One of the worst directors on the planet. I didn’t know he was still allowed to make films.
He fucking sucks.
Now Ari he just makes small comedy dramas. He does not ruin genre like QT or involve his lame kids like Rodriguez. He is not Uwe Boll. I think u are being a little rough on the man.
BROTHERS MCMULLEN was okay, it had a certain funky low-budget charm. I wasn’t inspired to see his other films, but have watched selected bits on cable, and haven’t been moved to seek them out.
I’ve only seen his first film. His is an enviable position (and no, I’m not speaking of that wife of his). He has complete freedom in what he does and how he does it. He has found a niche: his projects are simple to shoot, he casts whom he likes, and tells the stories he likes. Any idea of the amount of his budgets, Den? I’m going to say about five million. His films underperform at the box office, even at the low-budget at which he works, but he manages to continue. Funds are raised upon the names of his cast, is my guess. Interesting.
He actually reminds me of a poor man’s Ben Affleck, though the latter’s directing is better and acting is worse.
“His is an enviable position”.
Yeah, he really lucked out – a perfect case of being in the right place in the right time. He won the Sundance Award for that awful Brothers McMullen film at the exact moment when “indie film” was a hot commodity. Of course because of people like Burns (and we can also add the even more insufferable Eric Schaeffer) “indie film” came to mean complete incompetence in writing, acting and direction combined with smug navel-gazing self-regard.
I haven’t seen anything he’s done since Ash Wednesday.
That Sundance award I will never ever understand.
KJ the budgets range from 2-4 million.
Ari he is hardly incompotent, just not very exciting sometimes.
Watch Looking for Kitty and give me an honest assesment, I dare u
“Watch Looking for Kitty and give me an honest assesment, I dare u”
I might take you up on that challenge. I take it, though, that Looking for Kitty is not Burns’ attempt to make a porn film?
Nah I wish.
But it has David Krumholtz (from Slums of Beverly Hills and Numbers) and he has a porno mustache right out of the 70s
I do like David Krumholtz.
From the Huffington post
So in your new film, Nice Guy Johnny, you’re playing Uncle Terry, someone who is actually a darker force in the film. Your main character Johnny is torn between his values, his dreams, and the influences of others. They press upon him things that he in fact does not want for his life. You, as an independent filmmaker have experienced the expectations of others many times, especially with the larger studios. Would you like to speak to that?
Burns: That’s how the idea was born. My last film did not perform as well as we had hoped. My agents at the time said, “Maybe it’s time to put yourself up for open directing assignments.” Studios have a bunch of scripts, they thought of me doing studio romantic comedies, ’It’s a no-brainer, he knows how to make movies, and he gets them in on time.’ The advantage of that is: They’re guaranteed a release, it’s a nice big budget and therefore, a nice big paycheck. So, for the first time in my career I thought, you know, maybe it’s time to explore this. Everybody in my life is saying, “Why not entertain this?” So, I take the meetings, I read the scripts. And I got very close to one. I almost said, “Alright, lets go do it. Let me just read the script one more time.” And I realized that I couldn’t do it. Not for any reason other than that I got into this business to be a writer, and I thought that I had stories to tell. When I wrote Brothers McMullen it was a reaction to the fact that I wasn’t seeing any movies that represented the world that I came from. That has always been all I tried to do. Just tell these little tiny stories about the people I know. The studio script was fine, but it had nothing to do with me. I couldn’t see giving two years of my life to something I didn’t believe in. In my acting career, you can say, here’s three months of my life, I hope no one sees this…
Regardless of yr opinion on Burns I just wanted to ask, Kevin Smith faced the same problem recently and opted to do Cop Out, which he claimed was the first time he did a real movie, one that he dad would have liked. Burns so far has not done this as a director. Do you think Smith is better off, the movie did not perform that well? Personally I think that Burns will likely get to do a studio film one day on his terms and I think Smith has potentially ruined his career (tho it was not in a great place before Cop Out) or stalled it for a while.
