Boondock Saints Script Pdf
Troy Duffy: A Cautionary Hollywood Tale – Boondock SaintsI’m always looking for success stories in the film business to study and analyze. Robert Rodriguez and El Mariachi, Kevin Smith and Clerks, and Oren Peli Paranormal Activity come to mind. A name you might not have heard of is Troy Duffy. Studying filmmaking success stories is great but studying complete filmmaking disasters is even more valuable.I’m sure many of you are familiar with the cult indie film classic but many of you might not know the crazy story of its writer and director Troy Duffy.Troy Duffy 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 GenesisThe muse for the script happened one day when he came home from his job to find a dead hooker being wheeled out of a drug dealer’s apartment across the hall. Duffy went and rented a computer (as he couldn’t afford to buy one) and wrote the screenplay for The Boondock Saints based on his feelings of disgust at what he had just seen. As he puts it:I decided right there that out of sheer frustration and not being able to afford a psychologist, I was going to write this, think about it. People watching the news sometimes get so disgusted by what they see. Susan Smith drowning her kids guys going into McDonald’s, lighting up the whole place.
You hear things that disgust you so much that even if you’re Mother Teresa, there comes a breaking point. One day you’re gonna watch the news and you’re gonna say,‘Whoever did that despicable thing should pay with their life. You think — for maybe just a minute — that whoever did that should die, without any fuckin’ jury. I was going to give everybody that sick fantasy. And tell it as truthfully as I could.
I wrote Boondock Saints in three sections. I wrote the very beginning and then I started thinking of cool shit for the middle. Then somehow between the beginning and the middle, the ending dictated itself.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 what happened over the next three years is a remarkable cautionary tale. I saw this amazing documentary called Overnight, the 2003 documentary that chronicled Duffy’s rise and fall.Troy Duffy was portrayed in the film as an egomaniacal maniac, obsessed with the heights of his talent and abusive to his friends. He goes on to lose his mega-deal with Harvey Weinstein, his friends, and his Hollywood connections.The DocumentaryThis remarkable story should be taught in every film school around the world.
What do you say about The Boondock Saints? For those recently dipping their feet in the Hollywood pool, the story behind The Boondock Saints is one of the more fascinating in the town's eclectic history. I'll definitely be getting some details wrong here but for the most part, this is what went down: Troy Duffy was a no-name bartender in Los Angeles who wrote The Boondock Saints in his free time off a rented computer. He somehow got the script into Harvey Weinstein's hands at the apex of Miramax's power. Weinstein agreed to buy the script for 300k, allow Duffy to direct the movie for 16 million, and to sweeten the deal (and cleverly nab some media attention), he even bought Duffy the bar that he worked at for him.
It was one of those Cinderella stories that everybody loved to talk about. Well, except that a few months later Harvey changed his mind and stopped taking Duffy's phone calls. Duffy, not exactly current on Tinsletown protocol, didn't understand this meant his movie wasn't happening anymore. Now a lot of what follows is rumor, but supposedly Duffy started stalking Weinstein and threatening him for backing out of the deal. We all know that Weinstein isn't the shyest mogul on the block, and according to Troy, he began threatening Duffy's life. Duffy went from future filmmaker to caged animal as he holed himself up in his house with a gun, waiting for Harvey's assassins.
Of course Weinstein denies all of this. But Duffy swears it's true.
This is all documented in the documentary, 'Overnight', which, while not as good as my description makes it out to be, is still a pretty strong doc.Eventually Duffy got someone to put up money for his film and the movie pretty much went straight-to-video. Now, according to lore, the movie is now a 'cult classic' because it made over six million dollars on video. I've never seen the film, nor do I have any desire to, but whether you believe it's a success or not, it was good enough that someone put up money for a sequel. Roger has dug up the script for that sequel, and he shares his reactions with us.Genre: Action. Crime.Premise: The MacManus Brothers are living a quiet life in Ireland with their father, but when they learn their beloved priest has been killed by mob forces, the duo return to Boston to bring justice to those responsible.About: Troy Duffy makes his directing return in this sequel to The Boondock Saints.Writer: Troy Duffy.
Duffy and Swayze after selling his script.I have a few friends who color themselves Boondock Fans. I don’t judge them. Instead, I try to understand them. To prepare myself for this review, I had a conversation with my buddy, Ira, about why he likes “The Boondock Saints”.
