I first heard of the movie Boondock Saints from the big giant posters that appeared in lots of Blockbuster Video stores. I dont put much stock in any movie that goes straight to DVD; Starship Troopers 2 comes to mind, so I never really gave Boondock the benefit of the doubt. After I first got on SuicideGirls I saw that many people were fans of the movie so I checked it out. I saw what attracted its hardcore fanbase but the movie didnt exactly thrill me.
Earlier this year when I first got the notice for the movie Overnight I saw that it was about Troy Duffy the writer/director behind Boondock Saints. Back in 1997 Duffy got an unprecedented deal with Miramax. The deal had Duffy directing for the first time; his band, The Brood, would do the music and Miramax co-chairmen Bob and Harvey Weinstein agreed to purchase J. Sloan's, the bar where the 25-year-old Duffy once worked and still hangs out, sources say. Plans were for the screenwriter/director-to-be to split ownership with the Weinsteins.
At the same time Troys friends, aspiring filmmakers Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith, agreed to document Troys rise on video for a future documentary. Soon after that Troy started to turn on his friends and family. He became the dictator that he always wanted to be and even more so when his movie deal fell apart and he had to make the movie independently. Then the CD for The Brood came out it only sold 690 copies and Troy was dropped from the label.
Overnight is the best documentaries I have seen this year easily rising above Fahrenheit 9/11. It is a terrifying film that seems to warn people DONT FUCK WITH HARVEY WEINSTEIN!
Overnight opens in many cities on November 17 and is playing at the Film Forum in New York City until November 23.
To get to the Overnight website go to THINKfilm
Daniel Robert Epstein: Your movie is probably one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.
Tony Montana: Oh thank you.
DRE: It helped that I had seen Boondock Saints a couple of years ago.
TM: What was your reaction to Boondock Saints?
DRE: It was alright, definitely a bit overrated. It has a huge cult following.
TM: Yeah I shot the end credits of Boondock Saints and Ive had people quote me stuff from that.
DRE: Were you guys always planning on turning this footage into a documentary?
Mark Brian Smith: Tony presented the idea to me when all this good stuff started to happen. It fell into our laps because we were friends with Troy. What happened was that Tony pitched me the idea of following Troy through both the film and music industry simultaneously. I was really intrigued by that idea because I dont think anyone ever followed a complete neophyte from out of a bar into the highest levels of an industry like this. We wanted to do a film about how he chooses to behave and what he chose to become.
DRE: When did you finish editing the movie?
TM: A couple of days before Sundance.
MBS: Well we presented a two hour cut in the summer of 2003 at the Seattle International Film Festival. Then between that and Sundance 2004 we went back into the editing room about eight more times.
TM: We went to Sundance 2004 and had a midnight screening where all the buyers and press showed up. John Sloss, our rep at Cinetic Media, said that he had been coming to Sundance for years and he had never seen a midnight screening with a crowd like this. Unfortunately we met some resistance because of Cassian Elwes, from the William Morris Agency, who makes an appearance in our film. Sloss called him to invite him to a courtesy screening. Cassian said he had already seen it and said he wasnt worried about the movie. After the midnight screening Cassian stood outside and told reporters that we didnt have releases from the William Morris Agency. That got into the LA Times and as a result we walked away from Sundance without a sale. We had to wait 24 very long days before we could convince people we had the legal right to sell the film.
DRE: But also its a perfect ending of sorts to this movie.
TM: Troys film and album were released in early 2000 and when they both failed he turned to us. He threatened us and said we had to give him his release form back. Not only did we have his release but we filmed him signing it to make sure nothing would ever happen. We never talked to him after that. Then we went underground to edit the film and we had to lie to our friends and colleagues about what we were doing because we thought he would try to stop us. But at the end of the day when the film went to festivals he still hadnt spoken to the press. Except for this one blurb, that might not have even come from him, where he called Overnight An 80 minute smear campaign.
We sent a tape of the film to Harvey Weinstein a week and a half before Sundance as a courtesy. He watched it at his house in Connecticut but we never heard from him about it.
MBS: Our film came out at about the same time as Down and Dirty Pictures so I guess it doesnt behoove him to comment.
DRE: Were you guys worried about this affecting your future careers?