^^wrong. Burns cannot be compared to Smith at all. Cop Out was a flop but so what, it’s not really a Kevin Smith film. They didn’t even really use his name in the marketing campaign. With the exception of Mallrats and Jersey Girl, all of Kevin Smith films have made money.
Some of Burns films have made money too.
Plus I dont think Jersey Girl made profit.
I think that Smith is in a worse place now because Cop Out flopped
they may have hid him in the advertising but that does not mean they wont still blame him for the lack of profit.
portion of a very good interview by Capone on aint-it-cool.com where Burns talks about the future of indie distribution and why theaters are no longer necessarily the best option:
The movie business is a lot of fun, there’s all of these perks and all of the bullshit that goes along with it, but when you have two guys standing on a straight corner in Greenwich Village making a little tiny movie with an unknown actor who’s fighting for his life, everything comes back. It’s more, I think, the way a musician or a band might feel when they’re playing a gig. Everything kind of disappears, and you’re only in the moment with the music like that’s what happened on this movie. Right now, I don’t ever want to go back.
We’re going to do another movie in January, we’re maybe going to spend about $35,000 with the same idea. It’s a four-character little story, and I don’t even care… It doesn’t even matter if they get released theatrically anymore. You get to make these cool movies with great people who want to do it; there’s nobody standing over your shoulder saying, “The studio isn’t going to like that” or “Can you change that line in the script?” or then in post-production changing the title of the movie or saying “You can’t use this song” or whatever all of the horror stories you have heard—none of that bullshit. It’s liberating.
Capone: The last film, PURPLE VIOLETS, went to iTunes for distribution, and now this film, you’re doing something different again. Talk a little bit about your alternate means of getting the film out there beyond the festival circuit.
EB: The big thing, with PURPLE VIOLETS, we realized the movie before THE GROOMSMEN had a new company called Bauer Martinez releasing the film. They didn’t have a lot of experience and a little bit of money and they tried to sort of just copycat the traditional platform release that most of these indie titles do and that a number of my films have done sometimes to success and a lot of times to not so successful. But you would do your New York-L.A. release, and then two weeks later you get to your next five markets—Chicago, San Fran, Atlanta—and maybe three weeks after that. So eight weeks out then you at hitting your St. Louis, your Seattle, maybe Dallas, Houston.
The problem that we had and that we would always hear from people is “Alright, I saw you on the ‘Today Show.’" or "I saw Jim Moore’s interview in Entertainment Weekly and I was all read to see the movie and I don’t live near an arthouse, so it never came, and nine months later the DVD came out with this crazy artwork, and it didn’t even look like one of your movies.” That’s really frustrating, so by the time we got to PURPLE VIOLETS, we got another offer for that kind of release. And a big part of it was, I’m a big music nut, so I’m looking at what a lot of bands are doing, and the idea that they are trying to release their movies directly to their fans, and we looked at that and we said “There’s a model of this that can work for indie films.”
So that’s ’07, and we said “Let’s contact iTunes and see if they’d ever be up for an exclusive run of a movie and see if they would give up like a different level of promotion than some of the titles that they had there." So that’s what we did, and I’m not going to lie to you and say we hit a home run, but we hit a solid single. The movie was a $4 million dollar movie, so the woman that financed the movie did not get it all back and didn’t get it all back from iTunes, but we saw the number that was doable at iTunes and we thought “Wait a second, this could change the game.” You don’t sell your movie, you just license it, so I could retain ownership, and you can get the movie to anyone who has a computer, like on that day. If I go and do Conan, I can say “Go to iTunes that night and download the movie,” and we started to hear back from people, especially younger people, they are fine watching it on their computer or their phone. And that predated Apple TV, it predated the iPad, it predated Netflix streaming, predated the Apple TV streaming, and predated people like really being a little bit more comfortable watching movies on their computers. So we looked at that and thought “iTunes is one piece,” then what Magnolia and IFC were doing with their VOD window before, and then I saw Soderbergh did on GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE and BUBBLE, and I’m like “Alright, if VOD before theatrical is cool for Soderbergh, it’s absolutely cool for me.”
