I got to work with a team of people that I’ve only dreamed about collaborating with before. I was tasked with disguising Glen Powell into multiple Hitman looks - a dream job for any wig and makeup artist. Matthew Mungle, whom I talked with on a symposium panel at UT last spring, helped me with my plan of action. He is an absolute legend in makeup and special effects (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, CSI, Edward Scissorhands, Hillbilly Elegy, Dr. Doolittle to name a few) and things wouldn’t have been so successful without his mentorship. Matthew helped me get together my team of people, all artist-legends in their own rights, and if I wasn’t sure how to tackle a look, his direction helped me to succeed. I will be forever thankful. He directed me towards Gary Archer, the dental prosthetic technician and creator of almost all the famous sets of teeth you’ve seen on the screen in the last 30+ years - Mrs. Doubtfire, Austin Powers, and Interview with a Vampire to name a few. Kentaro Yano helped me to fabricate the tattoos - I drew them, and he helped me to figure out how to do them in the first place - his help and support was the best - he’s an amazing artist as well (he’s done tattoos for like everything, including Black Panther).
I got together the wigs for the characters, not the extensions nor the styles for the natural hair looks, but it was nice to be able to do some of the wig prep for the characters in the movie. Stacey Butterworth, one of the nicest people to ever work with, who’s work can be seen on also like everything - The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Hillbilly Elegy, multiple installations of the X Men movies, Vice, Gotti….. - helped me fabricate some of the wigs for the characters, and Allison Lowery, author of Historical Wig Styling and my original wig mentor, and Meredith Stein one of my alumni-assistant-turned-wigmaker helped to build some of the wigs and facial hair from scratch.
And then, the final piece of the puzzle - I searched out and found Ally Vickers, the hair department head. I couldn’t have done this without her. She’s simply just the best. Coming off the successes of Netflix’s The Bear, I was amazed that she was even interested in working on this with me/us. Her talents are uncomparable, and she brought so many hair options to the table that I hadn’t even thought about, improved upon some of my initial designs, styled the wigs the most beautifully, and her team were all dreams to work with. I truly hope we can collaborate again.
So, with all of that said, I am just so grateful and thankful to have had this crazy opportunity. I’ve been so on cloud nine since we wrapped that I can’t believe it actually happened. Hopefully, it will be out by next Fall, and then I can share some of the behind the scenes work that I did! In the mean time, here are some pics of the adventure that I can show. Woohoooo! Life is good.