The Boondock Saints turns 25 in 2024, marking an important anniversary for Tarantino’s cult classic, in which two Irish brothers decide to take justice into their own hands. Although the film failed to impress critics, it cultivated a die-hard fan base and can be credited as a launching pad for his career. UndeadNorman Reedus. With stylish action sequences, over-the-top characters and an unforgettable performance from Willem Dafoe, The Boondock Saints it is a truly unique watch, even a quarter of a century later.
The story of the film is well known to its fans. Writer/director Troy Duffy worked as a bartender and was inspired to create the film after seeing the destructive results of crime in his neighborhood. Thanks in part to Blockbuster Video’s strong push (rest in peace), The Boondock Saints it became a huge hit on home video. A sequence, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was released a decade later and The Boondock Saints III is scheduled to be filmed in March 2025.
Screen speech I spoke to The Boondock Saints writer and director Troy Duffy ahead of the film’s two-night return to theaters on November 7th and 10th. Duffy talked about his influences, some of the film’s most unique aspects, and the state of The Boondock Saints IIIwhich he is not involved with. Duffy also excitedly shared details about her upcoming novel The Boondock Saints: Origin of Blood, which will give the franchise a modern twist while delving even deeper into the minds of its main characters.
Troy Duffy on Boondock Saints’ path to theaters
It was blockbuster video, not theaters, that first released the film
Screen Rant: I was probably 13 when I saw it The Boondock Saints for the first time, and I watched a lot in a very short period of time.
Troy Duffy: 13. Oh my God. His parents weren’t paying attention.
I was at a friend’s house.
Troy Duffy: It’s cool to tell your story because the way Boondock happened was very underground. It was so friend to friend, brother to brother, sister to sister. I don’t think I’ve met a person who didn’t see it that way. Someone sat them down and strapped them to the chair and within 15 minutes you got another fan that does this again and again and again.
It’s cool that this is coming to theaters. I know it became popular on home video, and I’ve seen you say that you wish it had been released in theaters.
Troy Duffy: Early Boondock Saints fans – that was their biggest complaint. They said, “You motherfuckers make bad movies in Hollywood and it’s all in the trailer that it’s good, and we go there and the movie is shit. You finally make something we like and don’t put it in theaters. Fans were upset about this.
I was going to Blockbuster [Video stores]because they released it. They did what’s called a Blockbuster Exclusive. They released it on Blockbuster like it was a big movie. Instead of two or three copies per store, they place 60 to 120 copies in their roughly 7,000 or 8,000 stores. Everyone was like, “Did I miss this in theaters or something?” Then everyone started to find him.
I’ll just say my line here: I’m thrilled that in two weeks, audiences in the United States will finally be able to see Boondock Saints in theaters on November 7th and 10th, thanks to our partnership with Iconic Events to celebrate our 25th anniversary. year anniversary. For tickets and theaters near you, visit iconreleasing.com
Duffy reflects on the film’s enduring popularity and remembers when it first hit home
“We felt like sudden rock stars”
People still post about you and this movie constantly after all this time, and there are big studio movies that made so much money that no one talks about. What do you think made people engage with it so consistently?
Troy Duffy: I think it was just [that] we did that one, right. There were movie stars who wanted all these roles. I said no. I knew new faces were needed. When we actually shot the movie, we all had a great time. That setting was just electric and magical, and all these little things seemed to happen that were almost miraculous.
The bathroom scene… it was a place called Whites, and it was a rented studio. You take all your cameras and cranes, and I needed this very expensive crane on my little $6 million film to get this in super slow motion. I had it all in my head and my producer said, “No. It costs very expensive. I can’t accept it. We are going over budget if you do this.
Somehow, I show up in the morning and there it is – a super expensive crane. All of these things just fell into place. This part I can’t explain. The other part is just solid writing, solid directing, really solid acting, and almost everyone on set trying harder.
Also, I think one of the things that did this was [that] you can pause Boondock… Try doing that with the next guy you see. Pause every five minutes and ask, “What’s going to happen?” Most of the time when you watch a movie these days, you can do that and nine times out of ten the guy will be right. With Boondock, you are never sure. You don’t know what the hell is going to happen.
