It is not with pride that I admit that part of the $30,000 box office take for The Boondock Saints came from my own pocket. I’d had friends on the Boston sets of the film, and the script super, who I’d worked with a lot, had told me some pretty fun stuff about Willem Defoe from her time in Toronto, where most of the film was shot. So when it opened up the street from me at the Somerville Theatre I was happy to plunk down a few bucks.
I was not, however, happy to stay in the seat. I’m still not sure why I didn’t walk out; Batman and Robin might be the only other film I’ve sat through while reminding myself every three minutes that I didn’t have to be there.
Skip forward a bit to the film’s DVD release, championed by Blockbuster, and eventual accumulation of a frantic, unlikely fanbase. With a mix of violence and self-aware gangster stylization, Boondock Saints became a prime cultural signpost. I know people who would happily associate with rapists and murderers, but not fans of this movie. (And vice versa.)
Now step forward to St Paddy’s Day 2008, when Duffy posted a video on YouTube announcing the completion of his long-simmering deal with Sony to produce a sequel, which he claimed would shoot this summer. This in on the heels of a mid-February blog from Duffy that promised ‘very fucking good news’ about the sequel in the next couple of weeks.
But the video has been pulled from YouTube (/Film has a copy archived for your pleasure) and so I’ve got to wonder about the actual status of the Sony deal. This is not the first time that a sequel has been ‘announced’, either. Duffy has been talking it up for years.
Word is that the last decade has mellowed Troy Duffy somewhat; I’m told he’s no longer the wanker he appeared to be in Overnight, the documentary about the making of his Boston gangster flick. I’ve also been told that Overnight is not quite as true as it would pretend to be. But in the words of Ed Tom Bell (“well, it’s true that it’s a story”) the doc is still one of the best cautionary tales you’ll find about filmmaking.
I expect a furious back and forth in the comments section about whether this news is salvation or akin to the birth of a two-headed Antichrist. I’m somewhere in the middle (but leaning towards the latter) but have to admit that a sequel shot a decade after the fact would represent a pretty great second chapter to one of the best indie filmmaking stories to come out of the Miramax years.