The Riveting 2003 Documentary Overnight Is a Spectacular Symphony of Schadenfreude
When he briefly reigned as Harvey Weinstein’s new golden boy and a potent double threat, world-class jackass and The Boondock Saints writer-director Troy Duffy adorably labored under the delusion that he represented something show-business had never seen before.
Duffy imagined that the movie world had never encountered a sexist, narcissist bully who wildly over-estimated his talent and acted like he was doing the universe a huge favor just by existing.
The belligerent storyteller and hero to jackasses everywhere thought studios would be so blown away by the novelty of dealing with a filmmaker who was a huge asshole and treated people like shit that they’d have no choice but to give him everything that he wanted.
Ah, but Duffy was different from all of the other sexist, narcissistic bullies who wildly over-estimated their talent and acted like they were doing the universe a huge favor just by existing, including Harvey Weinstein, his star-maker turned dream crusher.
Duffy smoked incessantly and wore overalls, for starters, and has the dead-eyed thousand yard glare of a comic book super-villain or hillbilly serial killer. The preeminent cinematic bad guy worked at a bar he apparently thought should become a National Historical Landmark after he got big, drank excessively and made half-assed alcoholism a key component of his boozy, bleary, abusive persona.
More importantly, but just barely, Duffy was also the screenwriter of The Boondock Saints and a musician whose band The Brood (later re-named The Boondock Saints) was going to make their major label debut with the film’s soundtrack. Writing The Boondock Saints didn’t really set Duffy apart in that there are lots of people in Hollywood who have written scripts like The Boondock Saints or much better and aren’t nightmares to deal with.
One of The Boondocks Saints’ producers describes the screenplay that made Duffy rich and infamous as “Pulp Fiction with soul”, which is a little like some blowhard describing an unknown band as “The Beatles, but good.” Pulp Fiction does not deserve the insult. Duffy’s tragically enduring tribute to toxic masculinity doesn’t merit the praise.
Duffy was 100 percent certain that the script for The Boondock Saints, which he considered the greatest in film history, would be his ticket to almost inconceivable fame and fortune. Yet he also felt strongly that his attitude alone would guarantee both success and longevity.
Overnight begins with Duffy triumphant. Harvey Weinstein was going to get into the Troy Duffy business in a big way, which at the time was wrongly considered a VERY good thing and not one of the worst things that can happen to anyone.
In an unprecedented, much ballyhooed deal, Weinstein was going to finance Duffy’s debut to the tune of 15 million dollars AND buy Sloan’s, the bar where Duffy wrote The Boondock Saints and make the twenty-something auteur its co-owner.
Because WHAT could be better than working with Harvey Weinstein, with the possible exception of interacting with Troy Duffy on a daly basis? Oh, and The Brood were briefly very hot for inexplicable reasons.
Duffy saw himself as a combination of Quentin Tarantino and Kurt Cobain so of course he had to have a documentarian on hand to film him as he made, more or less at the same time, a new Pulp Fiction and an improved Nevermind.
Duffy might look like a roadie for House of Pain who got fired for drinking excessively and starting fights but that does not keep him from thinking that the world owes him everything and is unforgivably slow in delivering.
Overnight opens with a flurry of gushing statements about Duffy, his humility and his maturity that quickly become bitterly ironic. When the director’s brother and bandmate Taylor gushes of his sibling’s instant ascent to superstardom, “My brother is a role model for talented people out there” he’s right but only in the sense that Overnight is an unbeatable example of what not to do when you blow up. It’s a harrowing, bleakly funny cautionary tale of a success story that became something much different and darker.
When someone says of Troy Duffy, “He deserves everything that’s coming to him” it’s supposed to be praise. Instead it feels like a curse. Duffy got EVERYTHing that was coming to him alright, in the form of failure, rejection, public humiliation and a reputation for being the biggest jackass in an industry full of them.
Loyalty was crucial to Duffy’s plan for world domination but it was a very one-sided form of loyalty. Duffy sees his entourage/bandmates as a loyal band of brothers, literally as well as figuratively, where the dominant partner rules over the others as the unquestioned Führer.
“This group, I believe, has more potential to put more creativity on the table than probably any seven men in the whole history of this fucking town” Duffy delusionally insists of The Brood/The Boondock Saints, but the only creativity he seems remotely interested in his own.