Do you have a favorite interaction with fans?
Troy Duffy: Yes. This one kills me. We got a call from Ohio State University. That was a long time ago – perhaps Boondock had been out for a few years. This fraternity wants to take us there. Me and Norman (Reedus) ended up having a talk, and Norman and I don’t know what the hell a talk is. We thought, “What should we do?” It’s a question and answer session.
We fly there and these students are taking us for a ride. They say, “We’re going to take you to the new events center where you’re going to give your talk tomorrow.” It’s a place with a thousand seats – it looked like an opera house. I’m like, “Has anyone mentioned this yet?” They’re like, “Yeah, the first guy was last week. Chuck D from Public Enemy. And I’m like, “How was that?” They say, “It was great. 150 children filled the first three rows.” We thought, “What?” Cut to me and Norman drinking in the hotel and saying, “We’re not going to beat fucking Chuck D.”
We arrive at the location the next night, we are in the green room and something wrong is happening. We opened the door and there was a guy dressed as a firefighter. Me and Norman are so stupid – we thought there was some prank going on in another part of the building and we were messing with them or something, and these guys just didn’t tell us. We went up to the stage and not only was it packed, [but] there were children standing along the walls and four at the end of this hallway. The guy was the firefighter who was threatening to shut us down, and there were about 500 kids outside who couldn’t get in. We felt like sudden rock stars and had no idea. That was the first time fans punched me and Norman in the face – at Ohio State, which was the largest campus in the United States. That was the first time we realized what was happening.
Duffy Details Ripping Off Quentin Tarantino (And Getting Ripped Off)
“I admit it, but I think I’m rare”
13 year old me was absolutely obsessed with how Willem Dafoe’s character analyzes the crime scene. These scenes surprised me as a kid just because they were so stylized and cool. Do you have any favorite memories of putting this all together and working with it?
Troy Duffy: That’s one of the things I learned from Tarantino. [In] Reservoir Dogs, they went through that extended flashback sequence where [Tim Roth] He wrote the script for the story he was going to tell the mobsters and then he’s in the bathroom explaining it right in front of the barking dogs. I realized that the normal experience an audience would have in a flashback was so lazy [connection from] A to B to C. When I saw Tarantino do that, I thought, “Oh my God, you can do anything. This is a whole new way of telling a story, not just connecting the dots.” So I decided, “I’m going to trick him,” but whenever I do that, I have to do it my own way.
So I figured it out by just writing the scenes linearly and then taking that crime scene exposition – Dafoe walking around – and just putting it in before the show. Then I realized, “Oh. If we look at the investigation first, there are always one or two questions that need to be answered that they can’t figure out.”
So when you see that happen, not only do you have a better experience because you’re not being scored point by point, but you also see what caused those two bullet holes. [It’s] Rocco acting like an idiot. You get those really cool moments.
This aspect is something that all the fans loved. They focused on that. They loved seeing the crime scene investigations first – especially with such a flamboyant character – and then seeing it happen. It also increased the excitement. You could just have them do shit and kill people, but if you see the crime scene investigation first, now you really want to. So, it was also a way to make the real shows and the killings that the brothers do much more exciting to watch.
Have you ever met Tarantino and said you tricked him?
Troy Duffy: No. It’s funny. People make mistakes and I don’t even admit it, but I think I’m rare.
Billy Connolly called me one day — he’s on the red carpet for something he did, Lemony Snicket — and said, “Dear boy, they fucked us up.” I’m like, “Who fucked us?” He says, “They robbed us.” I’m like, “What?” and he said, “Snatch. Dear Richie.
I’m going to rent the thing. I put it. I’m watching, watching, watching. I don’t see anything. Then 15 minutes later this guy opens a jacket. He’s armed like Billy’s character in Boondock. I was like, Oh, motherfucker.”
But you won’t see Guy Richie giving me credit for that. We fool ourselves all the time. I’m not aware of that. I’m a thief here and there, but at least [I] I put my own spin on it.
Duffy on Boondock Saints III, his next film and his next Boondock Saints novel
I know there’s a third movie happening that you’re not directing. Can you talk about what you’ll do next with all of this?
