Hear the edited roundtable as a podcast
There will be some spoilers in the podcast. Click at your own risk.
Now that the movie has been shown to fans, we can finally sit down and talk about it.
I saw “Boondock Saints II” last week. I liked it.
I didn’t like it in the way that I’m a news editor and occasional film critic. I didn’t love it in the way that I’m an artist and I can appreciate a classic piece of film.
Let’s face it, there’s two kinds of people in the world: The ones that love “The Boondock Saints” and the ones who hate “The Boondock Saints.”
And I love “The Boondock Saints.”
Shit, I put it on the cover. But I’m not a damn fanboy. I’m not a fanboy about anything. In fact, the more I like something, the harder I tend to be on the people in charge. You can ask the people at Sony when PlayStation 3 first came out, and you can ask Boondock writer/director Troy Duffy, because I changed the pace on Monday and asked him some pointed questions.
What you’re going to hear in the podcast on the top of this article is my session on one of a series of roundtable interviews that Duffy and actors Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, and Billy Connolly put on at The Black Rose bar in downtown Boston. We had a good time and we laughed throughout most of the 20-minute session, but I was on a mission to bring home some data for this piece of our month-long coverage on the sequel, “All Saints Day.” But, besides that, the podcast is mostly hilariousness and gay jokes.
“It was just like riding a bicycle,” Duffy said about his return to directing.
“He sucked equally on this one as he did in the first one,” Flanery added after a pause, laughing.
But return it is. Duffy made Boondock in 1999 and hasn’t made a film since. He was a young director coming out to Hollywood, and he made some mistakes — and I’m probably being nice here. But he still managed to make a good movie amidst it all.
“They talk about Troy as a new director, but from day one it looks as if he was doing it his whole life,” Connolly said.
Just as people either love or hate Boondock, they either love or hate Duffy. (The Documentary “Overnight” really hurt him too)
The people in the original movie seem to be loyalists. Nearly everybody — including someone you don’t expect (it’s in the podcast) — is back for the sequel.
“Everything just happened,” Connolly said. “Everybody seemed to be there for the love of the piece, not just to be in a movie or earn some money.”
It showed. When you listen to the podcast and check out our other interviews, you’ll hear how good of a time they all had making both movies.
Boondock is an organic cult success, and the cast and crew know it.
“Half of Boondock was one guy sitting another guy down going ‘you’re watching this movie,'” Duffy said.
Will there be a third movie?
“Lets just ride this one into the shore and see what happens,” Duffy said. “I got some ideas.”
It’s also up to the studio and the fans. If the sequel makes money in theaters, I say bet on a trilogy.
At the end, I asked Duffy what we could expect from him going forward.
“During that 10-year period, I have written a bunch of scripts,” he said, “and I intend to knock them down like dominoes one by one. They’re in ascending budgets, all different stories. One is a period piece, a buddy comedy, a black comedy, one is about serial killers, one is called “The Peregrines” which would take me an hour to describe what the’s about, one is about a historical figure, which will take a lot of money to do that last one.”
The four guys also toured Boston College and Emerson College before premiering the movie for fans on Monday night. Here’s a vid from their day:
“Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day” is in theaters October 30.