MBS: We were but John Sloss is the best producers rep in the business. When we told people he was onboard they would tell us we were fine. That really said a lot. But in terms of cutting it we wanted to go no holds barred to show the blacklisting that happened to Troy. We just showed exactly what people said and exactly how it happened. We were never concerned that telling the truth would cause negative things to happen. A lot of people watch the film and say that Troy is the only one that could make Harvey Weinstein look sympathetic.
TM: As filmmakers we had a lot of ideas on how to approach this film creatively. We are pretty proud of ourselves with how we sculpted this film. We never wanted this to go straight to DVD or just air on television. We had hopes of this being a theatrical film. We were very influenced by films like On the Ropes, Hearts of Darkness and Burden of Dreams. You really admire how far they went.
DRE: In the film Troy says to the both of you that you arent going to get any money for managing the band. Was that to tell the audience that objectivity just went out the window?
MBS: Whats great about that moment is that he contradicts himself in that very scene. Tony and I wore a lot of different hats. We werent just doing the documentary but also running his company and managing his band. We wanted to get paid for all the legwork we had put in over a year and a half. We wanted to show how someone could turn on anyone, including their friends.
TM: It was the Hollywood clich; he cut us out as soon as his record deal came through.
MBS: We have to take personal responsibility because we had nothing in writing because Troy wouldnt allow it. So the main thing became that we wanted to control the documentary and because we had all our legal ducks in a row we had to tolerate him for another two years. It ended with his projects failing and even more tragic was him standing in the street talking to himself.
DRE: As I said, are we supposed to believe that you two are objective documentary filmmakers?
MBS: I think that every documentary, barring The History Channel and even some of those have agendas, have themes to them with the most blatant being Fahrenheit 9/11. If our film was a revenge piece then we did a terrible job of it. Some of the stuff that got cut out were scathing things he said about women and gays which would have made people walk out of the theatre. For example if an uncooperative actor had a gay manager Troy would say he was a pedophile or if an openly gay studio head was not responding to his phone calls then he was having a bad AIDS day. In the movie he calls [Miramax Production Head] Meryl Poster a cunt but in the stuff we cut out he calls her far worse stuff.
DRE: All of that will be on the DVD [laughs].
TM: Right. Thats a logical question you asked us but we never told Troy how to behave. We present what happened and how he acted. There is no manipulation of footage here.
MBS: Hes never come out and said any of the stuff we showed was wrong.
TM: Yeah, why hasnt Troy Duffy gone to one of the 18 film festivals this movie was at to rebuke it. Its because the film speaks for himself. At one point we went through this process of trying to get money and some producers asked us if we could put more good footage of Troy in the beginning to show more of his downfall. We would have loved to have shown 45 minutes of Troy Duffy as a nice guy then have the big turn. But these negative parts of his personality surfaced very aggressively when the deals went through.
MBS: When he is sitting there in the Boston Caf with his father and brother and pontificating on how successful the band is, that was only two weeks after his deal. I think he also got off on who he was as an individual with being a renegade.
DRE: It seems that if his film and movie projects were successful he probably could have acted that way and maybe even stopped you from putting out the film.
TM: Im saying no to that just because we were legally set but I guess if he was really successful he would have the money to file lawsuits that could have scared off buyers.
DRE: He could have tied you up for years. If you guys were to do a scathing film on Tom Cruise you would be shit out of luck.
TM: Thats probably true. The other side of that is that we know we would not have our film out if not for John Sloss. His legal team is so good. What they had to handle when we brought them this film was monumental. The other odd thing is that John Sloss is friends with Harvey Weinstein. Here he is representing this film and at the same time doing deals with Miramax. Hes releasing a film that suggests that Miramax blacklisted Troy. Its an odd incestuous circle.
MBS: It felt really good to have someone with power help us.
DRE: Did anyone say that what happened in the film is SOP in Hollywood?
MBS: No, [Boondock Saints producer] Robert Fried said to us that he had never seen anything like it happen before.
DRE: Was Troy not like this at all before? It seems that the things that brought Troy down are the same things that helped him make that killer deal with Harvey Weinstein.
MBS: Absolutely except that he didnt know where to stop. Troy took the game too far. He thought he could do anything he wanted if at the end of the day his endeavors were successful. Thats why when those projects did not succeed he threatened us because he knew what we had.
