Boondocks Saints 3

[Chieko Boteler]

TroyDuffy moved to Hollywood in his twenties to chase the dream of a music career with his band, The Brood. While seeking music gigs, he tended bar at a local Los Angeles dive, where he wrote the screenplay for The Boondock Saints during his break periods.

The screenplay featured two brothers in Boston dedicated to killing Mafia thugs. He successfully got the script into the hands of Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films, who bought the screenplay for $300,000 intending to film the movie on a $15,000,000 budget.

Now, this should have been the end of the tale but we all love a great comeback story. After being dropped by Harvey and Miramax, still believing that the film was a hot commodity, Troy Duffy convinced agents at the William Morris Agency to help him market it to other studios.

According to Troy Duffy, no one on the film got paid; not him, his producers, or the cast. He sued Franchise Pictures for royalties of the first film, merchandise, and sequel rights. After a lengthy lawsuit, Troy, his producers, and the principal cast received an undisclosed amount of The Boondock Saints royalties as well as the sequel rights.

Troy and I dive into the deep end of the pool in this conversation. He revealed things he never had before. We discuss the making of Overnight, his interactions with the now-disgraced Harvey Weinstein, and where he sees himself going from here.

Alex Ferrari 0:10

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's fresh baby. It's fresh. It's free. I'm a professional, sir. Now. Listen, man I am I'm so gratefully you wanted to come on the show. And and I've been a huge fan of yours, man. Because you are one of those stories, man you are. You are one of those stories that you tell filmmakers to scare them at the middle of the night. And I you know, and I heard this story when I was coming because you and I are of similar vintage. So we were coming up around the same time. So anytime and and I've said this 1000 times on the show man, the 90s was a crazy time to be an independent filmmaker. And it was these all these kind of crazy stories were coming up. And it was the rise of Miramax and the man who shall not be named, which we'll discuss later, and all of that, and all of all of that kind of stuff. And your story came out and it was just like, okay, that's another. That's another Ed Burns. It's another El Mariachi. It's another clerk. I mean, there was just so many current Carnahan, all those guys,

Troy Duffy 1:12

Joe Carnahan, just over a year, a year and a half ago turned out we were like secret fans of each other. It was this embrace between two owners that have been through it and independent film bad, you know, oh, my God just been there. It would have been great. It would have been perfect, perfect circle jerk.

Alex Ferrari 1:28

Due I swear to God, so I just had Joe on the show. And Joe and I become buddies. Matt. Joe, is I absolutely I understand that you too, just by the small amount of time I've spent with you. This the second I started talking to him like oh, yeah, you and Joe would get along famous. Joe would love you. It's just like kindred spirits.

Troy Duffy 1:45

I couldn't believe I'm not I met him. We went to his screening of the new movie he was doing about a year and a half ago with his best friend who is starring it ended up being a really great one. But I hadn't met Joe yet. I just meant like when I saw blood guts, bullets in octane.

Troy Duffy 1:58

Who's this guy? And then, you know, every time we got interviewed, he seemed like the the john wayne of film, and I'm just tough as nails. And yeah, like, he sees me, it gets, you know, inundated by fans and stuff afterwards. And he sees me and he just he does one of these and he goes Duffy like, boom, and I'm getting close, like, this guy is he's really freakin strong.

Alex Ferrari 2:47

Jesus Christ, man. So um, so yeah. So I wanted to bring you on the show, man. Because there's been a lot of myths around your story. There's been a lot of, you know, things happening. There was obviously that documentary, which we'll talk about and things that happened in happens, I wanted to kind of really take it straight from the horse's mouth, from the from the guy who is in the center of the storm. What the hell happened? So take us back up this take us back to the bar, man, when you were when you're when you're bouncing, and you wrote a script? How take us from there. And take us down the journey, sir.

