Who is he?
If things had gone differently, Troy Duffy would require no introduction. In 1997, Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein offered the then-twentysomething bartender and aspiring writer/director millions to turn The Boondock Saints, his screenplay for a hard-boiled Boston-Irish crime flick, into a blockbuster. The movie got made, but not before the Miramax deal fell through and Duffy’s Hollywood fantasy, which included a major record deal for his band (also called The Boondock Saints), began to collapse under the weight of the director’s ego, bravado and questionable conduct. The Boondock Saints opened on five screens in 1999 and grossed next to nothing, the band’s album flopped, and it looked as though Duffy would be better known for Overnight, the 2003 documentary tracing his almost-rise and subsequent fall, than for the movie that was supposed to make him a star.
It took the DVD market and the posthumous success of The Boondock Saints as a cult hit to provide Duffy with a second chance, which he gets with the release of Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day this week (read our review).
So what’s with the 10-year holdup between Boondocks?
“A lawsuit,” says Duffy in an interview with EYE WEEKLY last week. “We sued virtually everybody who was involved in the financing and distribution of the [first] film. The sequel rights were tied into that. Everybody we sued settled in court for undisclosed amounts and we started on the sequel right away.”
The director says that with fans eager for more, he wanted to revisit his characters in a way that was consistent with the original.
“The first film was deemed sacred ground by the fan base,” he says. “So you’re not free to sit down and write what you want. It was almost like writing with shackles on. Once the code was cracked, it became easy. We’ve done some new things and taken risks but, in Boondock, high risk is met with high reward.”
Does risk include casting decisions?
One unlikely move was for Duffy to cast some new blood in the form of Peter Fonda as All Saints Day’s chief villain. He joins the holdover cast from the first Boondocks movie, including original leads Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus, and Billy Connolly as their patriarchal figure.
“I was trying to find people who we’d not normally cast,” Duffy says. “You wouldn’t think of Peter Fonda as a film rebel, but for my money, the first independent film ever was Easy Rider, and for him to anoint our set with his iconic image and attitude, it weirdly fit. It took huge balls for him to do that.”
For all that’s gone wrong for Duffy, there’s clearly a sense of vindication in all this.
“Hell yeah I feel vindicated,” he says. “But the original cast never really left. We actually do hang out and I sent them every draft. When we did get the money to do this, it wasn’t like ‘Talk to my agent.’ It was ‘Sweet. Send a plane ticket.’ Click. Done.”
As for the Overnight legacy?
Duffy has no qualms about tackling the obvious elephant in the room: the flack he’s taken from the press and in the scathing documentary.
“I made mistakes, I misbehaved, I said the wrong things and I did the wrong things, sometimes. But I must’ve done enough things right to achieve my goals, which were to make a film and a record. You didn’t see that part [in the documentary], for what I’m sure are creative reasons. The little devils that made this documentary decided to go the sensationalistic route and provide no context for viewers to make their own decisions.”
But as far as exposure goes, there’s always a silver lining.
“Now I’m the rebel director who butts heads with Hollywood. There’s a bit of an advantage to that, although it’s still uncomfortable [for me to know] that you can go to Blockbuster and rent two hours of me acting like a jerk-off. Maybe I’ll put out a rebuttal film called Oversight.”
And there is an upshot Duffy can always brag about — something most filmmakers can’t.
“I heard there’s a drinking game where you have to take a shot every time someone says ‘Fuck.’ No one can make it through Boondock doing that.”