Why does anyone like the Boondock Saints?

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

There certainly is a lot of hate for this movie form Xixax... how did that come up?  Are there really no other worse movies (besides Ratner's catalog)?

I would happily watch Boondock Saints before I sat through another Uwe Boll film, which was only for comedic purposes anyway.

[modage]

Ratner is amazing compared to Boondock Saints.

[Just Withnail]

Uwe Boll

Boondock Saints

[Crash]

I remember thinking the movie went downhill when they were all reciting the Irish prayer. I actually started laughing.

[McfLy]

I was captivated by the movie's absurdity. Had I existed in some comical universe, I would cry throughout the film's runtime.

I hope I never cross path's with the special edition DVD thats coming out...I may have to *dum dum dum* misfile all the copies.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

This week's Comedy Goldmine on Something Awful offered this fine gem of comedy:



The topic was "Truth In Movie Titles."

The rest are pretty funny, too.

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3685

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

That was probably the best admin edit ever.

[MacGuffin]

Interview: Troy Duffy
The Boondock director discusses his colored history in Hollywood, overcoming Overnight, and creating a Saints sequel six years later.

Since the release of The Boondock Saints in 2000, Troy Duffy has gone from burgeoning talent to Tinseltown black sheep and back again. That film's production, thoroughly chronicled in the 2003 documentary Overnight, showed a young filmmaker at his best and worst - the creative captain of an ambitious, star-laden project, and a vitriol-spewing brawler with a penchant for self-destructive tirades. Most unfortunately, Duffy found himself on the receiving end of a grudge held by one of Hollywood's heavyweight producers: Harvey Weinstein, who has earned a reputation over the past two decades as an (at least) equally fickle filmmaker.
   
Next week, Duffy's film returns to DVD in an all-new Unrated Special Edition set, featuring a pristine transfer, improved sound and expanded extras. Speaking publicly for the first time since the release of Overnight, Duffy recently talked to IGN about the very public history of Boondock Saints, his own successes and shortcomings, and the long road to Hollywood redemption - which he hopes will end with a long and illustrious career (not to mention a Boondock sequel). Alternately conciliatory and combative, Duffy eagerly talked about himself, his films, and his future, and indicated that the past six years were little more than preamble for great things to come.

IGN DVD: Maybe just to start off you can talk about the differences between this 'Unrated' version of the film and the original cut.

Troy Duffy: What it is was my first cut of the film. It got rated NC-17, and there's only a few minutes difference, but it's going to be very noticeable to Boondock fans and it's only differences in scenes where people die. There's a lot more bloodwork, and a lot more sort of slow-motion gun ballet violence in it. I think it's only about two and a half minutes longer than the regular version. But cutting those scenes, when we got the NC-17 I challenged it with the MPAA. You go before this arbitration board called CARA and you plead your case and MPAA sends a representative over to plead their case and you plead your case and they screen the movie beforehand in front of, you know, nine 60-year old housewives that are just going to basically support whatever the MPAA wants to do. Anyway, I had to cut it to an R to get distribution; we had a deal with Blockbuster and they only release R [-rated movies]. So cutting it was like slicing up your baby; all of those shots, especially the slow-motion violence and the blood and all that, those were hard-earned shots - well-orchestrated, everybody on set had to contribute to getting those correct, and it was real hard to cut those out. I'm glad Fox is releasing this version because it's the one I originally intended. So the difference though only minute-wise is slight, it's going to be very impactful for the fans.

IGN: How much participation did you have in putting together this DVD?

Duffy: Well, it's my cut, you know. So I guess they went through the archives and found it and I'm helping them promote it, but this was all the studio's idea. So they decided what they were going to do, called me up and told me about it, and I said great - I'm in.

IGN: Did either of you discuss the possibility of further documenting the very public history of the film for this set?

