Even though the first film found a passionate following, Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was a movie most people bet would never happen. The fact that you might not have heard of Boondock Saints 1 was only a small hurdle facing the sequel. Writer/director Troy Duffy made the original through sweat and bravado, forcing his vision into existence. Some critics think his difficulties were his own doing.
Harvey Weinstein offered Duffy a production deal based on his script for The Boondock Saints. Ultimately, Weinstein dropped the film. The plot thickens, however, as there is a documentary film chronicling Duffy's struggles with Weinstein. Using behind the scenes footage they shot during Boondock's development, Filmmakers Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith compiled Overnight. Their documentary portrays Duffy burning his own bridges, screaming at Miramax executives on speaker phone and bullying his way through a film deal, unsuccessfully.
Duffy's reputation was only one of the reasons it took 10 years to make a sequel. The Troy Duffy who called in this week didn't sound like the monster Overnight portrayed. A confident man with strong opinions, yes, but not volatile. Maybe he was on good behavior, maybe he's just mellowed out or maybe you have to get to know the man to really paint a portrait of him. He certainly didn't shy away from the juicy details of his struggles in the 10 years between Boondock films.
What was the film that caused all this hoopla? The Boondock Saints was about Boston brothers (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) who decide to clean up the town, killing the local hoodlums. Boondock Saints II picks up the brothers retired in Ireland with their father, Il Duce (Billy Connelly). The murder of a Boston priest brings them home to set things right again. With a new partner (Clifton Collins Jr.) and an FBI agent (Julie Benz) on their tail, this is the next level of Boondock action.
SuicideGirlsG: How many times did Boondock II almost start before it finally got going for real?
Troy Duffy: Before we actually got a deal on it, three.
SG: How did the script change each time?
TD: I think during maybe the first deal, there was the potential of getting Willem back. That script was kind of out there but never really happened. Then we changed it and took his character out. Willem and I sort of agreed that you couldn't really do much more with old Smecker because once you show a guy in a dress and he goes over to the dark side, what else can you do? So the script changed dramatically after that but virtually right after that was our shooting script.
SG: Is that where Julie's character came in?
TD: Sure, sure, in a way. Her character just kind of fell out of the sky. I didn't write it for any particular reason. We wanted to give her her own thing, not just make her a watered down chick version of Smecker. So we tried to have this woman retain her femininity in an obvious man's world, even use it as a weapon sometimes. I didn't write Eunice [as a surrogate for] Smecker.
SG: What did you learn from your first production to make the second one easier once you got it going?
TD: All kinds of things. The major one, if you want to really simplify something that we could talk about eight hours for, down into one little news bite, I learned that you reserve your creativity and passion for the creative side of this business and you have to play the politics on the financial side of it. These people that are investing millions of dollars in your film need to know that somebody with a good head on his shoulders is going to get them their investment back. So I've delineated between the two things. Now my passion is just for filmmaking and when I'm sitting with financial people, I often play the politics that are involved with that.
SG: I saw Overnight and I know how editing can spin it, but you're on camera doing some outrageous things. Do you take any responsibility for your Hollywood conflicts?
TD: Sure, a little. Making a film is a very hard thing to do. Anybody that tells you it just goes perfectly and everybody loves each other at the end of the day is pretty much full of shit.
SG: No one believes those people.
TD: Yeah, but now we've gone to the other extreme with a film like Overnight and now we're supposed to believe this? It doesn't happen like that. You can edit something together and not provide the context in which things are said - who, what, where, why and when and just get people hating a guy. It's a very easy thing to do. I think the biggest shame of it all is that these two guys were friends of mine. They came to me and said, "Can we do this documentary on you?' It was their idea. They requested permission. We granted it to them and they said, "Don't worry. We're your friends. We'd never fuck you." Over and over again. That's exactly what they did. Unfortunately, they didn't learn the very lesson they filmed me learning which was that making a film is a very difficult endeavor. It's a hard thing to do. You add into that the music that we were also trying to make in the mix, it becomes damn close to impossible but we did it. I achieved the goals that I set out to do. I set out as a complete newbie in this business to make a film and a record on our terms and that's what we did. By watching that film, you have no idea of how I did it and that's a shame because it's a pretty interesting little story and I'm sure a bunch of young filmmakers could have watched the mistakes I made, were they honestly portrayed, and learned something from it. But, they would have also watched all the mistakes I didn't make, all the things that I did right. I mean, I must have done something right.