Troy Duffy: Three are coming. I basically sold everything to Thunder Road. These guys are basically the kings of Hollywood action franchises, [with] John Wick and Sicario, which I love. I love Sicario. They are planning production from March, August 26. So the boys should be in theaters by the end [that] year, beginning of the next. ’26, ’27, I mean.
What fans ask me more than anything is, “You had this success. The first thing you did was Boondock Saints. It was the only thing you did. What else do you have? So we put together a film – Blood Spoon Council. This was the second script I wrote, a long time ago. It’s about serial killers and this group of vigilantes who go out, somehow identify them, kidnap them, kill them and leave them at the FBI’s doorstep. [I’m] very, very excited about it. I wrote that I’m producing it with some other people. We want to cast that, and that will be exciting, especially if we can film in New Orleans, which we want to because there’s a bar in the French Quarter called The Boondock Saint. It’s been there for 20 years. They play the movie on a constant loop. I have nothing to do with the place: a bunch of retired cops own it. We’ll make it our HQ if we can shoot the Blood Spoon down there.
That’s one of the things that’s happening. The other is the book. I’m writing a series of books. So Boondock Saints, volume one will be an audiobook and looks at Connor and Murphy in the present day. They come and land on the ground in the United States, in Boston, while all this shit is happening, while injustice and injustice are skyrocketing in America. Imagine these two Irish boys, brothers who grew up there with this rosy perception of life in America – the nation on a hill, its land of milk and honey – and come here to find it.
Then [for] any fan who loves these characters and wants a longer, deeper journey where you get to know what the brothers are thinking, find out what their differences are and also their similarities. You’ll get to see them slowly sucked into the dark world of vigilantism and learn how it all happened.
See it like this. Something you can’t do in two hours in a movie – you’d think [for] anyone [who] kills someone for the first time, there is a spiritual thing that happens there. You can’t just be okay with that. Obviously, there comes a point where you are, but having a kind of spiritual crisis and [think]“Are we doing the right thing? Is this crazy? You would have to think that these brothers [have that] if it were real life, which the book kind of contemplates. That’s why I set it up here and now. They would have to have these conversations. They would be less afraid.
But then you’d start to see things… like, no police officer would ever think that the two illegal alien Irish brothers were doing this. They will immediately interpret these crime scenes as something happening, which gives the brothers unbelievable coverage. Now you’re playing cat and mouse.
Maybe the second season or the second volume of the book series is probably when the cops realize they have a vigilante situation here. “We have two vigilantes operating in Boston, killing idiots we all hate,” which would put the cops to shame.
The little things Connor and Murphy do affect society all the way to the top. If you shake it at the bottom, it will be shaken at the top. One would hope that the FBI would finally send this brilliant investigator who [Willem Dafoe plays in the movie]. And when he gets there, I mean, what if he’s an atheist? And if he hates them and not only wants to get them, [but] he really wants to kill them.
I’ve been writing for eight months. I’ll finish here soon, but getting into the book of it all makes me feel like I’m in a gigantic church. I can just go anywhere. Every new thing that hits me is exactly like this aspect where everything is interconnected.
Many fans had these questions, such as: “How come they didn’t recognize their father? They had a shootout with their father and they all shot each other. How does this happen? and “Why did he go to prison?” This whole backstory will feed. It’s already fueling all this to do; That’s why I call it Blood Origin. Volume one is called Boondock Saints: Blood Origin. A fan who has seen the film will pick up the book and have his head blown, because it doesn’t offend either. It doesn’t offend the movie, but now you watch it and if you watch the movie after reading the book, you think, “Oh my God. There were a million things going on there that I didn’t understand, but the book reveals it all.” That’s why I’m most excited.
About The Boondock Saints
Twenty-five years ago, Troy Duffy’s The Boondock Saints became a Hollywood story unlike any other – dismissed by the industry and critics, it turned into a cult classic that pleased audiences and eventually spawned a sequel, a documentary, a planned TV series and a film. comics. This November, The Boondock Saints celebrates its 25th anniversary by returning to select theaters for two nights only: November 7th and 10th.
The Boondock Saints hits theaters on November 7th and 10th. Get tickets here.