The Boondock Saints Director Troy Duffy Talks Ripping Off Tarantino & The Movies Return To Theaters

The Boondock Saints turned 25 in 2024, marking an important anniversary for the Tarantino-esque cult classic in which two Irish brothers decide to take the law into their own hands. While the movie didn’t impress critics, it cultivated a die-hard fan base and can be credited as a launching pad for the career of The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus. With stylish action sequences, over-the-top characters, and an unforgettable performance by Willem Dafoe, The Boondock Saints is a truly unique watch even a quarter century later.

The story of the movie is well-known to its fans. Writer/director Troy Duffy was working as a bartender and was inspired to create the movie after seeing the destructive results of crime in his neighborhood. Thanks in part to a strong push by Blockbuster Video (rest in peace), The Boondock Saints became a huge success on home video. A sequel, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was released a decade later, and The Boondock Saints III is set to film in March 2025.

Screen Rant spoke with The Boondock Saints writer and director Troy Duffy in advance of the movie’s two-night return to movie theaters, which will take November 7 and 10. Duffy spoke about his influences, some of the movie’s more unique aspects, and the state of The Boondock Saints III, with which he is not involved. Duffy also excitedly shared details about his upcoming novel The Boondock Saints: Blood Origin, which will put a modern spin on the franchise while diving even deeper into the minds of its primary characters.

Troy Duffy On The Boondock Saints’ Road To Theaters

It Was Blockbuster Video, Not Theaters, That First Launched The Movie

Screen Rant: I was probably 13 when I saw The Boondock Saints for the first time, and I watched it a lot in a very short period.

Troy Duffy: 13. My God. Your parents weren’t paying attention.

I was at a friend’s house.

Troy Duffy: It’s cool to get your story because the way Boondock happened was so underground. It was so friend-to-friend, brother-to-brother, sister-to-sister. I don’t think I’ve met a person that hasn’t seen it that way. Somebody sat them down and was riveting them to the chair and within 15 minutes you got another fan that does it again and again and again.

It’s cool that this is coming to theaters. I know it got popular from home video, and I’ve seen you say you wish it had gotten a theatrical release.

Troy Duffy: The first fans of Boondock Saints—that was their biggest complaint. They were like, “You mother***ers make s****y movies in Hollywood and everything’s in the trailer that’s good, and we go there and the movie sucks. You finally make something we like and you don’t put it in theaters. The fans were pissed off about that.

I was going around to Blockbuster [Video stores], because they released it. They did what’s called a Blockbuster Exclusive. They released it in Blockbuster like it was a big movie. Instead of two or three copies a store, they put 60 to 120 copies in their roughly 7,000 or 8,000 stores. Everybody thought, like, “Did I miss this in theaters or something?” So, they all started finding it.

I’ll just say my line here—I’m thrilled that in two weeks, audiences across 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 year anniversary. For tickets and theaters near you, go to iconicreleasing.com

Duffy Reflects On The Movie’s Enduring Popularity & Remembers When It Hit Him For The First Time

“We Felt Like Sudden Rock Stars”

People are still posting about you and this movie constantly after all this time, and there are huge studio movies that have made so much money that nobody talks about. What do you think it is that has made people engage with this so consistently?

Troy Duffy: I think it was just [that] we did this one, right. There were movie stars that wanted all these roles. I said no. I knew new faces were needed. When we actually shot the film, we all had a blast. That set was just electric and magical, and all these little things seemed to happen that almost were miraculous.

The toilet scene… it was this place called Whites, and it was a studio rental. You get all your cameras and cranes, and I needed this very expensive crane on my little $6 million movie to get that right in super slow motion. I had it all in my head and my producer was just like, “No. It costs too much. Can’t have it. We’re going over budget If you do.”

Somehow, some way, I show up in the morning and there it is—a super expensive crane. All these things just kind of fell together in place. That part I can’t explain. The other part is just solid writing, solid directing, very solid acting, and almost everybody on set going that one extra mile.

Also, I think one of the things that did it was [that] you can pause Boondock… Try this with the next guy you make see it. Pause it 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 10 the guy’s going to be right. With Boondock, you’re never right. You don’t know what the hell’s going to happen.

Do you have a favorite fan interaction?