Troy Duffy 3:22

Well, you know, in long in the short of it is yeah, I've had quite the wild ride. But most of it has been extremely lucky to have been able to do what I do. And I'm very grateful that boondock turned out the way it did. You know, having faith in something like that, and then having it be confirmed by the public is about I have the greatest fans in the world. And believe me, they're long suffering because I'm not so good at the social media thing. It's like it's grown up around me. And I'm like, I started out with a guy like, you know, taking a picture of his croissant in the morning. It's Oh my god. 1000 people, like your croissant. I didn't get it. Right. But yeah, you know, I came to Hollywood. I can't once upon a time I came to Hollywood was a dream. And it was music at the time. When I first came out here. I wanted to be a rock musician, and my brother and I found some in one was our friend from Colorado, we formed a band and tried to make it happen. And then this all came up in the middle of it because what happened was I I got so sick of saying shitty movies that I said, I'm going to write one of these and I you know, I've had a bit of a history with writing. My father was a Harvard English Lit grad that made all of his kids read a novel a month, extra correctly, and we had to be ready to talk about it. That dinner on this particular you know, whatever Sunday we were done with the book and we better have known our stuff. My dad was also a wing English teacher. And so he made made it so I knew what good writing was great writing was was shitty writing was okay writing was and why the wise the W's of all that. So I had a lot of experience and I always had my head in a book, you know, always, always do today actually. So it wasn't the biggest leap in the world, you know, when it came out like, it's this guy's first script, you know, believe

Troy Duffy 5:28

It was the first script and that really pissed every long suffering writer in this town off. I remember this one time, dude, when the script was really gaining speed, and everybody's hearing about it, and I maybe I made the deal at this point. I'm not exactly sure. But I went to the local Starbucks. And as I'm gonna line it to the back of this evidently writers frustrated writers quorum and they're all reading my script. I had no idea how they got it. But I didn't say anything. So I got this momentary glimpse into what other writers thought, and they just tore it apart, thought it was shit. And they were really upset about that. It was my first script and half of them didn't believe it. Like No, no no way

Troy Duffy 6:12

So I you know, the instant ire of every long suffering writer in Hollywood was what happened like right away, but yeah, I just I got the thing done. I had a friend and contacted new line, cinema. CP was a buddy of mine from before, he was now an assistant on a producer's desk over there. He read the thing said, Would you mind if I handle this? And I was like, go ahead. I never thought it would even get read. I was just kind of doing it as a kind of side thing.

Alex Ferrari 6:43

But you by the way, when you were writing the screenplay, from what I understand you'd like didn't even know what format was like, What did you do? Like, did you longhand it and then transfer it? How would that go?

Troy Duffy 7:00

I was like, Can you get me a script that's actually been made into a movie. And she got me the script of was a it was a Robin williams movie called jack. Yeah. Yes. Copeland, right. Yes, read the format. and copy it. I was scrolling things in notebooks while I was on the door at sloans. And then I would rent a computer, mid to late 90s. You know, 95, I think is when this is happening. Mid 90s. I would rent a computer every weekend, just transfer it over and copy the format from the from the draft script. So I cobbled together this thing that kind of looks like a script.

Troy Duffy 7:52

So yeah, and then it just took off from there. Evidently, you know, what I expected was for it to go into the you know, big gray ocean of crap that that that Hollywood was famous for churning out and what happened was the opposite. They read something that instantly had an effect on every reader and so began this, you know, court ship by all the agencies trying to get me you know, all the CIA's and William Morris is the one with William Morris. And, you know, the, the journey started right there. And that was like, it's funny, because there's a dichotomy here. There's the journey started with you know, Harvey Weinstein buys a guy a bar for his first first time fledgling director. So, you know, pull on a Troy Duffy in Hollywood became that type of thing, a success story. And then just a few years later, Paul and Troy Duffy was just going down in flames.

Troy Duffy 8:59

meeting with a producer the other day that was like I've been looking forward to this for like a week just to check you know, see you and how you are like all that shit that happened and what you did to Harvey Weinstein right well but there's like a circus freak thing with me now it's like like that is what

Alex Ferrari 9:31

Yeah, this is this is a fake background that you've got going on? And that honestly man that's one of the reasons why I wanted you on the show today because I wanted you to set the kind of record straight because there is so much bs out there about it and so many rumors and stories and and you know, and obviously the doc which we'll get to in a minute and all of that kind of shit that just kind of built into this and then the whole mythology of boondock by itself, like the movie itself and, and all that. So it so you were at the top of the top You I mean, I don't think there was anyone faster to the top. And I don't think there was anyone faster that flew back down so quickly.

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