TM: His behavior believe it or not has continued to this day. He still chain smokes, gets drunk every night and pontificates. Its a shame he hasnt learned anything. What he says now is that a Boondock Saints sequel is coming then people go to his website and buy merchandise. Thats how Troy lives now. The merchandise on his website is really the best merchandise Ive ever seen for a film. But there is no Boondock Saints sequel.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Earlier this year when I first got the notice for the movie Overnight I saw that it was about Troy Duffy the writer/director behind Boondock Saints. Back in 1997 Duffy got an unprecedented deal with Miramax. The deal had Duffy directing for the first time; his band, The Brood, would do the music and Miramax co-chairmen Bob and Harvey Weinstein agreed to purchase J. Sloan's, the bar where the 25-year-old Duffy once worked and still hangs out, sources say. Plans were for the screenwriter/director-to-be to split ownership with the Weinsteins.
At the same time Troys friends, aspiring filmmakers Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith, agreed to document Troys rise on video for a future documentary. Soon after that Troy started to turn on his friends and family. He became the dictator that he always wanted to be and even more so when his movie deal fell apart and he had to make the movie independently. Then the CD for The Brood came out it only sold 690 copies and Troy was dropped from the label.
Overnight is the best documentaries I have seen this year easily rising above Fahrenheit 9/11. It is a terrifying film that seems to warn people DONT FUCK WITH HARVEY WEINSTEIN!
Overnight opens in many cities on November 17 and is playing at the Film Forum in New York City until November 23.
To get to the Overnight website go to THINKfilm
Daniel Robert Epstein: Your movie is probably one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.
Tony Montana: Oh thank you.
DRE: It helped that I had seen Boondock Saints a couple of years ago.
TM: What was your reaction to Boondock Saints?
DRE: It was alright, definitely a bit overrated. It has a huge cult following.
TM: Yeah I shot the end credits of Boondock Saints and Ive had people quote me stuff from that.
DRE: Were you guys always planning on turning this footage into a documentary?
Mark Brian Smith: Tony presented the idea to me when all this good stuff started to happen. It fell into our laps because we were friends with Troy. What happened was that Tony pitched me the idea of following Troy through both the film and music industry simultaneously. I was really intrigued by that idea because I dont think anyone ever followed a complete neophyte from out of a bar into the highest levels of an industry like this. We wanted to do a film about how he chooses to behave and what he chose to become.
DRE: When did you finish editing the movie?
TM: A couple of days before Sundance.
MBS: Well we presented a two hour cut in the summer of 2003 at the Seattle International Film Festival. Then between that and Sundance 2004 we went back into the editing room about eight more times.
TM: We went to Sundance 2004 and had a midnight screening where all the buyers and press showed up. John Sloss, our rep at Cinetic Media, said that he had been coming to Sundance for years and he had never seen a midnight screening with a crowd like this. Unfortunately we met some resistance because of Cassian Elwes, from the William Morris Agency, who makes an appearance in our film. Sloss called him to invite him to a courtesy screening. Cassian said he had already seen it and said he wasnt worried about the movie. After the midnight screening Cassian stood outside and told reporters that we didnt have releases from the William Morris Agency. That got into the LA Times and as a result we walked away from Sundance without a sale. We had to wait 24 very long days before we could convince people we had the legal right to sell the film.
DRE: But also its a perfect ending of sorts to this movie.
TM: Troys film and album were released in early 2000 and when they both failed he turned to us. He threatened us and said we had to give him his release form back. Not only did we have his release but we filmed him signing it to make sure nothing would ever happen. We never talked to him after that. Then we went underground to edit the film and we had to lie to our friends and colleagues about what we were doing because we thought he would try to stop us. But at the end of the day when the film went to festivals he still hadnt spoken to the press. Except for this one blurb, that might not have even come from him, where he called Overnight An 80 minute smear campaign.
We sent a tape of the film to Harvey Weinstein a week and a half before Sundance as a courtesy. He watched it at his house in Connecticut but we never heard from him about it.
MBS: Our film came out at about the same time as Down and Dirty Pictures so I guess it doesnt behoove him to comment.
DRE: Were you guys worried about this affecting your future careers?
MBS: We were but John Sloss is the best producers rep in the business. When we told people he was onboard they would tell us we were fine. That really said a lot. But in terms of cutting it we wanted to go no holds barred to show the blacklisting that happened to Troy. We just showed exactly what people said and exactly how it happened. We were never concerned that telling the truth would cause negative things to happen. A lot of people watch the film and say that Troy is the only one that could make Harvey Weinstein look sympathetic.
