Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
What a great film. What an exceptional lesson in hubris. OVERNIGHT is, pound for pound, one of the best pieces of entertainment I’ve seen so far this year, and most of that is the result of the unfettered access that Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana had to their subject, Troy “That’s No Moon, That’s An Ego” Duffy. Now, our own Mr. Beaks has sat down for an interview with the guys that is almost as much fun as the movie. Dig it:
Seven years after striking his improbable filmmaking deal with Miramax, it turns out that the story of Troy Duffy’s ascent to Tinsel Town prominence is far more entertaining than the screenplay and film, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS, that was supposed to put him on the map. The sensationally, salaciously entertaining documentary detailing Duffy’s hubristic self-destruction is called OVERNIGHT, which I reviewed several months ago right here (http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=18212). Last week, I had the opportunity to talk with filmmakers Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana, who somehow survived several years of Duffy’s browbeating to bring this story to the screen. Ideally, this interview would’ve been conducted over Patron shots and multiple pitchers of beer; instead, I had to settle for twenty minutes in the mPRm conference room. Not that I’m complaining; the guys came ready to dish, providing me with an embarrassment of gossipy riches that’ll likely be circulating through the offices of WMA and (what’s left of) Miramax all day long.
Enjoy. Or fret.
I’m guessing that you two have not been invited to cover the pre- through post-production process on BOONDOCK II: ALL SAINTS DAY.
Mark: Is there actually a BOONDOCK SAINTS II, because that’s what we’re hearing! (Laughs.) No. That’s what Troy’s been telling his “Boondock Flock”, as he calls them, but as far as we know, that’s the only place that you can find that it’s actually a go: on his website.
Or the IMDB.
Mark: Or the IMDB.
Tony: Right, but I wonder about that, because all the studio databases have zero on it. There’s nothing out there.
The IMDB is also a good place to fake a production.
Tony: Is that right?
Yeah. It’s a valuable resource, but you sometimes have to take what’s posted there with a grain of salt.
Tony: And it’s been up there for years, this sequel to THE BOONDOCK SAINTS.
And updated frequently, which is strange. I wonder who’s doing that.
Tony: (Laughing.) Somebody who has merchandise to sell on his website!
So, when was the last time you talked to Troy.
Brian: June of 2000. He called us both on the same day and threatened us. Once the label dropped the band, and his film went, after being in five theaters for one week, straight-to-video, he realized that those endeavors failed for him. And he realized that we had shot 350 hours of stuff. I think that’s when he turned on us. When he did that, we realized who we were dealing with at the time – he would now try to cease control of our project even though he had no control whatsoever, and he already signed off on it; we filmed him signing his release – we agreed to… cut the movie underground. Anybody who worked on the film would sign a non-disclosure agreement, and we would only tell our closest friends and family members what we were doing. So, we had to lie to a lot of people. Anything you want to add to that, Tony?
Tony: (Pauses and sighs.) No. (Brian laughs.)
But when he threatened you, he seems like one of those guys who’s very quick to threaten, and that maybe his bark was worse than his bite.
Tony: It’s funny. I’ll answer that with a story, which is my tendency as a creative person. After he threatened us, there was one other time where I saw him in person, and that was when the bar (J. Sloan’s) was shutting down, because people started to come the very last week. I was sitting at the front of the bar – I still frequented the place, as you see at the end of the film – and Troy walked in with a couple of the guys from the band. I just caught his eye, he caught my eye, and we looked at each other. And he kept going. Frankly, it made me feel really good. A friend of mine came over who knew both of us equally, and said, “You’ve just slain that dragon.” He knew what was going on, the fact that… we didn’t respond to his threat when he called us up. Because he basically called us up and said, “I want the release back. It doesn’t count anymore, and you guys better be careful.” That kind of thing. So, we went underground, and we edited the movie for three years. We had to cut the film down from 350 hours to the eighty-two minutes that you saw. But after that, we never heard from him again. Even since the film has come out, we’ve heard nothing from him. Except he said one thing to VARIETY, where he called it, “An eighty-two minute smear campaign.” But there’ve been no lawsuits filed. He hasn’t spoken to journalists and given his side of the story; he’s refused all the requests from journalists so far.
