Movie Description
In Hollywood, screenwriting failures are so common that bars in the city are strewn with down-on-their-luck writers drowning their sorrows over broken dreams. Documentary filmmakers Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana begin their movie in such an establishment--a Hollywood bar called J. Sloan's. OVERNIGHT focuses on 25-year-old J.Sloan's bartender Troy Duffy, whose movie script, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS, has been picked up by Harvey Weinstein at Miramax. Weinstein is so impressed by the confident, self-assured Duffy that he gives him the go-ahead not only to direct his own movie, but also to score the soundtrack with his own band, The Brood. To Duffy's delight, Weinstein also buys the bar, making them co-owners. Propelled to A-list status, stars such as Mark Wahlberg and Matthew Modine start hanging out with Duffy at J. Sloan's. But as his ego spirals out of control, the interest from Miramax ends as abruptly as it started. No one at the company returns his calls, and with Duffy floundering in a sea of recriminations between himself and the friends he brought along for the ride, the movie is promptly dropped by Weinstein. In the end, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS does end up getting made. But with a low budget and minimal distribution, it disappears without a trace. The future for Duffy appears uncertain at the end of OVERNIGHT and J. Sloan's closes down as the credits roll. Duffy is reduced to a solitary figure whose blame for his misfortune rests somewhere between the fickle wiles of the film industry, and his own personal shortcomings.
| Credits | | Producer: | Mark Brian Smith |
Editorial Reviews
"As with other recent self-implicating documentaries...it is precisely here, in the interstices between apparent openness of directorial motives and the creeping suspicion of unspoken agendas, that things get really interesting."
Film Comment - Paul Arthur (12/01/2004)
"OVERNIGHT is unapologetically a cautionary tale....Compelling in a train-wreck kind of way..."
Los Angeles Times - Kenneth Turan (11/19/2004)
"[T]his is a gruesomely compelling study of success and failure in the US today."
Sight and Sound - Edward Lawrenson (08/01/2005)
"Sharply observed and savagely honest..."
Uncut - Uncut Staff (08/01/2005)
"[An] unflinching depiction of a would-be Tarantino turning himself into chopped liver..."
Rolling Stone - Peter Relic (08/11/2005)
"[W]e get intimate coverage of the meltdown, making this car-crash cinema par excellence."
Sight and Sound - Matthew Leyland (12/01/2005)
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