SG: And there are successful people known for being aggressive, like Michael Bay or James Cameron. How do you taper that as needed?
TD: You just have to have as much knowledge about the lay of the land as possible. Some things are easy. Some things get a little difficult. You have to know who knows who, what relationships are to what relationships, what people's motivations are. To me, it's just a matter of respecting business etiquette now. When I'm in rooms full of businessmen, I go with the business side of Troy. When a room's full of actors, I go with passion. That's what they respond to.
SG: To discuss the filmmaking side of Boondock, were there bigger stunts this time?
TD: Yeah, there were bigger stunts, bigger guns, bigger body count. That's just kind of the three Bs of sequels. You've got to give them everything they love about the first movie except bigger, badder and better. For my money, you have to give them a brand new story, like something that throws curve balls at 'em that they could never see coming. Cleanest example is Terminator 2. Suddenly Arnold's the good guy protecting Sarah Connor. We didn't see that coming and it was an extremely risky move for the filmmakers to take but they showed some balls and did it and we ate it up. It was the next thing that they made cool for us and that's what I've tried to do in the story of Boondock Saints. There's a female lead in Boondock Saints. Curve ball. The boys pick up a Hispanic American on the way in. Curve ball. We go into period piece flashbacks of how Il Duce became a killer. Curve ball. These are things Boondock fans are not used to seeing but this is the new story. This is the new thing we're going to make cool.
SG: And sequels have to deal with the fans' expectations. They discovered the first one as a surprise, but how do you deal with the sequel they've each imagined on their own ever since?
TD: Sure, I'm sure that that happened. I can't imagine what they were imagining because writing this thing was like trying to crack the code on a safe, you know. It was like Boondock fans know that movie in absolute minutia. We had to write and execute a film that respected that sacred ground. So you're not really free to just sit down and put pen to paper and do anything you want. It's kind of like writing with shackles on.
SG: Is Mexican standoff Russian roulette the ultimate badass combination?
TD: [Laughs] Yeah, we actually do that a couple of times.
SG: How did you come up with that scene?
TD: I don't know, man. These things just fall out of the sky and into my head. I wish I could tell you I get this particular kind of cheese and wine and I like these particular kinds of candles and put on my fuckin' Hugh Heffner smoking jacket, turn out all the lights and channel the Meducci family. I don't know how any of that stuff happens. It's just through raw working. Sometimes I'll just be walking around and get an idea. I don't know. To me, the creative process is about sort of paying attention to your everyday life and living it and shit will happen. I've never been the victim of writer's block, for instance.
SG: Will you continue being the Boondock Saints filmmaker or would you do other projects?
TD: Yeah, over the last 10 years while we've all been sort of trying to put Boondock together and then actually did it, I've written four other scripts and hopefully if I play my cards right, I can just knock 'em down like bowling pins, man. The first one that I'm hoping to get done is this movie called The Good King which is a buddy flick. Takes place in the 1500s about a king and a duke who are best of friends and they're womanizers and drunks and sort of idiot savants when they're hammered. They virtually destroy and resurrect the British Empire during one reign.
SG: What genres are the other three?
TD: One's a serial killer film. One has to do with mass hypnosis and the other one is based on a historical figure.
SG: Would you say the Boondock style can apply to all of those?
TD: To me, a filmmaker's responsibility is to do the right things for the story. I see new things happening in these scripts. That's what I'm excited about. Now, if we have to have gunfights or things that are Boondock related, will my particular moviemaking style from Boondock show up in that? Sure. I just don't know how you can avoid that. It's part of me. That's how I do things. That's how I see things. But these are all very, very different stories. Following up Boondock with a period piece buddy comedy, that's at the other end of the spectrum. It doesn't really have much to do with Boondock but that's what's interesting about it to me. I want to spread my wings a little bit and try some new stuff that I'm excited about and do it in a new way.
