Troy Duffy represents the quintessential indie film story: a young, cocky filmmaker whose number one fan is himself, with a collection of everyone else's ideas in his head, alienates just about everybody around him and more or less destroys himself on the blind path to making a truly terrible movie.
There was a great documentary made about it called Overnight, which chronicled Duffy's rise and fall. He was so confident in himself that he commissioned some friends to follow him around with a camera as he was making the original Boondock Saints so that they could see a masterpiece in the making. However the guys are no longer friends, the documentary tells the tale, The Boondock Saints sucked and the sequel is ever worse.
The legend is that Duffy, a near alcoholic musician and bar owner signed with the William Morris Agency and cut a deal with Harvey Weinstein to make his directorial debut, a foul mouthed crime tale of two Irish guys in Boston who kill in the name of the Lord. Weinstein said he'd pay for the picture, buy the bar, sign the band, whatever. However Weinstein, by that time, was known to be an infamous reneger but Duffy still didn't take the hint when the man never returned his calls.
Alas the Boondock Saints was finally made, grossed nothing and inexplicably became a huge hit on DVD; enough to justify this sequel which is loud, over-stylized, stupid, vulgar, unfunny, racist, homophobic and doesn't even begin to make sense. Duffy still riffs on Tarantino's cred as if he can out-hip the master while never once fully realizing what makes Quinten a true original. I just finished reading an invaluable book by David Mamet entitled On Directing Film in which Mamet muses, to simplify the concept, that great writing and direction breaks things down into their simplest form and uses shots to tell the story. If it doesn't contribute to the story of the character achieving their desired end, throw it out because it's useless. It's advice Duffy could have used although, in that case, he'd be without a film.
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