As rags-to-riches stories go, Troy Duffy's is tough to beat: A former bouncer and bartender from Boston, he sold his violent vigilante crime-thriller script to Harvey Weinstein and Miramax in 1997. That script, The Boondock Saints, eventually was developed into one of the most wildly successful cult classics in a generation -- but not by Harvey, whose relationship with Duffy soured prodigiously in the months after their deal was made. The project landed in turnaround, which was really just the beginning of Duffy's tobacco-streaked, booze-fueled, angst-ridden, massively hubristic legend that finally willed The Boondock Saints to the screen in 1999. (That journey is chronicled in the documentary Overnight, a fascinating, cringe-inducing romp that Duffy understandably disavows.) The rest is home-video history -- or at least it is until Friday, when The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day arrives in theaters with the original cast, crew and Duffy in charge.
Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery reprise their roles as the twin McManus brothers, who return from exile in Ireland to avenge the murder of a priest misattributed to them. Clifton Collins Jr. joins the Saints as sort of bipolar Mexican sidekick, while Billy Connelly returns as their father, who gets a Godfather II-esque origin story. It's all unapologetically pulp, and Duffy spoke with Movieline about cult success, equal-opportunity offending and the art of the perfect catchphrase.
I feel like we should light up while we talk. I've never seen more cigarettes consumed in two hours than I have in a Boondock Saints film.
Well, you write what you know. Besides, smoking is cool, and everyone knows it.
I remember when the first film went into turnaround, and I thought, "Well, that sucks." But not only did it get made, now we've got a sequel. Did you see any of this unfolding this way a decade ago?
Nah, not cult success. As far as I'm concerned, the coolest word in film is "cult." Cult movies are basically movies Hollywood missed the first time -- that they should have gotten -- and then the fans got it and made it successful. The fans made Boondock I successful. Whether they know it or not, they got the sequel made, because at a certain point these [studios] are like, "It's financially irresponsible not to make this movie." Boondock I has been a financial juggernaut since Day Fucking One, and it's put up numbers every single year for a decade. How many films are even viable after 10 years to make a sequel at all? Boondock just never fucking died. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And finally the powers that be went, "We gotta make this thing."
What is "bigger and bigger"? We hear numbers and legends floating around all the time, but how much money did The Boondock Saints actually make after going to video?
In North America it's done, from what we can cobble together, over $60 million. Worldwide, your guess is as good as mine. They didn't have Columbines in Japan, Germany, the UK, and a lot of the places this film came out theatrically. It was in top 10s all over the world. It was distributed in 22 foreign countries. Those numbers we don't have. But I can't imagine it wasn't successful there if it was successful here. So your guess is as good as mine, but you can put the number $60 million on North America and I'd feel pretty good about it.
That said, these are relatively low-budget films. You very rarely see an entire ensemble clamoring to get back together for a sequel at these prices. What's different here?
I think that was a bit of luck. To have people identify with each other as well as we all do and truly enjoy each others' company truly greases the wheels of communication when you're making a movie. When I know them enough -- when we're hanging out and drinking and playing -- and I know what makes them tick and they know what makes me tick, it makes the whole fucking process go a lot smoother. There is a Boondock family, right down to the craftsmen and crew members who made it. People were just down for the cause. When they heard Boondock II was coming, it wasn't, "Let's negotiate." It was a phone call. "We're on! See you there!" Click. There was a guy who walked from a film he was fucking doing to come do Boondock 2. He came and busted his hump for me, and for probably less money.
The first film reportedly grew out of you witnessing a dead woman being taken out of a neighboring drug dealer's apartment, and you seeking some sense of justice. How much of that motivation continues in the sequel, if any?
That was part of it the first time around, just the stuff I was seeing around me: My brother and I living in a shithole crack house in fucking Hollywood. Guys with guns. I came home once and caught a dude robbing my apartment. Then us sort of being fed up with it and realizing it wrong -- and that there was nothing we could actually do about it ourselves. Instinct is to knock on this guy's door and blow his fucking head off. You can't do that. You'd like to. So I toyed with the fantasy that everybody has when they see that story on the news, whether you're the most liberal person in the world or the most conservative person in the world. When you hear a guy raped and killed a 4-year-old girl, your immediate gut reaction is, "That motherfucker should die." A lot of people don't say it, but they feel it. This film was a way to help them indulge in that fantasy a bit.
Where did this film's weird emo-badass Mexican sidekick come from?
