Overnight ***½ (2003, Troy Duffy, Jeffrey Baxter, Chris Brinker) – Classic Movie Review 4673

Struggling 25-year-old musician and barman Troy Duffy did the difficult immediately: he wrote a script for a movie called The Boondock Saints and sold it to the ace independent film company Miramax. The deal was, he would direct the movie, provide the songs and Miramax would even buy the bar he worked in – J Sloan’s in LA!

The impossible took a little longer: he systematically alienated all his friends, family, colleagues and, dumbest of all, alienated Harvey Weinstein, powerful boss of Miramax, who promptly pulled the plugs on the whole deal. Amazingly, The Boondock Saints did get made by Duffy in 1999, under a different producer and management, with a restrictive tiny budget and stars Willem Dafoe and Billy Connolly.

I know what you’re thinking: this story’s going to have a happy ending. But, no. No one would buy The Boondock Saints at the Cannes Film Festival, no one wanted to distribute it, no one came when they showed it briefly in a couple of US cinemas and, when it finally made some dough on video, Duffy didn’t make any money out of it as his agents hadn’t negotiated him these rights.

For seven years, two film-makers recorded what was to be a triumphant rags-to-riches story. But Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana became unhappy prisoners of their own project, driven to the edge of despair and madness as they shot 350 hours of footage. Somehow, they have edited it down to 90 minutes of the saddest celluloid that ever spewed out of Tinseltown. Their 2003 documentary is an unmissable heart breaker and eye-opener for every serious film fan, lover of indie movies or Tarantino wanabee.

With J Sloan’s closed and demolished, it looks certain that Troy Duffy will never work in this town of LA again.  You would like to feel sorry for him, but he is such a raging bull in a china shop that your heart hardens. It is infuriating that there is no word in the documentary from Harvey Weinstein, whom we just see scarily passing by at Cannes; that there is no explanation of what made The Boondock Saints the hottest script in town; and that there are no film clips from the movie so we can judge it for ourselves.

But still, this documentary is one hell of a film freak’s movie.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4673

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