The new documentary \Overnight"" displays the brief rise and fall of the egomaniacal filmmaker Troy Duffy, the man behind 1999's hit ""The Boondock Saints.""
It comes pre-packaged as a ""real-life Tinseltown cautionary tale"" that takes delight in the boorish Duffy's much-deserved comeuppance, but could perhaps be more accurately described as an 82-minute train wreck.
""Overnight"" is a compulsively watchable, but ultimately hollow, portrait of failure. This would have worked better as an absorbing but unlikely DVD featurette for a special edition of ""The Boondock Saints.""
Troy Duffy was a minor celebrity in the spring of 1997 after becoming Miramax Studio's newest Cinderella story. Studio chief Harvey Weinstein was grooming this Boston bar owner into the next Tarantino, and pulled out all the stops to show his dedication.
Weinstein picked up Duffy's ""Boondock Saints"" screenplay for nearly half a million dollars and, in a nearly unheard-of display of fat cat generosity, offered Duffy a $15 million budget, final cut, casting preference and even a deal for Duffy's rock band, The Brood, to perform the soundtrack.
Newspapers and magazines already began to celebrate Duffy as a talented outsider/underdog destined to shake things up, and this 25-year-old blue-collar guy was suddenly thrust into a whirlwind of opportunity.
Of course, everything went to hell. Duffy became intoxicated by the pervasive attention lavished upon him and began to have delusions of grandeur, regarding himself as the be-all, end-all of independent cinema and rock music. He embarked upon a campaign of bridge-burning, professional and otherwise, effectively laying siege to a once-burgeoning career in a lengthy downhill torrent of pigheaded vitriol aimed at just about everybody in his life.
His creative team grew sick of his constant self-righteous tirades, his family became alienated, The Brood failed to churn out anything worthwhile, and Weinstein eventually pulled the plug in an attempt to wash his hands of the spectacle that Troy Duffy had made of himself.
The directors of ""Overnight,"" Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana were former friends of Duffy and managing members of The Brood eagerly awaiting its success.
They had intended to document their friend's overnight success; instead, they ruthlessly captured his uncanny downfall. While Smith and Montana do not feign objectivity, their own hostile regard for Duffy manifests itself conspicuously and shortchanges a variety of the film's overall attributes.
While undeniably entertaining, ""Overnight"" devolves from a smartly acerbic look at the price of ego into a collection of one-note clips showing Duffy complaining, drunk or swearing incessantly. It may be funny at first to see Duffy lashing out against industry successes such as Jerry Bruckheimer or Keanu Reeves, but it soon wears out its welcome.
Smith and Montana seemingly chose their scenes not to illustrate any searing insights or provide a discerning look at the making of an independent production, but to repeatedly represent Duffy as a hotheaded monster (which proves an easy task).
The best scenes in ""Overnight"" are the early ones showing Duffy's pathetically sycophantic behavior at its most extreme-which fascinatingly hint that unbridled ass-kissing, not talent, drove Duffy's initial good fortune.
Brief behind-the-scenes content on the set of ""The Boondock Saints"" with Willem Dafoe and other cast members also suggest the wealth of footage Smith and Montana could have chosen from to add some variety and make it into something more than an attack piece on Duffy.
When it stifles its temptation to show Duffy at his frequent, repetitious worst, ""Overnight"" serves as a gritty, penetrating look at a Hollywood wunderkind who counted his chickens before they hatched.
It is not the blistering cautionary tale ""every aspiring filmmaker should see,"" but may be of special note to fans who want to witness the trials and travails behind the tumultuous making of ""The Boondock Saints.\
