Overnight is occasionally amusing, often mortifying, never contextualized enough to be interesting, and always compelling. But it’s compelling only if you’re somewhat familiar with the subject of the film, Troy Duffy. Specifically, Duffy’s directorial debut, The Boondock Saints. In 1997, Harvey Weinstein bought the script for Duffy to direct at Miramax and less than a year later put the project in turnaround. Why? It’s unclear. But apparently Duffy pissed off Miramax exec Meryl Poster so much, Weinstein dropped it. How did Duffy pissed off Poster? Unclear. There’s no interviews with anyone like Poster in the film, much less Weinstein. The one person besides Duffy who badmouths him does so with a pixelated face and the producer who actually worked for Miramax on the project has voice distortion.
The documentary, made by Duffy’s band’s co-managers—oh, yeah, Duffy also had a band, which is apparently shitty. There’s none of their music in Overnight (and no clips from Boondock). So if you haven’t heard the music, if you haven’t seen the movie, you’re not going to get the full effect of the documentary because directors Smith and Montona just don’t have the right material to tell the story. It’s also not compelling unless you want to see jackass Duffy show the full shallowness of his humanity. It’s like a puddle with some old dog poop in it.
And Overnight is eighty minutes of it.
The first people Duffy turns on—so his band and ostensibly the documentary makers are all part of his crew. They’re going to take Hollywood by storm. There are multiple scenes where Duffy talks about leading the greatest group of creatives in history because he’s got his younger brother and the two guys in the band and the documentary makers slash band managers. Only once the band signs a deal, they fire the managers. There’s a long scene of Duffy and his brother berating the band mangers (you know, the guys who made Overnight) and telling them they will never get paid. Ever.
Then the movie keeps going. The movie they’re making. So even though there was this falling out, they didn’t fall out. There’s maybe less footage going forward but there’s also less story, just Duffy self-destructing more and their album sucking. Eventually Duffy will fall out with everyone and the movie ends on an upbeat note about how he didn’t get any money from the movie’s eventual video success because his agency screwed up his contracted.
Duffy’s got this conspiracy theory about how Harvey Weinstein is influencing his agency to give him bad deals when really it seems like the agency (William Morris) put an absolute tool (Jim Crabbe) in charge of Duffy’s account. Like, no one comes out of Overnight looking good. At best you’re just a dope. Even co-director Montana, who eventually contributes a lot of onscreen interviews, looks bad. Smith, the other one, he’s somewhat sympathetic still. But the guys in the band are dicks. Jake Busey is a pig. But it really does seem like, from the movie, Crabbe screwed everything up somehow.
Except what really happened was Duffy went out drinking with obviously Miramax would’ve used it as an Ewan McGregor vehicle Ewan McGregor and got in a fight about how Duffy supported the death penalty and people who don’t suck. Like McGregor. Not in the movie. At all. But apparently it’s directly responsible for Miramax dumping the project.
Anyway.
Overnight is adequately executed rubbernecking and nothing else. Kind of good music though—from Jack Livesey and Peter Nashel. It’s better than it needs to be.
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