It came from my friend Clifton Collins's personality. I saw that character in him; I wrote that role for him. And then we cast him in it. Thank God he was available, and thank God he was open to making far less money than he usually makes. I'm speaking for Clif here -- though we've had these conversations, and I feel I can -- but it was also something that he felt a responsibility for, that he wanted to do. For years I ran every draft of the script by Clif, and he watched that Romeo character evolve into what it was. And at the end of the day, he wanted to play that. He wanted to make a movie with his friend Troy, you know? And it worked out that way.
His character has a great, kind of meta moment where he's attempting to develop a Hollywood catchphrase on the fly. What is your trick for coming up with a catchphrase?
That's a tricky one. The fans taught me something in Boondock I. All these little throwaway lines that I thought were little minor, throwaway chuckles, they totally paid attention to. They went to work the next day and used them on their friends. "Thanks for coming out" was a great way to dismiss people who are fucking fools. And it caught on for some reason. In terms of Boondock II, I put a little thought into it this time. I wanted to come up with something that meant absolutely nothing. [SPOILER ALERT] You can use "Ding dong, motherfucker" in any situation. "You wanna go grab a beer?" Ding dong, motherfucker. "My mother died today." Ohhhh, ding dong, motherfucker. You can do it anywhere. So to me, the art of the catchphrase is saying something completely meaningless that people can attribute their own meaning to in virtually any situation.
What's up with all the gay jokes in these films?
That just happened on set. Flanery kept doing his impression of this New Jersey guy; one day he showed up at the location, which was wrecked because we'd just had this huge gunfight. And he shows up on set and he goes, "I hear the Saints show up, and one of 'em wreaks havoc and the other one's a queer." And everybody just started fucking dying. That was five minutes we lost of the day because we were laughing so hard. It just kind of made its way into the dialogue and became the vernacular.
Did it ever feel too easy, though?
What do you mean?
I mean too easy or dismissive -- "gay, fag, queer." Like in the first film Willem Dafoe blows off his lover in bed with the line, "Cuddle? What a fag."
No. I just feel like if you can't take a joke, go fuck yourself. I think with a lot of people, we take these things and beliefs and views we have in life and attribute them to film, almost forgetting that it's a goddamn movie. It's supposed to be fun and entertaining and something to fuck around with. It's not something you make political or moral decisions around. It's a goddamn movie. We're an equal opportunity offender. We even had a lesbian thing in the first film. It's just something that's fucking funny, and I figure if you can't take a joke, go watch another movie.
Fair enough. At the New York premiere, Billy Connelly referred to the directors of the documentary Overnight as "a couple of disloyal assholes." I know you disavow that film, but to what extent do you attribute some of The Boondock Saints' legend to the back story that film depicts, and just how difficult it was to get the first film out?
Well, the film doesn't really show you that. If you think about it, the one salient fact that the filmmakers of Overnight couldn't hide -- clever little devils that they are -- is the following: I started out as a nobody in this business. I wrote one script, got a movie deal and got a record deal. Lost them both, resurrected them both with new companies, and then we went and made our film and our album on our terms. That is a tall order for anyone being a newbie in the business. The film doesn't show you how I accomplished that. But that's what was being pitched to me by these guys: An educational thing that's the story of a complete nobody going and doing something that a lot of kids want to do these days, and going through the pitfalls of it. And maybe not make some of the mistakes you saw old Troy make. Or maybe doing some of the shit you saw him do right, because the fact of the matter is I must have done something right. You just didn't see it, because for "creative reasons" they decided not to tell you that part of the story.
I am proud of Boondock I. There were things that went wrong. I misbehaved sometimes. I said and did the wrong things sometimes. But to show it with that kind of agenda and not provide the context? Why is Troy angry? What's the situation? Who's he talking to? I still get people coming up to me asking, "What happened with Miramax?" This is a fucking question Overnight should have answered! It's a documentary! That's what they do! They show it! They simply didn't tell the story. Their anger at me overrode their judgment as filmmakers. That's the tragedy of it. And they stabbed everybody who ever helped them in the back. All those people you see in that film are still with me today, from the actors to my brother to the guys in the band. They never left my side. These guys were angered on my behalf when they saw this fucking thing. I had people calling me up wanting to do a class-action lawsuit. I was the guy who said, "Fuck it, leave 'em alone. It doesn't matter. We know what happened, we were there. I don't give a shit what the public thinks. As long as my friends and family have got my back, I'm OK with it."
And of course, you're still working. What's next?
I hope to do another film that's not Boondock. I've done two Boondock movies, I'm satisfied with that. There's the possibility for a third down the line. But during this 10-year period with all the bullshit that went on, I still managed to write five scripts that nobody's read yet except for my producer, Chris Brinker. The next one, hopefully, will be The Good King, which is a black comedy/period piece -- the 1500s. Couldn't be more different than Boondock.