But then when we looked at those deals that IFC and Magnolia are doing, to get your movie out theatrically is so expensive, like even the smallest movie you are going to spend a couple of million to market it. We have this movie that costs $25,000 and we are like “Alright, either we sell it for a no-advance partnership, which we did on LOOKING FOR KITTY, and we should have seen money on that—nothing—or you sell it for a low-six-figure number and that’s it, I don’t own the movie anymore. They own it and do another crappy artwork like they did on THE GROOMSMEN. I don’t get to have any involvement in the trailer or the marketing, and I don’t own the movie anymore.”
A guy named John Sloss who’s a big indie film lawyer, this company called Cinetic, and another company called FilmBuff, he’s the one who put it in my head. He’s like “If you go VOD you can get into 42 million homes on the day that your movie’s released.” If you don’t make excuses for it and you embrace it not as a straight-to-video kind of thing, but you recognize “Wait, people are watching indie films in their living rooms on their flat screens now, on their BluRay players. It’s a different experience than the VHS on your little 12 inch.” So I was like “Alright, I kind of see this, so I did some research on all of the kind of numbers, especially James Gray’s movie TWO LOVERS and what that did on VOD. So then I said, “Alright, I’m in. Let’s do this.”
Then we started talking to Comcast through the Tribecca Film Festival—they have a good relationship. Comcast was like “Well we have this idea that On Demand should be a destination as opposed to sort of an afterthought. What if indie movie fans know ‘I go to my On Demand channel to see these titles’ as opposed to ‘Let me see what’s on.” We were like “Alright, we are in on that,” so with Comcast we started this thing called “The Indie Movie Club.” They are going to have interviews with filmmakers. The first thing we did is this thing called “Picks and Flicks,” so like I pick seven indie movies like THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH, SHE’S GOT TO HAVE IT, METROPOLITAN, LAWS OF GRAVITY, all of the movies that when I’m in film school are getting me high on the notion that you can do it. So we’re looking at all of these things, and they were like “Well let’s take the DVD window then and collapse that and we will go day in day. We will go digital, VOD, and DVD all in one day, kind of like the way bands now can say ‘Our new album is coming out, wherever you want it, we are going to deliver it to you in anyway you want to consume it or watch it.’" So we cut out the middle man. There’s no taste maker telling us that our movie is good enough, there’s no A&R guy telling us “You need a hit single here!” All of the studio pressures, marketing pressures from distribution companies, all gone, and now I own the movie, so in five years when the new thing evolves where people are now watching their movie in this whatever way, I then can monetize the film again. So you will never get rich, it will never be AVATAR, but what it does is it enables a filmmaker now to have full creative control, and you can hit singles and maybe doubles and make enough money to go make another movie next year. And I’ll never have to go hat in hand to the jerk who wants to cast his girlfriend in my script in order to get his $3 million dollars. And that is liberating.
If you want to do this, you’ve got to say: I have to tell small stories. I’ve got a lot of big movies I want to make, but I can’t make them this way. This is a different kind of thing. And the other thing is you’ve got to be okay not having your movie playing in a movie theater. The argument I’ve made with some of my friends who are filmmakers who like the business and financial side of this model, but they can’t get their head around not having it play in theaters. I’m like, “Look at your last movie. You played on six screens in six different cities for two weeks. Do a film festival tour.” Like we’re here. Tomorrow, I’ll see my movie in a great theater. I’ll get the thrill of sitting in the background, hearing the laughter and seeing it projected, and that’s better than showing up at the Angelika at 3:00pm and seeing four people in the theater in a small, not-great screening room. A friend of mine had a great line, he’s like, “The red carpet has become too cumbersome. Get rid of it, man, and embrace the future.” The death of the album sucks, but it’s the new reality, and I’m like “The death of theatrical sucks, but it’s the new reality for our business.”
Capone: With that in mind any time you come into contact with film students, you must get the question, “What advice do you have for a young filmmaker?” It used to be, “Write your own scripts, because that way you might be able to get the deal to direct it,” or “Make shorts.” Now it seems the answer is, “Don’t be afraid not to have your first movie or two not going into theaters.”