Interesting. I find it remarkable that the band stays loyal to him even after all of this. And Taylor (his brother), too, I assume?
Tony: Taylor no longer lives in Los Angeles. Mark and I do not know what their relationship is. Several of “The Syndicate” members have left L.A. – obviously, we’re still here and Troy is still here – but the guys were afraid of him. He’s the guy who made everything happen, as he was so frequent to remind them, and always hanging everything over their head. He did the same thing with Mark and I. Two weeks after Troy’s deal, we went to Boston for the location scout that you see in the beginning of the film. We went to a bar with Troy, and Troy looked at me – this was two weeks after the trade announcement – and he goes, “Tony, where would you be without me right now? Really. What would you be doing now? Look what I’ve done.” That type of thing. And I had to really sit there and eat it, because I had achieved a certain amount of success in the industry before then. It was really hard to take, because Mark and I made this decision to follow somebody who was a nobody, and then when he became a somebody, even though it was short-lived, we had to swallow a lot of bitter pills for four years unfortunately.
But you were both, at least, impressed with his talent, or his voice at first, right?
Tony: Absolutely.
Brian: Absolutely. (To Brian:) Go ahead, and I’ll answer that, too.
Tony: Yeah. Troy… when we read his script and listened to his music – this was in the fall of 1996 – nothing had happened yet, but what we both heard were two equally original voices in two equally difficult mediums. I said to Troy, “Which one do you want to do, and how far do you want to go?” And he goes, “I’m going to do both, I’m going to succeed at both, and I want to be a legend.” Well, most people don’t talk that way before they’ve done anything, but at the very least it showed that he was ambitious and had a lot of confidence and charisma. We were attracted to that, but it should’ve been an early red flag, I guess. The film and the music were what attracted us to him, but then I came up with this idea of “What if we did a documentary of someone doing this that was really no-holds-barred?” Because we realized that, if something were to happen, we would have access. And it did: in three months, he signed with William Morris, and three months later there was the trade announcement and the cover of USA TODAY. We were kind of inspired by films like HOOP DREAMS and HEARTS OF DARKNESS – films that really showed all the good and all the bad of these peoples’ process – and so we decided to make a process film, not a behind-the-scenes or a making-of. At the end of the day, it ends up being a cautionary tale.
But, again, he was fine with the idea of an unvarnished take?
Tony: Yeah. We had a lot of material that ended up on the cutting room floor where Troy would say things like, “I want the entire truth to be told. I want the most truthful documentary to be told.” While we were shooting, he would say things like, “I want you guys to tell the complete truth. Blah, blah, blah… I’m fine with it.” We didn’t put that in the movie because that wasn’t the point of the movie, either. The point of the movie was that we had Troy sign a release, we filmed him signing the release, so why would we put in the movie him saying, “This is the truth, and I want everything in it.” We just didn’t feel that was necessary.
We also didn’t feel it was necessary to put in the things that actually could have been perceived to be a revenge piece – things that were so volatile that, if we put them in there, people would get up and walk out. He would say things about minorities that were… very volatile, including the anti-Semitic remark which we put in just to show that he was willing to go there, too. But we didn’t put in the things he said about African-Americans, or Latinos, or other things he said about Meryl Poster that were worse than him calling her a “cunt”.