Duffy: No, that's a little bit of a tricky situation. We're involved in litigation with the company that actually controls the rights, who has a deal with Fox, so I'm basically helping Fox because Fox is a great studio that we're tentatively doing the sequel with. We've sort of negotiated a deal with Fox which can't be signed until this litigation ends, so we're together. It's just that the [production company] that owns the rights that we're suing right now, we don't speak. So yeah, in terms of doing the commentary and stuff like that, I was called about ten months ago and it would muddy the waters of our lawsuit. I had to actually talk to my lawyers and they said I can't participate in anything like that. If I had sort of known at that point that Fox was going to be behind the whole thing, I probably would have participated more in terms of doing a new commentary, but unfortunately it's just a bunch of crappy law stuff.

IGN: How much does the release of the DVD sort of make you reflect on the making of the movie and all of the fallout attention generated by Overnight?

Duffy: (laughs) Well, yeah I guess it makes me reflect a little bit on all of that stuff. But this is six years later; this movie was released in 2000 on video by Blockbuster and it immediately was like starting a fire with the public. Still today, it's Blockbuster's highest-grossing straight-to-video title. It just did really well - as soon as Boondock touches the public, anyway, it does really well. So I've had six years to kind of go over the past and mistakes that I have made, and, you know, you relive them and you think about them and decide you're never going to make those again, which I've done. [But it's] six years later and now we're getting a theatrical release; I've got a bunch of film geeks working for me at the office and they've been scouring the internet to try to find some example of that happening before, and they haven't been able to find one yet, which is really cool for us.

With Boondock, it's like the fans sort of twisted Hollywood's arm behind its back and said "we like this," and the movie was never really given a theatrical release or a chance like that, except by Fox and that was some six years later. They had to figure out what was going on with the fan base and realize how big it was and then they responded, so the whole thing kind of happened ass-backwards as to the way it usually happens in the business. So I'm extremely happy about what they're doing. Six years later we're getting a theatrical release and an unrated version because the first one did so well. The movie is getting sort of the attention that it's deserved, at long last.

IGN: One of the reasons I was excited to talk to you was because this is the first time you've publicly discussed the film since the release of Overnight. Assuming you've seen that documentary, are there things you feel like were particularly inaccurate?

Duffy: Well, I haven't seen it, and I have no intention of seeing it. Here's how I regard that. It is kind of strange, number one, because a little controversy keeps things lively. I'm not upset that much about it in terms of how it was received by the public, but last year we did a college tour, and we spoke at about nine universities. It was just me and a couple of the guys from the film at some very well-attended events. After everyone of them we did about half of an hour of q & a with the students, and these are some big crowds - we had anywhere from 900-1200 kids a pop at these things. It was during the height of the press for that documentary, and I would get to campus sometimes and read it in the campus newspaper - "Duffy Under Fire, a documentary" - and so the kids were aware of it. But at all nine of these places, not a single student asked me a question about it.

I don't know why that is, but they just didn't seem to give a sh*t. Who does ask me about is my close friends who were there during the time and feel just as betrayed as I do. And what they seem to want to know when you boil it all down is how I feel about it. How I feel about it is very simple: if you've ever had a very close friend, somebody you regard as a brother, stab you in the back, then you know exactly how I feel about it.

IGN: What did the experience of making the movie and its' 'ass-backwards' trip to getting into theaters teach you about making movies as you're going forward and working on Boondock Saints 2 or other projects?

Duffy: It taught me - well, I got an Ivy League education in this business, because it happened this way. I've had a lot of time to reflect and look at all of my mistakes, and I made them - I started out when I was 25 years old, and I'm going to be 35 next month. I made a lot of mistakes, I did not always know what the right thing to do was, I misbehaved, sure. But there's a learning curve in this business, and I think most people experience it. I certainly did. So I learned from my mistakes, and I now realize that you've got to kind of build a career brick by brick and not have that romantic notion of throwing it all on black, like 'this one movie is going to define me and that's it'. You have to continue to do stuff. So over the years that we've been kind of staying quiet, I've written four new scripts, we're going out with one of them. It's entitled The Good King, it's a black comedy, and we're going to try with every fiber of our beings to get it made and tap right into the Boondock fan base and move on from there. Also, we're going to unwind the sequel; like I said, it's a matter for the courts to decide, but we're going to get that done.

