Dim Light Shed: A Review of Overnight

When I first saw Boondock Saints (heretofore referred to as BS), back in my early college years, I thought it was pretty cool. A cool mix of accents, a cat getting shot, bagpipes, brotherhood, drinking, and extreme violence. It had all the elements that get the neurons in a young geek's mind going.

I was not much for restraint at the time, nor did I think critically about the film until a friend smirked when I said I liked it.

He said something like, "It feels like a bunch of guys got drunk and just thought of everything cool they could cram in a movie, and did that."

Which moved the film from my "most liked" to my "most hated" list, in the way that someone else's opinion can when you're young and impressionable.

After watching Overnight, which details the rise and fall of the director of BS, Troy Duffy, I realized exactly how accurate my friend's assessement was. Duffy was a hard-drinking, self-righteous bartender with a bunch of hard-living friends who wrote a script between hangovers that turned a few of the right heads.

The story goes like this: when fame knocked on his door, he answered in his overalls, and immediately, before any movie was made, declared himself the future of Hollywood. He proceeded to drink away his success, alienate anyone who tried to help him, and by the time the movie came out in just four theatres and bombed even in that setting, he had no friends left.

BS enjoyed a somewhat happy ending, and made wealthy whatever distributor picked it up and got it into the hands of high school and early-college aged men like myself, looking for something loud and flashy. Duffy didn't see any of that money, and he quickly drank away his own meager earnings.

The lesson is supposed to be that fame doesn't make you better. It just turns up the pressure.

For me, the lesson is that when you get that deal, when opportunity knocks, when the world starts listening, that's when the work really starts. It's not whether or not you get there so much as what you do once you get there.

Anyway, I don't feel exactly edified or enlightened either way. It's a true story, but its truth is not particularly surprising or interesting to watch. Once you realize that the lead is a self-destructive, delusional windbag, you pretty much know how things are going to go. It's maybe interesting as a bit of Hollywood history, for those who haven't heard its story a hundred different times before. It's a nice little glimpse behind the scenes of BS, for whatever that's worth.