EB: We’ve been thinking about the next film, like we might even take the film and break it up like into—kind of what I was saying maybe we were thinking about with NICE GUY JOHNNY—15- or 20-minute chapters. And is there a place to offer that up as free content online to get an audience excited? Give them the first hour for free, almost like try and engage them to be involved in the creative process. Whatever is happening virally is changing the way audiences are watching these films, and I think you, as a filmmaker, now have some responsibility to try and figure out “Why does it need to be 90 minutes to 2 hours in a theater?” “Are there other ways that we can tell these stories and use the Internet or the web?” There are a billion people on Facebook. I’d rather have a billion people see my movie than a handful of cinephiles in New York and L.A., so my advice would be like “Throw out the old rules." It’s a medium that’s only a hundred years old. Who is to say that the next hundred wont be a whole other new version of it? But again, I’m excited by potentially what the future holds, but I have no idea what the hell it is. Then the other thing is really how do you monetize it? That’s the hardest thing.
I haven’t really followed the guy at all, though I do appreciate his taste and have heard him speak a few times on podcasts. I think he’s resigned to the fact that he’s going to be known more for his acting and less for his films. If his enthusiasm matched his ability, then he’s be more highly regarded. If this turns out to be a viable model, then I hope it helps others figure a way to make films on smaller budgets.
Another user (kvn) was nice enough to provide this article to me from filmmaker magazine about the downward projection of Burns’ budgets. His next film cost 9,000 bucks (a third of his original sundance discovery)
BREAKING DOWN ED BURNS’ $9,000 SHOOTING BUDGET
By Scott Macaulay on Friday, March 18th, 2011
Tags: Canon 5D, Ed Burns, micro-budget, no-budget filmmaking
While procrastinating working yesterday, I was following Ed Burns’ Twitter stream, in which he detailed the no-budget nature of his latest film, Newlyweds. With a shooting budget of $9,000, Burns worked with a three-person crew, shot on the Canon 5D (which he owns), had the actors wear their own clothes and do their own hair and make up, and worked without lights (except an occasional china ball) and sound mixer (the actors wore lavs). Tweeted Burns, “Sound is important but don’t let it slow you down. The Italian Neo-realists didn’t and they made some pretty great films…. No disrespect to soundmen and women, but on these shooting schedules (12 days) you can’t be precious. When I have a budget, I have respect.”
He also revealed the budgets of all his films: “Budgets for past movies: The Groomsmen 3 Million, Purple Violets 4 Million, She’s the One 3 Million, Sidewalks of NY 1 Million, No Looking Back 5 Million, Brothers McMullen 25K. Looking For Kitty 250K, Nice Guy Johnny 25k, Newlyweds 9k.” Breaking down this latest picture, he writes, “Newlyweds shooting budget: 5k for actors, 2k insurance, 2k food and drink. 9k in the can. We only shot 12 days. That’s how to make an independent film.”
Interesting here are a few things. First, Burns is obviously making the choice to work this small. I’m sure he could successfully pound the pavement for a bigger budget. It’s just that he doesn’t want to do it anymore. He tweeted, “”I went hat in hand to the money guys for years. Just couldn’t do it anymore. Decided to write smaller stories and never looked back.” Second is the level of transparency. With first-time filmmakers being told by sales agents “not to talk budget,” here’s a veteran who has no qualms about pulling the curtain all the way back.
For more of Burns’ production tweets, follow him and/or visit Notes on Video, which has aggregated all the tweets in one place.
Speaking of Ed Burns, one of my favorite director dialogues appearing in Filmmaker is this one between Burns and Kevin Smith. Burns had won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize with The Brothers McMullen and was awaiting its release. Smith had scored with Clerks and just finished shooting his sophomore film, Mall Rats. Here’s an exchange where they both talk about facing down rejection and summoning up the will to become a filmmaker. Once more, it’s interesting to see Burns embrace now the same model he started his career with.