If anything, I've just learned from all of my stupid, amateur mistakes, and I made a lot of them and I learned from them how better to behave in this business. Spilled milk, you know? I'm not going to cry about it, and I'm not going to apologize to anybody, because somehow, someway we did it. We got a good movie out of this, and the fans have shown me that, so I'm just going to move on and try to do it better.

IGN: Are you having luck getting your new material looked at, or have you found that Overnight and the moviemaking experience on Boondock has soured some folks to your projects?

Duffy: Actually, it's strange. This is going to sound weird, but the wake of Boondock and my particular history in the business seems to have a positive effect on production companies and people in the business wanting to read my work. So we've had no problem getting people to read it and consider it, and we just literally started doing that this week, so we're going to hear some stuff pretty soon. But it's almost like all of that history sort of worked in my favor, like "oh, that guy? He's got a new script? Yeah I want to read it." I don't know exactly why that is, but I think there's a different level of interest than in a normal dude.

IGN: How many of the cast members of the original film plan to return for the sequel when and if it happens?

Duffy: Everybody's back in except Willem Dafoe, [because] sometimes actors have their careers plotted out in different ways and he's sort of doing a different thing now. So he's the only one who won't be back. Billy Connolly, the brothers, Rocco, everybody's in and calling me every two weeks and going "when are we going to do this thing?" So eager is how I would describe the interest of the actors. On top of that, we've got some new roles in it and we're going to be able to do some interesting casting at that point. So I can't wait to see what kind of new faces we can come up with for these roles.

IGN: You already did a commentary on the original DVD that shows up on the Unrated version, but what in particular do you hope this new DVD highlights about the movie that people may still not get about Boondock Saints?
   
Duffy: Well, I don't know, man. Kids that like Boondock watch it over and over and over again, and they seem to pick up new things a lot of the time that they hadn't seen before when they watch it. Now we've got a little bit of extra footage in there, and I think that they're going to pick up on the new stuff and I think in terms of highlighting they're going to feel like it's just a little more 'Boondock', you know? It's just a little bit better, and that's what I think they're going to come away with. It's not like there's a new scene in there or new dialogue or anything like that. It's just - it feels more Boondock. It's a little cherry on top, you know?

[grand theft sparrow]

Regal Theatres is doing a promotion of this DVD by screening the movie in their theatres sometime this weekend I think.  I saw a commercial for it before MI3 and thought to myself, "I need to remember to post this on xixax." 

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

And then you did.

[Stefen]

I went to a party this weekend and got completely hammered and some meathead who fancied himself an intellectual starting talking about how good Boondock Saints is, and I was like, "That movie is garbage" and he was like, "Whatever man. You just don't know enough about film to get it, okay?" and I was so sloppy drunk and mad that the only comeback I could muster was, ".......fuck you." then went to get another beer.

I really wish some of you had been there with me, sober.

[Pozer]

i wish i was with you and you with me.  saturday night i was out with a large group of ppl for a birthday and several ppl were discussing movies and how Boondock Saints was their favorite of all time.  i jumped in with my opinions on why it is so horrible and others stepped over the line to the pro-Boondock side and i was left alone in the minority.  i was disgusted and sloppy drunk as well and my protests got through to not a one.  one of them ended it by shouting, "sorry we didn't all go to film school like you and don't have your artistically intelligent mind!" and everyone started laughing and those who hadn't seen it were all convinced to make it the next movie they see.

if you were with me we would've gone Boondock Saints on their asses. 

[cron]

those posts made me laugh HARD.

[Alexandro]

i went to no party last weekend. instead i called up a girl friend and invited her to my place to see boondock saints. when it was over she said: "alex, thanks for showing me this film, it was great", and gave me a blowjob.

[Gold Trumpet]

i went to no party last weekend. instead i called up a girl friend and invited her to my place to see boondock saints. when it was over she said: "alex, thanks for showing me this film, it was great", and gave me a blowjob.

If that's true then it rivals my story of when I dated a hardcore catholic and grudingly agreed to our first date being evening mass at her church. I was raised a catholic, but she knew I was since then the furthest thing from it. While I expected the date to be a hatchet job on her part to "save" me, I took her back to my place afterward and immediately got laid. Religion was never brought up again between us and I always have fond memories of something I dislike working out in my favor.