SG: When could a third Boondock happen?
TD: There's the possibility of that. I've got some things in the hopper, just thinking about it. But, that will be years away if at all. I liked leaving the first one the way we did with a cliffhanger and I always knew that we were going to do this sequel. In doing a three, that code to that safe is going to be a bitch to crack. So I'm going to need a couple of years of thinking about that in order to make something that lives up to Boondock 1 and 2.
SG: Could a deal on the third one be easier?
TD: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Especially after this one comes out. I don't want to seem overconfident but I've just gone to the east coast on a little press tour and I got to see this film with three Boondock Saints fan audiences: Boston, New York and Philly. I know what the fans response is right now. I've gotten my answer. This is a big one.
SG: But crossing the hurdle of 2, you can talk franchise now.
TD: Sure, sure. That's all nice to think about but at the end of the day, the public will tell you how good your fuckin' movie is. We all love to think we know. Every critic loves to be able to go, "Hey, this film sucks because of this" or "This film will succeed and be huge. This is the action film of the year because of this." Ultimately though, those things are the possession of the public. They're going to tell you by spending their money on your film, their hard earned money I might add, how good your movie is. They've already told me that, about 1300 of them have told me that over the last couple of days. I've seen their reactions to this and I've seen what they do afterwards. I know we got one here.
SG: It actually killed in a little screening too.
TD: Oh yeah? You know what the funny thing is? I've been hearing like, "Yeah, I was at a critic's screening so it's always lame and shit."You actually had a good one, huh?
SG: Particularly the line "Who ordered the whoopass fajitas" brought the house down.
TD: [Laughs] You know what though? The line that follows it, "Ding dong motherfucker," I believe that's the one that's going to be in the sort of American vernacular now with kids that are Boondock fans. You can actually say that to anything. Since it doesn't mean anything, that can be your response to virtually everything that's asked of you.
SG: How, if at all, did your music inform your filmmaking?
TD: I would say you write one film, you direct a second, you edit a third. That's a well known quote in the industry. To me, you musically infuse a fourth. The music to us on this one, we didn't have much money, so we decided to just go fuckin' balls out. We went out to bars and found musicians, new ones, unsigned acts. My brother happens to be a very talented musician and I shipped him out here and put him in a studio, made him record one of the songs that he does that I love. It was a band called The Dirges. I just happened to drink with them down at the bar and I've seen their shows a million times. They're great, Irish, anti-authority. When I was a kid, I found a guy at a bar called The Falcon on Poinsettia and Sunset named Ty Stone who recently was signed with Atlantic Records. But I just saw him playing at the bar and tapped right into what he was doing. We snagged two of his songs for the film. Now this soundtrack, you're not going to recognize any of the names on. They're all brand new so they're all starting out, sort of just like Boondock. We decided to make this one sort of a Boondock related moment in time type of a soundtrack and that's what we did.
SG: How about as far as your own band?
TD: I think my music gene is going to be satisfied by doing music in my films from now on. Music business was a little rough for us. I think it's actually tougher than the film business at the end of the day. I don't know that I have the time to do it as much as I would like to, you know. It's that old serving two masters thing.
SG: Was it hard to make Boondock II look like Boondock I 10 years later?
TD: No, no. We kind of appreciated the advances in film a little bit and we used some new visual techniques. We used this film damage technique when the brothers fantasize about what a perfect gig would be. We used a different film technique when we went into the period piece flashbacks, 1950s New York. The whole film looks different.
SG: That's new stuff. The main body of the film still looks like Boondock.
TD: Oh yeah. We tried to keep the new sort of techniques and new visual playing around with the new part of the story. When it came to filming the brothers, fuckin' classic works. If it ain't broke!
SG: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
TD: Yeah, I'd just like to say to Boondock fans that this sequel is like taking a Playboy playmate to the senior prom and then banging her and her twin sister afterwards.
Visit the site for Boondock Saints 2: All Saint's Day The film will be in theaters October 30, 2009.