Brian: Also, we’re characters in the film, as you know. We had actually many roles: we were directing this documentary, we’re characters in the film, we’re also managing his band, and we’re part of his company developing other projects, so we had to try to juggle this all at one time. When we were in the editing room, we’re asking ourselves, “Okay, Michael Moore has done a lot for this medium, but we’re not Michael Moore. We’re not making a Michael Moore film. We don’t want to be the centerpiece of this project, but we have to… include ourselves in this process because we are *so much* a part of this process. And the way he treats us, and the way he looked at how the documentary was handled.” So, we had to walk a very straight, fine line with that, because we didn’t want it to come off like we’re showcasing ourselves and that it’s a revenge piece. I don’t know if we succeeded or not, but—
Tony: It’s funny. The only person who really offered us any resistance was Cassian Elwes from the William Morris Agency. We tried to set up a courtesy screening for him prior to Sundance. Our agent John Sloss called him up and said, “We’d like to screen it for William Morris,” and he said, “It’s okay, I’ve already seen it.” He had managed to get a copy from somebody. I said, “What did Cassian say?” And Cassian said, “I’m not worried about it.” Sooooo… cut to: our midnight screening at Sundance. It’s over capacity, and all the (buyers and press) are there. And it goes gangbusters. It goes over very, very well, and we’re all very excited. But we find out the next day that Cassian was standing outside telling reporters that we did not have releases for the William Morris agents (in the film). That showed up in print in FoxNews.com from Roger Friedman and also in the LOS ANGELES TIMES on January 22nd. It scared away buyers. And so we left Sundance without a deal because people thought it was going to be a legal nightmare, and that we didn’t have it because it came from Cassian’s mouth. But the fact of the matter is… (Tony retrieves numerous contracts from a manila folder)… there we go. (Tony starts flipping through the contracts for me to see.) There’s Cassian’s release (dated, I notice, 1998), and there’s Joel Roman from the William Morris Agency, and there’s Ramses Ishak from the William Morris Agency, and Jim Crabbe’s release we have on camera. So, (Cassian) pulled the dirty pictures on us, and did a really scumbag thing. We walked out of there without a deal, and we had to wait twenty-four days before someone came forward a formal offer. A couple of companies were brought back into the fold, and we decided to go with ThinkFilm. That’s in some ways more distasteful than some of the things that Troy did.
Brian: Roger Friedman came up to me on Main Street (in Sundance), and said (imitating Friedman), “Mark! I talked to Cassian! I heard you don’t have all your legal ducks in a row. He said he didn’t sign a release.”
Tony: You could tell it had started.
Well, (Friedman) is the official propaganda arm for Miramax.
Tony: Is that right?
He does Harvey’s bidding.
Brian: That’s what I’ve heard.
He’s infamous for that, in fact. How he manages to hang on, I don’t understand. And that leads us to the next topic: Harvey has seen the movie, I assume?
Brian: We set up a courtesy screening for Harvey two weeks prior to Sundance. Cinetic, our reps, and ourselves… we both thought it was a good idea for him to see it just to show that we weren’t going behind his back in any way; that we were openly presenting this film, and actually wanted them to support us, meaning that this was not going to be a propaganda piece against Miramax in any way. And a lot of people do think it actually makes him look in a favorable light because Harvey was right. Especially when a book like DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES was coming out at the same exact time (of the Sundance debut), I think maybe that’s why Harvey has chosen not to say anything about this film. That’s just speculation on my part, but, you know, I think that when people think it might help in certain ways, that it might favor him—
Tony: Bascially, people thought Troy Duffy was the only person who could make Harvey Weinstein look sympathetic.
Right. That’s exactly what I came out of it with, and I was surprised, because when it was screening up (at Sundance), people were painting it as another Harvey bashing film.
Tony: Bashing by Troy Duffy. I mean, Troy hurls more insults in this film than was thrown in the 2004 election campaign.
Brian: In the back of our minds, we always wondered, too; wouldn’t it be ironic if Miramax wanted this film?
Tony: We always wondered that—
Brian: And they graciously declined.
You talked about the racial invective that was cut out. Are there any other outrageous moments that had to go that you can share?