Troy Duffy: Yeah. This one kills me. We get a call from Ohio State University. This was a way long time ago—maybe Boondock had been out for a couple of years. This fraternity wants to fly us out there. Me and Norman (Reedus) ended up going to have a speaking engagement, and me and Norman don’t know what the f*** a speaking engagement is. We’re like, “What are we supposed to do?” It’s a Q & A.

We fly out there and these students are taking us around. They’re like, “Let’s take you to the new event center where you’re going to be hosting your talk tomorrow.” It’s a thousand-seat venue—it was like an opera house. I’m like, “Has anybody spoken here yet?” They’re like, “Yeah, the first guy was last week. Chuck D from Public Enemy. And I’m like, “How did that go?” They’re like, “It went great. 150 kids filled the whole first three rows.” We’re like, “What?” Cut to me and Norman drinking at the hotel, going, “We’re not going to beat Chuck f***ing D.”

We get to the venue next night, we’re in the green room, and something wrong is going on. We cracked the door and there’s this dude dressed as a fireman. Me and Norman are so stupid—we figured there’s some play in another part of the building and we’re f***ing with them or something, and these guys just didn’t tell us. We went out on stage and not only was it packed, [but] there were kids standing all along the walls and four deep down this aisle. The guy was the fire marshal threatening to shut us down, and there were like 500 kids outside that couldn’t get in. We felt like sudden rock stars and had no idea. That was the first time the fans punched me and Norman right in the face—Ohio State, which was the biggest campus in the United States. That was the first time we realized what was going on.

Duffy Details Ripping Off Quentin Tarantino (& Being 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 a crime scene. Those scenes blew my mind as a kid just because they were so stylized and cool. Do you have a favorite memory of putting those together and working with him?

Troy Duffy: That was one of the things I learned from Tarantino. [In] Reservoir Dogs, they went through that extensive flashback sequence where [Tim Roth] wrote the script of the story he was going to tell to the mobsters, and then he’s in the bathroom explaining it right in front of the barking dogs. I realized the usual experience an audience would have in a flashback was this lazy [connection from] A to B to C. When I saw Tarantino do that, I’m like, “My God, you can do anything. That’s a whole new way to tell a story, not just connect the dots.” So I decided, “I’m going to rip him off,” but whenever I do that, I have to do it in my own way.

So I came up with that just in writing the scenes linearly and then taking that crime scene exposition—Dafoe walking around—and just putting it before the gig. Then I realized, “Aha. If we see the investigation first, there’s always a question or two that needs to be answered that they can’t figure out.”

So, once you see it happen, you not only have a better experience because you’re not being dot-to-dotted, you see what caused those two bullet holes. [It’s] Rocco acting like a f***ing idiot. You get those really cool moments.

That aspect of it with something every fan loved. They keyed in on that. They loved seeing the crime scene investigations first—especially with such a flamboyant character—and then see it happen later. It also ramped up the excitement. You could just kind of have them go do s*** 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 actual gigs and the killing that the brothers do much more exciting to see.

Did you ever get to meet Tarantino and tell him you ripped him off?

Troy Duffy: No. It’s funny. People rip each other off and don’t even… I admit it, but I think I’m rare.

Billy Connolly calls me up one day—he’s on a red carpet for this thing he did, Lemony Snicket—and he’s like, “Dear boy, they f***ed us.” I’m like, “Who f***ed us?” He goes, “They ripped us off.” I’m like, “What?” and he’s like, “Snatch. Guy Richie.”

I go rent the thing. I put it in. I’m watching, watching, watching. I don’t see anything. Then, 15 minutes in, this guy pulls open a jacket. He’s got guns on like Billy’s character in Boondock. I was like, Oh, motherf***er.”

But you’re not going to see Guy Richie giving me credit for that. We rip each other off all the time. I have no conscience about it. I am a thief here and there, but at least [I] put my own spin on it.

Duffy On Boondock Saints III, His Next Movie & His Upcoming Boondock Saints Novel

I know there’s a third film happening that you’re not directing. Can you talk about what you’re doing next with all of this?

Troy Duffy: Three’s coming. I basically sold everything to Thunder Road. These guys are basically the action franchise kings of Hollywood, [with] John Wick and Sicario, which I love. I love Sicario. They’re looking at production starting in March, August of ’26. So the boys should be in theaters end of [that] year, beginning of the next. ’26, ’27, that is.

