Ed Burns: Risky Business
In 1995, fresh out of film school, Ed Burns made a movie for $25,000 called “The Brothers McMullen,” willed it into the Sundance Film festival, and walked away with the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. The movie went on to earn $10 million domestically, launching Burns as the next young promising American auteur — a writer-director-actor who would create, command, and perform in character-driven films cut not to a target demographic but from an authentic vision.
That was then. Eleven years later, although Burns has delivered prolifically against that promise — with nine released or soon-to-be-opened films, as well as notable writing and acting turns for other directors — recent deliveries have become increasingly painful. Not because Burns is out of stories to tell, but because many studios have either lost their appetite for those kinds of stories or their stomach for financing them. In this risk-averse new Hollywood, making a good film, never easy to do, is arguably easier than getting one made.
Case in point: Burn’s new New York-based comedy-drama, “The Groomsmen,” which Burns once again wrote, directed, and stars in — this time with Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, and Jay Mohr. The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, explores the give-and-take among anxious imminent groom Paulie (Burns), his pregnant fiancée (Brittany Murphy), and his four groomsmen, man-boys to a man who have refused any kind of like commitment.
“It was so impossible to get it made,” says Burns, who eventually did get the film financed by Bauer Martinez Entertainment, a company new to the indie world. “We ended up making the film for $3 million, about half of the original budget. And I don’t know, quite honestly, if it would have happened without Brittany Murphy. I believe their thinking was, ‘Okay, put Brittany in a wedding dress on the box of the DVD and we’ll break even.’”
Money Shift
Burns suggests that financing for indie directors has not so much dried up as been deflected into other genres. “A lot of the specialized film companies, whether it’s Fox Searchlight or Lion’s Gate, are having so much success with teen comedies and slasher movies that they no longer make the indie films they were set up to support, finance, and distribute,” says Burns. “Now those companies say, ‘You go raise the money, make the movie, and then maybe we’ll overspend to buy it, but we don’t want to be involved in the risk side of that business.’”
In his “Groomsmen” script — based on personal experience, but inspired by two favorite movies, Fellini’s “I Vitelloni” and Barry Levinson’s “Diner” — Burns believed he had delivered a story that minimized box office risk. “My films aren’t your typical art house fare,” he says. “They are pretty accessible, and while not obviously commercial, they draw a big enough audience for them to make money back.”
Cost Cutting
But to help balance the equation of outlay and earn-back, Burns conceived and created Groomsmen on a small canvas. “You’ve got to figure out a way to make a really small film, or a really big one,” he says, “because the middle area has kind of disappeared.”
Making small films is something Burns has done more often than not since his debut at Sundance, and although his budgets are somewhat larger now, his MO is very much the same. He works in New York, using the same crew, taking full advantage of talented actors who appreciate his vision and the satisfying roles that fall out of it. “The actors each made eleven thousand dollars on this film,” he says.
To take even more cost out of the equation, he decided with Bauer Martinez to cut the film in Final Cut Studio. “The big change is that on previous films we needed to go to an editing facility, where you pay to rent an Avid,” says Burns. “But on this production we owned the Final Cut Pro station. You eliminate a big cost right there.”
Final Cut Pro’s portability paid off on the set, where Burns could watch dailies on his PowerBook, but even more significantly when he decided to move post-production into a guest house on his Long Island property. There, editor Jamie Kirkpatrick and assistant editor Will Lehman were able to easily set up the system. “Eddie has this philosophy that you should be able to tell stories simply but effectively, and his entire filmmaking process is based on that,” says Kirkpatrick, who on his first-ever edit using Final Cut Pro was able to efficiently conform 55 hours of footage to Burn’s vision.
Kirkpatrick also used Soundtrack Pro for pre-screening sound mixing and DVD Studio Pro to burn dailies to discs.
Groomsmen Sets a Date
With the “The Groomsmen” opening soon, Burns is already busy in production on two other film projects that will no doubt feature simple stories about talkative, thoughtful characters.
“I think I’m just going to keep making Ed Burns movies,” he says. “And as difficult as they are to make, there’s nothing more fun than being on one of our sets. When you don’t have a studio executive looking over your shoulder and you get to cast whomever you want and use whatever music you want, those are pretty nice things to have going on in your film.”
Also nice is the positive buzz generated by “The Groomsmen” at Tribeca, which gives Burns and his backers hope that the movie will open strong. “If we do well opening weekend, we’re on our way,” says Burns. “But we’re certainly nervous given that it’s a smaller movie in the middle of the summer. In the indie world, you keep your fingers crossed.”