See the first 5 minutes of Boondock Saints 2 now
Harvey Weinstein offered Duffy a production deal based on his script for The Boondock Saints. Ultimately, Weinstein dropped the film. The plot thickens, however, as there is a documentary film chronicling Duffy's struggles with Weinstein. Using behind the scenes footage they shot during Boondock's development, Filmmakers Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith compiled Overnight. Their documentary portrays Duffy burning his own bridges, screaming at Miramax executives on speaker phone and bullying his way through a film deal, unsuccessfully.
Duffy's reputation was only one of the reasons it took 10 years to make a sequel. The Troy Duffy who called in this week didn't sound like the monster Overnight portrayed. A confident man with strong opinions, yes, but not volatile. Maybe he was on good behavior, maybe he's just mellowed out or maybe you have to get to know the man to really paint a portrait of him. He certainly didn't shy away from the juicy details of his struggles in the 10 years between Boondock films.
What was the film that caused all this hoopla? The Boondock Saints was about Boston brothers (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) who decide to clean up the town, killing the local hoodlums. Boondock Saints II picks up the brothers retired in Ireland with their father, Il Duce (Billy Connelly). The murder of a Boston priest brings them home to set things right again. With a new partner (Clifton Collins Jr.) and an FBI agent (Julie Benz) on their tail, this is the next level of Boondock action.
SuicideGirlsG: How many times did Boondock II almost start before it finally got going for real?
Troy Duffy: Before we actually got a deal on it, three.
SG: How did the script change each time?
TD: I think during maybe the first deal, there was the potential of getting Willem back. That script was kind of out there but never really happened. Then we changed it and took his character out. Willem and I sort of agreed that you couldn't really do much more with old Smecker because once you show a guy in a dress and he goes over to the dark side, what else can you do? So the script changed dramatically after that but virtually right after that was our shooting script.
SG: Is that where Julie's character came in?
TD: Sure, sure, in a way. Her character just kind of fell out of the sky. I didn't write it for any particular reason. We wanted to give her her own thing, not just make her a watered down chick version of Smecker. So we tried to have this woman retain her femininity in an obvious man's world, even use it as a weapon sometimes. I didn't write Eunice [as a surrogate for] Smecker.
SG: What did you learn from your first production to make the second one easier once you got it going?
TD: All kinds of things. The major one, if you want to really simplify something that we could talk about eight hours for, down into one little news bite, I learned that you reserve your creativity and passion for the creative side of this business and you have to play the politics on the financial side of it. These people that are investing millions of dollars in your film need to know that somebody with a good head on his shoulders is going to get them their investment back. So I've delineated between the two things. Now my passion is just for filmmaking and when I'm sitting with financial people, I often play the politics that are involved with that.
SG: I saw Overnight and I know how editing can spin it, but you're on camera doing some outrageous things. Do you take any responsibility for your Hollywood conflicts?
TD: Sure, a little. Making a film is a very hard thing to do. Anybody that tells you it just goes perfectly and everybody loves each other at the end of the day is pretty much full of shit.
SG: No one believes those people.
TD: Yeah, but now we've gone to the other extreme with a film like Overnight and now we're supposed to believe this? It doesn't happen like that. You can edit something together and not provide the context in which things are said - who, what, where, why and when and just get people hating a guy. It's a very easy thing to do. I think the biggest shame of it all is that these two guys were friends of mine. They came to me and said, "Can we do this documentary on you?' It was their idea. They requested permission. We granted it to them and they said, "Don't worry. We're your friends. We'd never fuck you." Over and over again. That's exactly what they did. Unfortunately, they didn't learn the very lesson they filmed me learning which was that making a film is a very difficult endeavor. It's a hard thing to do. You add into that the music that we were also trying to make in the mix, it becomes damn close to impossible but we did it. I achieved the goals that I set out to do. I set out as a complete newbie in this business to make a film and a record on our terms and that's what we did. By watching that film, you have no idea of how I did it and that's a shame because it's a pretty interesting little story and I'm sure a bunch of young filmmakers could have watched the mistakes I made, were they honestly portrayed, and learned something from it. But, they would have also watched all the mistakes I didn't make, all the things that I did right. I mean, I must have done something right.