TM: As filmmakers we had a lot of ideas on how to approach this film creatively. We are pretty proud of ourselves with how we sculpted this film. We never wanted this to go straight to DVD or just air on television. We had hopes of this being a theatrical film. We were very influenced by films like On the Ropes, Hearts of Darkness and Burden of Dreams. You really admire how far they went.
DRE: In the film Troy says to the both of you that you arent going to get any money for managing the band. Was that to tell the audience that objectivity just went out the window?
MBS: Whats great about that moment is that he contradicts himself in that very scene. Tony and I wore a lot of different hats. We werent just doing the documentary but also running his company and managing his band. We wanted to get paid for all the legwork we had put in over a year and a half. We wanted to show how someone could turn on anyone, including their friends.
TM: It was the Hollywood clich; he cut us out as soon as his record deal came through.
MBS: We have to take personal responsibility because we had nothing in writing because Troy wouldnt allow it. So the main thing became that we wanted to control the documentary and because we had all our legal ducks in a row we had to tolerate him for another two years. It ended with his projects failing and even more tragic was him standing in the street talking to himself.
DRE: As I said, are we supposed to believe that you two are objective documentary filmmakers?
MBS: I think that every documentary, barring The History Channel and even some of those have agendas, have themes to them with the most blatant being Fahrenheit 9/11. If our film was a revenge piece then we did a terrible job of it. Some of the stuff that got cut out were scathing things he said about women and gays which would have made people walk out of the theatre. For example if an uncooperative actor had a gay manager Troy would say he was a pedophile or if an openly gay studio head was not responding to his phone calls then he was having a bad AIDS day. In the movie he calls [Miramax Production Head] Meryl Poster a cunt but in the stuff we cut out he calls her far worse stuff.
DRE: All of that will be on the DVD [laughs].
TM: Right. Thats a logical question you asked us but we never told Troy how to behave. We present what happened and how he acted. There is no manipulation of footage here.
MBS: Hes never come out and said any of the stuff we showed was wrong.
TM: Yeah, why hasnt Troy Duffy gone to one of the 18 film festivals this movie was at to rebuke it. Its because the film speaks for himself. At one point we went through this process of trying to get money and some producers asked us if we could put more good footage of Troy in the beginning to show more of his downfall. We would have loved to have shown 45 minutes of Troy Duffy as a nice guy then have the big turn. But these negative parts of his personality surfaced very aggressively when the deals went through.
MBS: When he is sitting there in the Boston Caf with his father and brother and pontificating on how successful the band is, that was only two weeks after his deal. I think he also got off on who he was as an individual with being a renegade.
DRE: It seems that if his film and movie projects were successful he probably could have acted that way and maybe even stopped you from putting out the film.
TM: Im saying no to that just because we were legally set but I guess if he was really successful he would have the money to file lawsuits that could have scared off buyers.
DRE: He could have tied you up for years. If you guys were to do a scathing film on Tom Cruise you would be shit out of luck.
TM: Thats probably true. The other side of that is that we know we would not have our film out if not for John Sloss. His legal team is so good. What they had to handle when we brought them this film was monumental. The other odd thing is that John Sloss is friends with Harvey Weinstein. Here he is representing this film and at the same time doing deals with Miramax. Hes releasing a film that suggests that Miramax blacklisted Troy. Its an odd incestuous circle.
MBS: It felt really good to have someone with power help us.
DRE: Did anyone say that what happened in the film is SOP in Hollywood?
MBS: No, [Boondock Saints producer] Robert Fried said to us that he had never seen anything like it happen before.
DRE: Was Troy not like this at all before? It seems that the things that brought Troy down are the same things that helped him make that killer deal with Harvey Weinstein.
MBS: Absolutely except that he didnt know where to stop. Troy took the game too far. He thought he could do anything he wanted if at the end of the day his endeavors were successful. Thats why when those projects did not succeed he threatened us because he knew what we had.
TM: His behavior believe it or not has continued to this day. He still chain smokes, gets drunk every night and pontificates. Its a shame he hasnt learned anything. What he says now is that a Boondock Saints sequel is coming then people go to his website and buy merchandise. Thats how Troy lives now. The merchandise on his website is really the best merchandise Ive ever seen for a film. But there is no Boondock Saints sequel.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
oh well....i guess I gotta go watch troy be a jackass in this movie.