Fame and money don’t corrupt Duffy. Instead they empower him to be the worst he can possibly be. But for a brief, shining moment it seems at least possible that he will come out of nowhere and single-handedly change show-business.
Heavyweights that should have known better lined up to kiss Duffy’s ring. I experienced vicarious embarrassment for the likes of John Goodman, Jeff Goldblum and Patrick Swayze as they clown around with Duffy and feed into his conception of himself as the white-hot center of the cinematic universe.
Mark Wahlberg, who wisely passed on The Boondocks Saints to make Boogie Nights, insists that Duffy is “young and in touch with the shit”, a borderline nonsensical compliment that speaks to how Duffy’s rough edges at one point marked him as an important voice of authenticity rather than a creep. Before folks realized that Duffy was a giant phony, he was mistaken for the real thing.
Late in Overnight, Duffy sternly tells collaborators who are universally and understandably disgusted with him, “Keep your mouths shut and do your fucking jobs.” It’s curious counsel considering that in the history of show business few creators have kept their mouths open and failed to do their jobs quite like Duffy.
Duffy’s big, open, sexist and anti-Semitic mouth and attitude costs him his deal with Miramax. Weinstein was one of the most powerful and feared figures in film when Overnight and The Boondock Saints were filmed. He used that power overwhelmingly for unspeakable evil but in the case of Duffy at least he used his clout to get Duffy and his movie blacklisted after it ends up getting a budget that’s less than half of what Miramax initially offered but still insanely generous.
Duffy does just about everything wrong, including firing the co-directors of Overnight, who also managed his band, ensuring the most witheringly negative depiction imaginable. Co-directors Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith give the bane of their existence rope to hang himself with and their subject spends eighty-two absurdly enjoyable, extremely incriminating minutes swinging wildly from a noose, unaware that he’s the villain rather than the hero of his story.
Overnight offers a spectacular symphony of schadenfreude as it follows Duffy’s person and professional implosion as he goes from being a wunderkind to a pariah. The eminently quotable, intensely rewatchable cult classic begins with its singularly loathsome subject triumphant and ends with him in defeat, a broken man destroyed by his own infernal hubris.
The film notes that Duffy’s insufferable writing and directorial debut did well on video with young people, albeit in a way that did not necessarily benefit Duffy financially. The movie just kept on making money from the dregs of society, as did its 2009 sequel The Boondocks Saints 2: All Saint’s Day.
A third Boondock Saints film is reportedly on the way. In many ways The brash drunk from Boston has made two god-awful movies people love and feel an emotional connection to that is honestly a little disconcerting.
Duffy’s popularity as a filmmaker speaks poorly for humanity as a whole. Despite Overnight’s deeply satisfying ending, (unhappy for Duffy, happy for us) the filmmaker’s self-indulgent bloodbaths ended up making a fuck ton of money and a real mark on pop culture.
Duffy is tragically an independent film success story but thanks to Overnight his enduring legacy will be as one of the film’s world’s most spectacular failures and heavies.
Would you like to read a MASSIVE book about movies like Overnight?! Then check out the Kickstarter for The Happy Place’s next book, The Fractured Mirror: Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place’s Definitive Guide to American Movies About the Film Industry here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/weirdaccordiontoal/the-fractured-mirror?ref=user_menu
The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s first non-"Weird Al” Yankovic-themed book is out! And it’s only 16.50, shipping, handling and taxes included, 30 bucks for two books, domestic only!
PLUS, for a limited time only, get a FREE copy of The Weird A-Coloring to Al, Felipe Sobreiro and my “Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring. book when you buy any other book in the Happy Place store! That’s a 10.50 value for free!
Buy The Joy of Trash, The Weird Accordion to Al and the The Weird Accordion to Al in both paperback and hardcover and The Weird A-Coloring to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Colored-In Special Edition signed from me personally (recommended) over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash here and The Weird A-Coloring to Al here and The Weird Accordion to Al here
Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace We just added a bunch of new tiers and merchandise AND a second daily blog just for patrons!
Alternately you can buy The Weird Accordion to Al, signed, for just 19.50, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here.
I make my living exclusively through book sales and Patreon so please support independent media and one man’s dream and kick in a shekel or two!