SG: And there are successful people known for being aggressive, like Michael Bay or James Cameron. How do you taper that as needed?
TD: You just have to have as much knowledge about the lay of the land as possible. Some things are easy. Some things get a little difficult. You have to know who knows who, what relationships are to what relationships, what people's motivations are. To me, it's just a matter of respecting business etiquette now. When I'm in rooms full of businessmen, I go with the business side of Troy. When a room's full of actors, I go with passion. That's what they respond to.
SG: To discuss the filmmaking side of Boondock, were there bigger stunts this time?
TD: Yeah, there were bigger stunts, bigger guns, bigger body count. That's just kind of the three Bs of sequels. You've got to give them everything they love about the first movie except bigger, badder and better. For my money, you have to give them a brand new story, like something that throws curve balls at 'em that they could never see coming. Cleanest example is Terminator 2. Suddenly Arnold's the good guy protecting Sarah Connor. We didn't see that coming and it was an extremely risky move for the filmmakers to take but they showed some balls and did it and we ate it up. It was the next thing that they made cool for us and that's what I've tried to do in the story of Boondock Saints. There's a female lead in Boondock Saints. Curve ball. The boys pick up a Hispanic American on the way in. Curve ball. We go into period piece flashbacks of how Il Duce became a killer. Curve ball. These are things Boondock fans are not used to seeing but this is the new story. This is the new thing we're going to make cool.
SG: And sequels have to deal with the fans' expectations. They discovered the first one as a surprise, but how do you deal with the sequel they've each imagined on their own ever since?
TD: Sure, I'm sure that that happened. I can't imagine what they were imagining because writing this thing was like trying to crack the code on a safe, you know. It was like Boondock fans know that movie in absolute minutia. We had to write and execute a film that respected that sacred ground. So you're not really free to just sit down and put pen to paper and do anything you want. It's kind of like writing with shackles on.
SG: Is Mexican standoff Russian roulette the ultimate badass combination?
TD: [Laughs] Yeah, we actually do that a couple of times.
SG: How did you come up with that scene?
TD: I don't know, man. These things just fall out of the sky and into my head. I wish I could tell you I get this particular kind of cheese and wine and I like these particular kinds of candles and put on my fuckin' Hugh Heffner smoking jacket, turn out all the lights and channel the Meducci family. I don't know how any of that stuff happens. It's just through raw working. Sometimes I'll just be walking around and get an idea. I don't know. To me, the creative process is about sort of paying attention to your everyday life and living it and shit will happen. I've never been the victim of writer's block, for instance.
SG: Will you continue being the Boondock Saints filmmaker or would you do other projects?
TD: Yeah, over the last 10 years while we've all been sort of trying to put Boondock together and then actually did it, I've written four other scripts and hopefully if I play my cards right, I can just knock 'em down like bowling pins, man. The first one that I'm hoping to get done is this movie called The Good King which is a buddy flick. Takes place in the 1500s about a king and a duke who are best of friends and they're womanizers and drunks and sort of idiot savants when they're hammered. They virtually destroy and resurrect the British Empire during one reign.
SG: What genres are the other three?
TD: One's a serial killer film. One has to do with mass hypnosis and the other one is based on a historical figure.
SG: Would you say the Boondock style can apply to all of those?
TD: To me, a filmmaker's responsibility is to do the right things for the story. I see new things happening in these scripts. That's what I'm excited about. Now, if we have to have gunfights or things that are Boondock related, will my particular moviemaking style from Boondock show up in that? Sure. I just don't know how you can avoid that. It's part of me. That's how I do things. That's how I see things. But these are all very, very different stories. Following up Boondock with a period piece buddy comedy, that's at the other end of the spectrum. It doesn't really have much to do with Boondock but that's what's interesting about it to me. I want to spread my wings a little bit and try some new stuff that I'm excited about and do it in a new way.
SG: When could a third Boondock happen?
