In his 1965 hit Billy Joel pleaded for the Lord to “have mercy on the boy from down in the boondocks”. Joel’s songs would often speak up for boys who never escaped their humble beginnings (anyone remember “Uptown Girl”?) and boondocks was a word with resonance.
The word Boondocks originally appeared in the early 1900s as an adaptation of the Tagalog “bundok”, meaning mountain and became widely used by American soldiers serving in the Philippines during World War Two. As most Filipino cities are on the coast, mountains were generally difficult to reach and boondocks became the slang word for wild terrain. Soon the word became a general label for an unappealing wilderness and the provincial and uncultivated people that often lived there.
The word has gained wide exposure in Hollywood as part of one of the film industry’s most famous cautionary tales. In 1997 Troy Duffy, a penniless Los Angeles bartender, wrote “The Boondock Saints”, a story of two working class brothers. The script was sold to Miramax Films, who offered Duffy a $15 million dollar budget to direct the movie. Delighted with his rags to riches success, Duffy behaved so obnoxiously that the studio eventually cancelled his contract. He went back to working in the bar. From the boondocks to Beverley Hills and back again, all in the blink of an eye.