He’s a quarter Irish, and in-between pints of Guinness and Smithwicks, I asked him to tell me why the flick appeals to him.“First off, these guys are Irish. And what do the Irish do best? Those are actual song lyrics by the way.”“So you like the movie because the heroes are Irish?”“Sure. But what makes them so great is that they have no idea what the fuck they are doing. They win all of their gunfights purely by accident. Happy accidents. Who are they when we meet them?
They’re workers in a meat factory plant, I think. And don’t they like beat the shit out of a health inspector or something?”“I don’t really remember.”“The point is, these guys are just blue-collar second-generation Irish immigrants in Boston. Yet God calls upon them to punish the unjust. They’re like these killer saints that deliver the justice of God by the barrel of a gun.
And I think that’s something we can all relate to.”“Religious vigilantism?”“Why not? Look at Willem Dafoe’s FBI detective character. He’s this guy who can’t always catch the bad guys. He has to work through the American legal system, our imperfect justice system. And a lot of the times, he has to watch people escape the system just to go commit the same crimes. And that’s why he likes the Saints so much. They don’t have to go through our flawed legal system.
Boondock Saints Courtroom Scene Script
They are God’s legal system. They are God’s executioners.”“Sounds like the last season of Dexter.”“I’m pretty sure the writers of Dexter stole that from Boondock Saints.”“Is that a serious statement?”“Steal.
It just goes to show you that Boondock was ahead of its time.”“I never really thought about it like that. So what’s your favorite scene?”“Everything you need to know about The Boondock Saints is in the final scene.
You got the cops in the courtroom at a loss of what to do. They are fucking agonizing that this Mafia Boss is gonna get away. It’s fucked up, you know? This crime lord is going to walk the streets, basically a taint upon Boston. Everyone’s just pissed. The failure of the court system strikes again. But then the Saints walk in and fucking pop this dude.
In the middle of a court room! Can you not see the brilliance in that?”“Well.okay. I do remember that. Hold on – what was that?”“What was what?”“You didn’t hear that?”“Hear what?”“Is that.is that a disembodied guitar riff?”“I think.I think it is!”. Original Saints.Rockin’ music overtakes us as we DISSOLVE TO.Just me at my computer. Thinking about this script.Perhaps I just prefer my flavor of vigilante to be of the Charlie Bronson or Frank Castle variety, because to me, reading The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day was basically the equivalent of reading really horrible Quentin Tarantino fanfiction.I kinda liked the first act though.
Which just goes to show you guys I was willing to give the Saints a second chance. Everyone deserves a second chance, right guys?This motherfucker starts off in Ireland. The boys are now rugged sheep-herders with piercing eyes and luxurious beards. Think Alan Moore without the wizard costume and with more muscle on his bones. If the locale doesn’t prove to you that they are Irish, why don’t you fucking take a look at the Celtic Crosses inked to their forearms. Do you doubt their heritage now?I thought not.And if you’re bored, don’t be. Because someone, let’s call him CREW CUT, fucking murders a priest in the first five pages.
It’s fucking brutal! And if it’s not brutal enough, what if I were to tell you that this execution is intercut with wolves attacking the sheep Connor and Murphy are trying to defend?What if I were to tell you that the priest gets a bullet to the back of his head and pennies put on his eyes? What if I were to tell you that a sheep dies? What if I were to tell you that this dude, Crew Cut, is using the modus operandi of the Saints whilst killing a man of the cloth to lure them back to Boston? What if I were to tell you that the boys blast away the wolf that kills the sheep and that the rest of the wolfpack runs away?Would you think it’s not brutal enough now, faggot?I think my friend Ira would say that everything you need to know about The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day would be in this one sequence of glorious intercutting.And he might be right.
Because it’s fucking symbolism. And everyone knows that symbolism is the fucking shit.Cue MOODY MUSIC. What I learned: If you want to be cool, you should rip the fucking period key out of your keyboard. That way you are forced to use more exclamation points. I think a ratio of 3:1, exclamation points to periods, is what you should shoot for. The more the merrier, right?
The Boondock Saints 3 Movie
Also, I think the more CUE ROCKIN’ MUSIC slugs the better. Except you should mix it up. Instead of ‘rockin’ you can substitute words like: ‘hauntin’, ‘festive’, ‘moody’, ‘hard core’, ‘pulsating’, ‘cool’, ‘Country Western’, ‘scratchy’, ‘thunderin’, ‘slammin’, et cetera. The possibilities are pretty fucking endless, if you think about it.