TD: There's the possibility of that. I've got some things in the hopper, just thinking about it. But, that will be years away if at all. I liked leaving the first one the way we did with a cliffhanger and I always knew that we were going to do this sequel. In doing a three, that code to that safe is going to be a bitch to crack. So I'm going to need a couple of years of thinking about that in order to make something that lives up to Boondock 1 and 2.
SG: Could a deal on the third one be easier?
TD: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Especially after this one comes out. I don't want to seem overconfident but I've just gone to the east coast on a little press tour and I got to see this film with three Boondock Saints fan audiences: Boston, New York and Philly. I know what the fans response is right now. I've gotten my answer. This is a big one.
SG: But crossing the hurdle of 2, you can talk franchise now.
TD: Sure, sure. That's all nice to think about but at the end of the day, the public will tell you how good your fuckin' movie is. We all love to think we know. Every critic loves to be able to go, "Hey, this film sucks because of this" or "This film will succeed and be huge. This is the action film of the year because of this." Ultimately though, those things are the possession of the public. They're going to tell you by spending their money on your film, their hard earned money I might add, how good your movie is. They've already told me that, about 1300 of them have told me that over the last couple of days. I've seen their reactions to this and I've seen what they do afterwards. I know we got one here.
SG: It actually killed in a little screening too.
TD: Oh yeah? You know what the funny thing is? I've been hearing like, "Yeah, I was at a critic's screening so it's always lame and shit."You actually had a good one, huh?
SG: Particularly the line "Who ordered the whoopass fajitas" brought the house down.
TD: [Laughs] You know what though? The line that follows it, "Ding dong motherfucker," I believe that's the one that's going to be in the sort of American vernacular now with kids that are Boondock fans. You can actually say that to anything. Since it doesn't mean anything, that can be your response to virtually everything that's asked of you.
SG: How, if at all, did your music inform your filmmaking?
TD: I would say you write one film, you direct a second, you edit a third. That's a well known quote in the industry. To me, you musically infuse a fourth. The music to us on this one, we didn't have much money, so we decided to just go fuckin' balls out. We went out to bars and found musicians, new ones, unsigned acts. My brother happens to be a very talented musician and I shipped him out here and put him in a studio, made him record one of the songs that he does that I love. It was a band called The Dirges. I just happened to drink with them down at the bar and I've seen their shows a million times. They're great, Irish, anti-authority. When I was a kid, I found a guy at a bar called The Falcon on Poinsettia and Sunset named Ty Stone who recently was signed with Atlantic Records. But I just saw him playing at the bar and tapped right into what he was doing. We snagged two of his songs for the film. Now this soundtrack, you're not going to recognize any of the names on. They're all brand new so they're all starting out, sort of just like Boondock. We decided to make this one sort of a Boondock related moment in time type of a soundtrack and that's what we did.
SG: How about as far as your own band?
TD: I think my music gene is going to be satisfied by doing music in my films from now on. Music business was a little rough for us. I think it's actually tougher than the film business at the end of the day. I don't know that I have the time to do it as much as I would like to, you know. It's that old serving two masters thing.
SG: Was it hard to make Boondock II look like Boondock I 10 years later?
TD: No, no. We kind of appreciated the advances in film a little bit and we used some new visual techniques. We used this film damage technique when the brothers fantasize about what a perfect gig would be. We used a different film technique when we went into the period piece flashbacks, 1950s New York. The whole film looks different.
SG: That's new stuff. The main body of the film still looks like Boondock.
TD: Oh yeah. We tried to keep the new sort of techniques and new visual playing around with the new part of the story. When it came to filming the brothers, fuckin' classic works. If it ain't broke!
SG: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
TD: Yeah, I'd just like to say to Boondock fans that this sequel is like taking a Playboy playmate to the senior prom and then banging her and her twin sister afterwards.
Visit the site for Boondock Saints 2: All Saint's Day The film will be in theaters October 30, 2009.
See the first 5 minutes of Boondock Saints 2 now
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
Terrible.
but there was one thing that completely threw me for a loop... the end credits when i saw sean patrick flanery's name. from start to finish, until i saw his name in the credits, i seriously thought they just got a new actor to play his charachter.
i mean... what the fuck happened to his face??