First, just a little personal background: I was always a big fan of Boondock Saints, ever since I first saw it in my friend's basement. It immediately caught on with my group of friends. We rented it, having never heard of it (as I’m sure many fans did). We watched it over and over, then went back and bought copies, started loaning them to friends, and were soon surrounded by people we knew who had seen it, tossing around quotes and referring to scenes. A cult of Boondock Saints fans if you will.

(Note: Please be aware that some of the clips from Boondock Saints included in this story contain some profane language and more than a bit of violence. Proceed at your own risk).

MovieRetriever: Your first movie was a big cultural phenomenon. I mean, 1999 was pre-viral marketing, and yet Boondock Saints somehow became a viral hit.

TROY DUFFY: Yeah I don't know how the f**k that happened, it just found an audience somehow, some way. We were having our screenings for the industry during Columbine, and that whole wake, so we were virtually blacklisted from US screens, and Blockbuster thought that was kinda unfair so they gave us what's called a Blockbuster Exclusive deal, release the movie in their stores much bigger than it actually was, and they gave us whole shelves and stuff. For some reason fans just got it and it caught fire, and it became their highest grossing exclusive.

BOB MARLEY: It had a long wick on it though. I remember it being like a year or so and I was out doing stand-up, and then I would walk into a stand-up club and there'd be tons of Boondock fans. I was like "what's going on with this thing?" And then a couple years later it kept growing and growing and growing.

DAVID DELLA ROCCO: It caught fire out of nowhere. That was so funny. I thought "I did this movie, and here's my big chance.” I had a really ridiculous manager for me, she loved the movie, and she was a good manager, and she said "Wow, this is going to do well, this is going to go in theaters" and found out it didn't go in theaters, and I thought oops, but then little by little....

MovieRetriever: After a while you would mention Boondock in a bar or something and if the person had seen it you knew you had something in common. It became a community thing.

DUFFY: That's what's so cool about these shows we're doing. That's one of the things I really like. We did Busby's in LA, had our tenth anniversary party to get all our fans out, and they get to know each other. That's what the meat of that is. If you're a Boondock fan, you see a guy in a Boondock shirt at the supermarket, you go up and talk, and pretty soon you're texting each other and they're friends. That's what these shows are about.

MARLEY: This Busby's 10th anniversary party in Los Angeles was eye opening because prior to that I thought I could pick out any Boondock fan. I would go do my standup show, there'd be a thousand people in the room, certain guys would start walking up to the merch table at the end and I'd think "Boondock, Boondock, Boondock." But I go to this Busby's thing, there's a whole collection of guys and girls like that, sleeved up with tats, with that certain look, but then there's this 53-year-old Asian man and his 35-year-old Caucasian wife, and the guy asked me to sign his Boondock poster. You look around the room and it reaches all different demos. It's just good, that's all. 

BRIAN MAHONEY: I was surprised at the college situation. My wife came home one day with this stack of paperwork on Facebook, when Facebook first started getting really big. When you first sign up for Facebook it asks your favorite movie. So she gave me a list of 200 colleges, and Boondock Saints was in the top 5 at like half of them. At Notre Dame I thought Rudy would be number 1, and Boondock Saints beat Rudy. So the fact that all these college kids discovered us, so our fan base was educated, it was unbelievable.

MARLEY: It's funny because you look at some reviews, a lot of the time they're not that favorable just because I don't know if they just don't get it or what the deal is. The best one I think CB told me was the Wall Street Journal said "say whatever you want, but this is one of the top 50 most rented movies of all time."

DUFFY: My favorite one was this reporter who wrote this article and the byline was "Don't insult this movie in public." He told this whole story about how he was in a bar talking s**t about Boondock Saints and he gets surrounded by about 10 fans who tell him "get the f**k out of here before you get hurt." I love the way the fan base protects the film. You'll be reading IMDB and there's a bad review, and then there's 10 Boondock fans arguing with it.

