"It doesn't have to be
Boondocks, Troy …"
By
Dylan Grant
www.moviefreak.com
Hollywood is a
funny place. How funny? Troy Duffy, once the toast of the town and
latest Next Big Thing to come along in the Tarantino inspired era of
late nineties indie film saw the release of The Boondock Saints
dwindle to nearly nothing, his career apparently over before it
started. "I was sleeping on the floor of my friend's apartment," says
Duffy, "when Tokyo called. Tokyo, like the city itself just picked up
the phone." Troy's first – and to date, only – film was scheduled to
headline the Tokyo Film Festival. "A limo showed up, they flew us to
Tokyo first class. We were in this skyscraper of a hotel and as we
were going up in the elevator, we could see a giant, megatron screen
across the street from the hotel that was running the Boondock
trailer. I show up at the screening and there are 2000 screaming
fans. After it was over I was right back to the floor in my friend's
apartment."
It happens
like that sometimes. In Hollywood's promise is another man's drunken
delusion, and for every Tarantino, there's a guy who can't find his
way off the floor of his friend's apartment. Think of Sunset Blvd.
Erich von Stroheim played a character that was once one of the biggest
directors in Hollywood, married to the woman for whom he now works as
a butler. It's fictional in the sense that von Stroheim was never a
butler, but there are those kinds of career trajectories.
But back to
Troy Duffy. There is more to the saga of The Boondock Saints
than anyone could have or should have expected. The script was hot,
the test screenings were a hit, and the world seemed to be throwing
open its doors, blowing, to borrow from Walt Whitman, the doors
themselves from their hinges. Unfortunately, a school shooting in
Columbine, Colorado ruined all that. The shootings, their fallout,
and all the freshly heightened scrutiny paid to violence in the media
(because, you know, media violence is what those shootings were all
about) turned what had been a hot property into a film that was
virtually unreleasable. If a certain box office tracking web site is
to be believed, The Boondock Saints ran in five theaters back
in 2000, took in about thirty grand at the box office, and opened and
closed in about three weeks. Every indication was that the film would
fade away, and we would never be the wiser.
But like I
said, Hollywood's a funny place, and for every story about the guy who
makes the big film and ends up cleaning swimming pools, there's yet
another story about the guy who made the film, saw it tank, was
starting to think he would be forced to clean swimming pools, only to
see things turn back in his favor. "Blockbuster saved us," Duffy
says. "They agreed to take it on exclusively, and from there the rest
is history." The Saints were quickly moving 100,000 units a
month, or as one rabid fan put it: "I went to the University of
Florida, and everybody had two DVDs: Zoolander and The Boondock
Saints."
Fans, as they
do, rescued the film from the dusty shelves of video store obscurity
and turned it into a kind of backside hit. The Boondock Saints
is a fan film, raised to such a level that it is now, from a critical
standpoint, bulletproof. I saw the film for the first time recently,
and there is a lot to criticize, but it is such an audience darling
that none of that really matters. (Maybe it has something to do with
the film's simplicity. The Boondock Saints is one of those
films that makes you feel like you too can make a movie.)
Seeing his fans, it was like Overnight never happened. No one
brought it up, much less gave an impression that he had let them
down. The air in the screening room was one of an even that they had
been waiting for since 2000.
The popularity
of the film gave way to talk of a sequel, which Duffy says will
happen. "It's going to be called All Saints Day," he
says. The plot revolves around our righteous triumvirate hiding out
on an island, returning to Boston when they learn they have been
framed for the murder of a priest. Troy says, "The film takes a lot
of twists and turns. The Il Duce character stays on the island when
they go back. He's near death for most of the movie. Then he comes
back in the end and we realize that everything we thought was
happening was really part of something else."
So the script
has been more or less written, and there's a deal waiting to be
signed, and –
Yes, yes, but
when, Troy, when will we see this fabled sequel? How
much longer, o' Lord? "That's the one question every fan asks," Duffy
laments, "and it's a question I really can't answer. It's
frustrating.
There are,
Troy tells us, certain litigious matters that must be unraveled before
the sequel can be allowed to move forward. Troy can't tell us
anymore. All this talk about saints and islands and sequels and
lawyers is leading us into murky waters, where the Moviefreak lawyers
tell us we would be rash to tread.
But fear not.
Duffy has been keeping busy these past six years with more than a
lengthy court case. "We wrote four scripts," he says, "and we chose
one to go ahead with." Duffy has little more to say about that one,
titled "The Good King," other than to say that it is a dark comedy.
Actually, "it's as black as a starless night at the bottom of the
ocean." If you like the humor in Saints, Troy tells us, you'll
love "The Good King."
Who knows how
any of this will play out, but it seems safe to say that "The Good
King" will probably be made before any Boondock sequel, but
maybe that's for the best. There is nothing like a little litigation
to chip away at the soul. "I was in a bar one night and some fans
sent some drinks over, and then they sent some more drinks over, so I
went to go talk to them." Here Duffy admits that he probably told
them too much about a law suit his lawyers have pleading with him to
be quiet about. "One of these guys put his hand on my shoulder and he
says, 'It doesn't have to be Boondocks, Troy. Just give us
something. We're hungry.'" Duffy pauses a moment, then asserts, "I'm
a filmmaker again. Fuck it."
For now,
though, Troy is relishing the re-release of The Boondock Saints.
The original unrated version will be shown in theaters on the 22nd of
May, with the new two-disc DVD following the next day. "I hadn't seen
this cut in years," said Duffy after the screening. The major
restorations, he says, involve shots here and there that were too much
at the time. "Basically, every time someone got killed there was more
blood."
From the
audience reaction, the years have clearly not diminished the fans'
enthusiasm. The applause, hysterical laughter, all the whooping: it
was like seeing your favorite band give the performance you'd always
hoped they would. The fans loved it, Duffy looked happy, and the film
looked great. A story as unlikely as this could only happen in
Hollywood.
Article Posted: May 12, 2006
