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HOLLYWOOD – Writer-director Troy Duffy is the independent movie Icarus.
The Boston-born former bar bouncer went from obscurity to the highest Hollywood heights almost overnight. In 1997, he sold his first script, “The Boondock Saints,” to Miramax in a widely publicized multimillion-dollar deal with the studio’s then co-chief Harvey Weinstein famously offering to throw in the bar at which Duffy worked to sweeten the deal for the writer-director’s vigilante shoot-’em-up. And after the trade papers anointed Duffy “Hollywood’s newest wunderkind,” the filmmaker was off: cudgeling his friends, family and the other members of his rock band, the Brood, with his suddenly outsized ego.
More crucially, though, Duffy’s high-and-mightiness fell out of favor with Miramax’s top brass, who ultimately put the project into turnaround. “Saints” became tainted goods in the industry’s eyes, although it was eventually made on the cheap, landing in only five theaters for two weeks and grossing a paltry $30,000. The whole process is painfully captured by the documentary “Overnight,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and presents Duffy’s career demise as a cautionary tale about the moviemaking fast-lane.
Not exactly the stuff on which film franchises are built – or so it would seem. And yet despite “Boondock Saints’ ” record as a box-office non-starter, despite its wholesale lack of recognition factor outside a core group of ardent fans, today marks the arrival in theaters of Duffy’s return to form: “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.”
“ ‘Boondock’ was a cult success,” explained Duffy, 38. “The word ‘cult’ cuts both ways. The reason people thought ‘Boondock’ hadn’t done well is because it was out there doing its thing quietly. There was no fanfare. But as soon as it touched fans, it did it on its own. Whoever you talk to, you get the same story: ‘My buddy strapped me to a chair and said, “You’re watching this movie.” Two hours later, you got another ‘Boondock’ fan.”
Focused on two Irish-American brothers (Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery) who go on a highly stylized murder spree, taking out mobsters and underworld kingpins after receiving a message from God to clean up crime in Boston, “Boondock Saints” proved a hard sell upon its U.S. release. The Columbine High School massacre was still fresh in the national consciousness, having occurred only a year earlier. And within the industry, Miramax’s public kiss-off of the film was the equivalent to a scarlet letter.
But according to the movie’s producers, “Saints” found its legs overseas, where the film received theatrical distribution and then made its major connection with fans on DVD.
“In the U.S. on home video, it did well past $50 million,” “Saints” producer Chris Brinker said. “In Canada, it did another $10 million. In Japan, it was wildly successful. And it did great in South Africa, Korea, Germany and Italy. You’re above $100 million gross just on DVD worldwide. It’s really nuts.”
Shaking off the career missteps and industry infamy, Duffy moved forward full bore on the sequel.
Duffy had no trouble re-enlisting almost all the first film’s principal cast members and secured $8 million for the shoot. Sony Pictures and Apparition Films stepped in to distribute “Saints II,” which was raucously received by fans at a jam-packed panel discussion at San Diego’s Comic-Con this summer.
“It’s the blue-collar ‘Twilight,’ ” said Apparition’s chief executive, Bob Berney, name-checking the juggernaut teen vampire romance.
“It’s like a Springsteen crowd that comes to this movie.”