MARLEY: I did a radio interview where I went in to promote a stand-up gig, and this guy totally sabotaged me and started talking badly about the movie, and I was like "well, I'm sorry you feel that way" – what else are you going to say. So anyway, sure enough the phone starts ringing and every line is red, so the radio host picks up the first line and the  caller says "tell that guy he's an idiot, he's an asshole. This is the best movie in history" and I'm on air saying "Sorry dude, you let the dogs out. Here they come."

DUFFY: One of the things about it is that it didn't get a theatrical release, there wasn't all that promotion on television, nobody saw trailers. So when people found it, it felt more organically theirs. Like "this is our movie" and they showed it to people they liked and not to people they didn't. it became a special thing that way. When a fanbase cares that personally, about something like that, it's amazing.

MARLEY: Here's what I really like about Boondock fans. Normally when a group of people find something like that and they build it up, they feel ownership over it, and then they want to tear it down at some point. And with the second movie they haven't done that, they've raised it up, and said that this movie is just as good if not better. In fact, I've had a lot of people tell me they liked the second one better than the first one, and that's what's cool about Boondock fans, they like it, they're into it. It's like a big family.  

MovieRetriever: It's a very “community” experience – it wasn't in the theaters, so you had to hand it off. It was an inside thing.

MAHONEY: Tom, let me ask you a question, did you know about the secret at the end of the second movie going in?

MovieRetriever: No, and I didn't see it opening night, I went a few weeks after.

MAHONEY: That's what blew me away, that the fans could keep that secret.  

ROCCO: I got a big kick out of that surprise. I thought it was cool.  

MARLEY: I love the response when you're sitting in the theater with 500 people. I've been to like 4-5 screenings where nobody knows, and all you hear is "Oh s**t."

DUFFY: You hear his voice first, and I remember when we were in Boston I hear a guy go "No f**king way," the whole audience starts leaning forward. I was right next to Tommy Chabot, a friend of ours who's actually in the first movie, and involved with us, and we hadn't told him either, and right when [Willem] Dafoe's face appeared he just punched me in the arm, he's like "you motherf**ker, why wouldn't you tell me?"

MARLEY: He was so pissed at me too, he was like "you're a f**king asshole."

MAHONEY: We were lying in interviews, me and you, saying "No, Willem's not back."

ROCCO: You know what I actually had to do with that? I went to see this girl in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and she knew this lady that writes this magazine, and so before the movie she says: "So Dafoe isn't going to be in it?" and I said "Nope, no Dafoe." The girl looked like an idiot when she was talking to her friend so I said "Crazy f**king Troy didn't even tell me." He did a different ending on the film. All of a sudden I didn't see him for two weeks and he changed it.

MARLEY: I just told everybody you know Willem Dafoe, between the first movie and the second movie he became more famous, he's so busy, he couldn't get the time. It totally takes people by surprise.

MovieRetriever: I have a friend who had been convinced that Julie Benz was actually Willem Dafoe after a sex change and a faked death.

DUFFY: I've actually heard that quite a few times. I can't f**king explain it but Boondock fans have come up with the wildest bunch of crazy stuff that I never thought of. There's numbers theories out there, the idea that in Boondock 1 the beginning is actually the very end and the rest is a flashback.

MARLEY: I've had people ask me about specific scenes, what were you thinking right then. And I was thinking "I hope I don't f**k these lines up, and what's for lunch?"

DUFFY: I think that when they look that deep into something, that's one of those things where you just kinda stand back and go "What hath we wrought here?" when you hear this harebrained theory that actually kinda makes sense in a way, you're like "oh my god, I didn't see that one coming." So I've heard Dafoe is her [Julie Benz], but to me, as a dude, that's way too hot for her to be Willem Dafoe. You'd have to wonder who the hell was his doctor.

ROCCO: You know what's funny, speaking of the first one, how Dafoe got into playing that chick. That was just "this is good."

MovieRetriever: The first movie is a bit like lightning in a bottle – sometimes I think of the energetic performances by these cool actors, sometimes I think about the lines.

DUFFY: One liners are our bread and f**king butter man. If you can give something to somebody that they can say at the water cooler the next day to your friends, if you have one of those in your movie, you're doing good.