What the fans ask me more than anything is, “You’ve had this success. The first thing you did was Boondock Saints. It’s the only thing you did. What else do you have?” So, we’ve set up a film—Blood Spoon Council. This was the second script I ever wrote, a long time ago. It’s about serial killers and this vigilante group that goes out, somehow identifies them, snatches them, kills them, and drops them at the doorstep of the FBI. [I’m] very, very excited about that. I have written that I am producing it with a couple other people. We’re looking to cast that, and that’s going to be exciting, especially if we’re able to shoot it in New Orleans, which we want to because there is a bar in the French Quarter called The Boondock Saint. It’s been there for 20 years. They play the movie on constant loop. I’ve got nothing to do with the place—a bunch of retired cops own it. We’ll make that our HQ if we’re able to shoot Blood Spoon down there.

That’s one of the things going on. The other is the book. I’m writing a book series. So Boondock Saints volume one is going to be an audio book and it contemplates Connor and Murphy in this day and age. They come over and they land boots on the ground in the United States in Boston while all this s***’s going on, while unfairness and injustice is going off the charts in America. Imagine these two Irish boys, brothers that grew up over there with this rosy perception of life in America—the nation on a hill, their land of milk and honey—and they get here to find this.

So [for] any fan that loves these characters that wants a longer, deeper journey where you get to know what the brothers are thinking, you get to know what their differences are as well as their similarities. You get to see them slowly sucked into the shadowy world of vigilantism and know how that all happened.

Look at it like this. Something you can’t do in two hours in a film—you would think that [for] anybody [who] kills somebody for the first time, there’s a spiritual thing that happens there. You can’t be just okay with it. Obviously, it gets to a point where you are, but to have a sort of spiritual crisis and [think], “Are we doing the right thing? Is this f***ing crazy?” You would have to think those brothers would [have that] if it was real life, which the book kind of contemplates. That’s why I set it right here and now. They would have to have these conversations. They would be scared s***less.

But then you’d start to see things… like, no cop is ever going to think the two illegal alien Irish brothers are doing this. They’ll immediately interpret these crime scenes as something else happening, so it gives the brothers an unbelievable amount of cover. Now you’re playing cat and mouse.

Maybe season two or volume two of the book series would probably be when the cops even realize they’ve got a vigilante situation here. “We’ve got a pair of vigilantes in operation in Boston, just killing bad a**holes that we all hate,” which would make the cops embarrassed.

The small things that Connor and Murphy do affect society all the way up to the top. If you shake it at the bottom, it’s shaken at the top. You would expect the FBI finally to eventually send out this brilliant investigator that [Willem Dafoe plays in the movie]. And by the time he gets there, I mean, what if he’s an atheist? What if he f***ing hates them and he not only wants to catch ’em, [but] wants to actually kill them.

I’ve been writing it for eight months. I’ll be done here pretty soon, but going into the book of it all makes me feel like I’m just in a gigantic church. I can just go anywhere. Every new thing that hits me, it’s just like this aspect where it’s all tied together.

A lot of fans had those questions, like, “How come they didn’t recognize their father? They got a gunfight with their dad, and they all shot each other. How does that happen?” and “Why did he go to jail?” All that backstory is going to feed in. It’s already feeding into all this to make; it’s why I call it Blood Origin. Volume one is called Boondock Saints: Blood Origin. A fan who watched the movie is going to take the book and it’s going to just blow their f***ing heads off, because it also doesn’t offend. It doesn’t offend the movie, but now you watch it and if you watch the movie after reading the book, you go, “Oh my God. There were a million things happening there that I didn’t get, but the book unlocks it all.” That’s what I’m most excited about.

About The Boondock Saints

Twenty-five years ago, Troy Duffy’s The Boondock Saints became a Hollywood story unlike any other—written off by the industry and critics, turned into an audience-pleasing cult classic that ultimately spawned a sequel, a documentary, a planned TV series and a comic book. This November, The Boondock Saints marks its 25th anniversary by returning to select movie theaters for two nights only: November 7 and November 10.

The Boondock Saints comes to theaters on November 7 and November 10. Get tickets here.

After brothers Connor and Murphy kill two Russian mobsters in self-defense, they set out on a vigilante mission to rid Boston of crime and violence. However, an FBI agent is hot on their trail.

Director

Troy Duffy

Release Date

January 22, 1999

Studio(s)

20th Century

Distributor(s)

20th Century

Writers

Troy Duffy

Runtime

108 minutes

Budget

$6 million

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