Troy Duffy
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Troy Duffy | |
|---|---|
| Years active | 1999-Present |
Troy Duffy (born June 8, 1971 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American director, screenwriter and musician. Duffy became a known personality in Hollywood after starting and effectively ending his career as both a filmmaker and musician over a period of roughly three years.
Movie career
Duffy moved to Los Angeles in his twenties to pursue a music career with his band, The Brood. While seeking gigs, he worked at a bar where he wrote the script for the motion picture The Boondock Saints during his break periods.[1] The inspiration for the screenplay happened one day when he came home from his job to find a dead woman being wheeled out of a drug dealer's apartment across the hall. Duffy then rented a computer (for he did not own a computer) and wrote the screenplay about The Boondock Saints, based on his disgust at what he saw.
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] 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 script featured two brothers in Boston dedicated to killing Mafia thugs. He successfully marketed the film to Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films, who bought the screenplay for US$300,000 intending to film the movie on a $15,000,000 budget. However, they dropped the project, leaving Duffy without prospects.[3]
Duffy convinced agents at the William Morris Agency to help him market the film to other studios, and it was eventually picked up by Franchise Pictures LLC who offered to produce the film for less than half of Miramax's original budget. Desperate to get the project rolling and convinced that it would eventually prove a major success, thus giving him an upper hand over the people who previously panned him, Duffy took the deal, shooting the film over several weeks on location. After shooting, the film was "shopped" at the Cannes film festival in the hopes of finding a distributor.
After months of sitting on the shelf, the film was picked up by a small company for theatrical release - it was shown in five theaters in the United States for a period of only seven days.
Duffy's infamy was cemented in the documentary Overnight, which he initially authorized and endorsed. His story is also featured in an episode of E!'s Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Now, his notoriety is amusingly mocked in a cycle of jokes similar to the following: What's the difference between Troy Duffy and Keanu Reeves? Reeves can get work in Hollywood.
Through word of mouth, The Boondock Saints DVD grossed over $6,000,000 in sales, of which Duffy received nothing due to the structure of the contract he signed with the distribution company.
He is currently filming the sequel to The Boondock Saints.
Music career
The controversy originally surrounding the film and the fact that Duffy's band would be producing its soundtrack created a small but significant interest in the group, which had previously been ignored. The band consisted of Duffy, his brother Taylor, and two friends, Gordon "Gordie" Clark, and Jimi Jackson. The members frequented several North Hollywood taverns and were appropriately featured in the bar scene of the movie The Boondock Saints.
After several failed attempts to secure a record contract, the band finally won a deal with a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, who produced their first and only album, Release the Hounds (Duffy having changed the band's name from The Brood to The Boondock Saints). After nearly a year on the market, the album sold fewer than 700 copies, and the label dropped the band. The band members are also featured in the documentary Overnight, being subjected to verbal abuse by Duffy.
See also
Overnight: A 2003 documentary which mainly focuses on the perspective that Troy Duffy "fell" in Hollywood.
Notes
- ^ "Troy Duffy Interview by Troy Rogers". Retrieved 2007-09-13.
- ^ "Boondock Saints". Filmvault.com. Retrieved 2006-12-11.
- ^ Jones, J.R. "Flipping the Script". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 2007-09-13.
External links
- Troy Duffy at IMDb