MARLEY: But the thing is with the first movie we didn't know that when we were making it. With the second movie we were like "we need some s**t we can put on some t-shirts."

DUFFY: Have you ever looked on IMDB and clicked on Memorable Quotes? I did one day and almost every single thing said in the film is on there. It's basically all the lines. It's the whole f**king movie. People have glommed onto these lines. That stupid f**king "thanks for coming out" line, I just thought that was a mild chuckle. And that's like your [Marley's] tag line when you show up.

MARLEY: That "thanks for coming out" is a stand-up thing, you always say "hey, thanks for coming out." We would always just throw it around. So on the set, we'd be there before we'd be shooting, somebody would bring you something and you'd say "Oh yeah, thanks for coming out."

DUFFY: We'd use it as a line to dismiss people arrogantly, but the way you did it, that's what turns it. It's like your buddy comes up with a stupid idea, you're like "uh, that's a good idea, that's great."

MARLEY: It's funny, but now from a marketing standpoint it's hilarious, because we'll be doing an interview and Troy points to me and I say "Thanks for coming out." It kinda makes sense, but in the first one you had no idea, people just grab onto it.

MAHONEY: Sometimes people see you, they're like "Where you goin’? Nowhere!"

MARLEY: I'll be walking through the grocery store and someone will just yell it out, I've got my kids with me and they'll be like "Where you goin’?" and I'm like "Nowhere" and my daughter's like "Why do they say that?"

DUFFY: At least it's better than "I can't buy a pack of smokes without running into 9 guys you f**ked."

MARLEY: Rocco's got so much good stuff, in the first one especially.  

ROCCO: You know I really did feel like a monkey on a string this one time. I'm at this bar and the bartender comes over, says "my buddy's got a camera, can you say 'Hey F**kass get me a beer.’" I'm feeling a little funny, like, are we doing a scene, but I say "Hey f**kass, get me a beer" and then I say "Wait wait, let's do another one."

DUFFY: You can see he's an actor. Hang on, can I go again on that? I wasn't ready.... And you know what was different for me man? The only real difference between 1 and 2 is that suddenly we were making this for a fan base now. We go to these fan screenings, and Boondock fans have all these tattoos all over their bodies. There was this one kid in Philly, me and Norm go out to have a smoke while the movie's playing and these two kids come up in pea coats and crosses, saying "Can we have your autograph? We've been here since nine in the morning, we couldn't get in, but it's worth it to just get your autograph" so we yank them inside after they pull up their shirts, one kid had a mural of the brothers doing their thing, and dad over here, the other kid had the prayer on his back with a huge cross. I thought about it, and right then it hit me, I can't think of any other movie where that happens. Every now and then you see a guy like Bon Jovi with a Superman tattoo.

MARLEY: I was going on this radio station in New Hampshire for like five years in a row, just telling jokes, promoting standup shows, and the lead guy brings it up, "You're in Boondock Saints?" and the sidekick guy goes "You're in Boondock Saints?!?" and he rips his shirt open and he has the whole prayer tattooed on his chest, and I'm like "Dude how do you not know I'm in it if you're that into it? That was a bit of an error." The strangest tat was at that Busby's thing in LA, this girl pulls up her sleeve and she's got a bunch of the actor's names signed onto it, and then they tattooed over it, and she asked me to sign my name, so I signed my name, and she said "Now I'm almost complete."  

DUFFY: I saw this one dude I think in New York City, and he goes "check this out" and he has this tattoo on his forearm, and I can't make heads or tails of it. It turns out it was an ambigram that said Veritas one way, Aequitas the other way. He had sat down with a scientist and a tattoo artist and worked it out, and once he tells you what it is, you can totally f**king see it.

MARLEY: It's like Where's Waldo?

ROCCO: But you know what's interesting about this, like, in a way, I know this girl who's married, has a couple kids, her husband spends most of his time in Iraq, he's in the service. It's not laughing at them, this is f**king serious, these aren't morons.