In our last Vanishing Act, we got you caught up on Mark Borchardt, the aspiring filmmaker whose attempts at bringing his first film to the screen were documented in American Movie. As a special St. Paddy’s Day treat, we thought we’d do the same for another aspiring filmmaker whose attempts at bringing his first film to the screen were documented in 2003’s somewhat less uplifting Overnight.
The subject of that documentary is Troy Duffy, a foulmouthed, chain-smoking, overall-clad boy from Boston who went to Hollywood and made his dream come true. At least, that’s the direction things seemed to be going when Duffy made a too-good-to-be-true deal with Miramax based on his buzzed-about script The Boondock Saints. The Weinstein brothers agreed to finance the film with Duffy as director, hire his band to do the music for the movie, and even buy the bar where Duffy works (J. Sloane’s) on the premise that they’ll own it together.
If you’ve seen Overnight, you know what happens next. The tagline “There’s more than one way to shoot yourself” neatly sums up Duffy’s association with Miramax, as the brash, confrontational and increasingly obnoxious and deluded would-be filmmaker goes on to decimate his relationship with the Weinsteins and sandbag Boondocks in the process. Eventually he did make the movie with Franchise Films for a much smaller budget than originally planned. Boondocks opened in a handful – make that a thimbleful – of theaters for a week in 2000, earning less than $100,000 at the box office. If this happened to Mark Borchardt we’d find it depressing, but Duffy comes off as such an unlikable blowhard throughout the documentary, there’s not a wet eye in the house. Hubris had taken down another victim, or so it seemed.
For some reason, however, Boondock Saints developed a rabid cult following once it was released on video exclusively to Blockbuster. The story of two Boston Irishmen who take on the Russian mob, the film is virtually indistinguishable from any number of Tarantino or Guy Ritchie knockoffs, save for Willem Dafoe’s deranged performance as an FBI agent. Still, facts are facts: the DVD sold like crazy, and no matter how many bridges Duffy burned in Hollywood, money still talks.
In this case, the talk was about a sequel, to be called All Saints Day. That talk continues to this day, and generally involves veiled references to rights issues and litigation standing in the way of the “Boondock flock” getting their hearts’ desires. Periodically Duffy issues video messages via his website and YouTube, such as the one below, detailing his plans for the sequel as well as another project-in-waiting, a black comedy called The Good King. He doesn’t really sound like a guy who’s been humbled (he claims never to have seen Overnight), but who knows? If you’re feeling charitable today, why not raise a glass of green beer in a toast to him and all the others who have been chewed up and spit out by the Hollywood machine – even the ones who had it coming.