Brian: That we can share? Well… you know, (Troy) was a big fan of porn. And, so, we actually shot a lot of material… Troy would be doing business, he’s on the phone with high rollers in this town, and muted right in front of him is a major porn going on. So, I would actually pan back-and-forth to show the insanity of this. But, like I said, we had to go through, and there’s only so much time to show certain storylines.
Tony: I mean, if there was a manager of an actor that wasn’t behaving the way Troy thought, and if this manager would happen to be gay, then he was a “pedophile” according to Troy. This particular studio head who actually *is* gay; if he wasn’t responding to Troy in a particular way, then “he’s having a bad AIDS day”. I mean, stuff that, if we were to put it in the movie, and we have all of this stuff on film, people would’ve walked out. He was overcompensating with the smoking and the drinking and the misogyny and the—
Brian: He bought into his own character that was kind of created in the press, as well. I mean, he *was* that person, but—
Troy: He also, one night at the bar, just to put a hat on this thing… there was a mutual friend in our group, and, out of nowhere, Troy grabbed this guy and kissed him on the mouth. And I don’t just mean (a peck); I mean *grabbed* him and gave him a big wet kiss. I just sat there, and it’s just one of those things that’s always stuck in the back of my mind: is Troy is somebody who struggles with his sexual identity?
One of those guys who “doth prostest too much”? I’m wondering, because we see a bit of unrest with Dafoe (while shooting THE BOONDOCK SAINTS), and he’s one of those guys who can get a bit prickly. Was he a little more combative on set?
Brian: If he was, we would’ve shown it. For those two months that he shot the film in Toronto in Boston, (Troy) was on his best behavior. He was the saintly good Troy Duffy, because there were so many people coddling and looking out for him—
Tony: On set, though.
Brian: On set only, I’m talking about.
Tony: In the office, he was the same guy.
Brian: And he knew not to cross Willem. He knew he needed Willem to make this film work, so he was always on his best behavior with the actors. I mean, he would make some wiseass comments to Sean and Norman at times, because they were not stars, per se. I mean, there was one story that no one knows about where Sean and Norman had agreed to shave their heads for the film. And when they showed up on set and told Troy that they weren’t going to do it because they were already looking at their next roles. Norm was doing GOSSIP next, back-to-back in Toronto, and they couldn’t do that. Their agents were calling (producer Chris Brinker) and saying, “I’m sorry, they can’t do that.” Troy flipped out.
Tony: (Imitating Troy:) “They’re fucking models! They’re fucking faggots! They’re gonna fuckin’ shave their fuckin’ heads!”
Brian: (Laughing.) Exactly.
Tony: (Still in character:) “What, are they fucking pussies? They can’t come out and fuckin’ drink with me at night? Are they afraid they’ll be hungover?”
Brian: Especially Sean. Sean’s very professional, he’s been doing this a long time back to YOUNG INDIANA JONES, so he would always ride Sean about going out and getting drunk with us. *And* riding Willem even at times. It’s like, “We’re here to make a movie. It’s business, Troy.” But everything had to be buddy-buddy: “C’mon! Come with me! Love me! We’re pals!”
We wrapped up with a bit of off-the-record business, and a discussion of how the liquor-fueled mayhem engulfed even the documentarians from time to time. Clearly, to be in Troy Duffy’s orbit meant one must match his intensity in all aspects of life, which, unfortunately, put a particular premium on drinking. Happily, Brian and Tony were able to emerge from this debauched period with a sober-minded depiction of the Hollywood nightmare, one which is currently playing at the fabulous Film Forum in New York City, and will be expanding to the Nuart in Los Angeles this weekend.
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
Thanks to the filmmakers for having the balls to pull the trigger on this one. So often, you can get killed for telling the truth in this town. As fans of the classic ISHTAR remember, “Honest and popular don’t go hand in hand.” And thanks to Beaks for the interview. Great stuff.
"Moriarty" out.