Burns:…. I knew I wanted to make films. I had written about seven screenplays, sending them out. Getting rejection letter after rejection letter. My dad was like, “You wanna be a filmmaker? Go out and make a fucking film. We don’t know people with a million dollars, so let’s figure out a way to make a low-budget one.”
Smith: And this was who?
Burns: My dad.
Smith: See, I had this little experience with my sister. She was like, “What do you want to be?” I want to be a filmmaker. She’s like “Be a filmmaker.” And I was like oh, yeah, right. And she was like “No. In your mind become a filmmaker. You’re a filmmaker from this day forward. Do everything as a filmmaker would do.” And it’s true. It works.
Burns: That’s exactly what he said, and the other good, important advice he gave me, which helped with rejection letter after rejection letter, was if you’re interested in the end result, you’re in it for the wrong reason. You enjoy the process. You’re doing this for you. You make the film you make. Who gives a crap what anyone else thinks? Does it hurt to be rejected? Hell yeah, it stings. I actually have all of my rejection letters –
Smith: Framed?
Burns: I took them all and stuck them on some thing and framed them. I actually have a rejection letter for McMullen from Fox.
Smith: Fox? Fox Searchlight?
Burns: No the big Fox and that one is on the frame.
^Nice, thanks Dennis Brian.
There are few people on this Earth I loathe more than Ed Burns. Although I inexplicably enjoyed She’s the One.
Ed Burns has cheapend the term indie fims. But we must give him praise at least for persistance because just about any one else who had brought out film after film to audience and critical indifference would have hung up their megaphone long ago.
trailer for the 9,000 dollar film:
Looks like a cheap low IQ Woody knock-off. Well, for less than 10K, I guess it’s guaranteed to return some kind of profit. No budget films are looking better technically these days though….
Newlyweds is non on amazon on demand (for 4 bucks) and direct tv (for 7 bucks)
will watch this weekend
I kinda liked She’s the One for what it was, especially the father.
House have you read this thread about Burn’s current method of financing
it is inspiring.
Learned a lot from Burns and how he finances his films. Every up and coming filmmaker should pay more attention to him.
Dennis Brian
Nice Guy Johnny (2010)
Purple Violets (2007)
The Groomsmen (2006)
Looking for Kitty (2004)
Ash Wednesday (2002)
Sidewalks of New York (2001)
No Looking Back (1998)
She’s the One (1996)
The Brothers McMullen (1995)
Above is a list of his films as director. I have not seen the most recent one. When he first came out with Brothers, he had a good story, PA from Entertainment Tonight, made a movie on weekends, sent it to Sundance, Redford liked it gave him a production deal. Then I was the film and it was merely ok, too slight to be a comedy, not dramatic enough for drama. He did some press and people called him the Irish Catholic (his religion is often mentioned by his characters) Woody Allen. I did not understand the comparison, he exerted little energy onscreen and tended to talk so slowly and calmly the jokes were often lost in the delivery. I hated his next film, great soundtrack, but stale jokes and Jen Aniston (I hated her before it was fashionable), but with no looking back, I finally saw the Woody comparison, this was Burns’ September, a small chamber piece with some fine acting (by Lauren Holly and Bon Jovi!!) and a compelling story.
He followed that up with a Woody rip-off The Sidewalks of New York, every character in that seemed inspired by Allen. I had not seen anything so blantant (or so poor an imitation of a filmmaker) since Miami Rhapsody. Next came Ash Wednesday, an odd thriller that at least showed he can direct all kinds of genres.
That one starred Elijah Wood. It seems none of these movies made much money as his films kept getting smaller and smaller but Ash Wednesday was followed by his gem. Looking for Kitty is about a lame duck detective played by Burns helping a loser high school coach played by David Krumholtz (in a mult-layed performance) find his wife. The film is funny, touching and odd, all wrapped up in 77mins, a wonderful film.
The less said about The Groomsman the better but Purple Violets has a good central performance by Debra Messing (Burns is a good director of women). I am looking forward to his new film and dispite his track record I am a fan, anyone else?