IMAGINE YOU’RE A filmmaker. You’ve made a movie. It’s about men and women, relationships, how people’s lives are connected. It takes place in New York City; appropriately, you’ve called it Sidewalks of New York. The film, complete with shots of the World Trade Center glittering in the sunlight, is ready for release.
And then comes September 11.
Hollywood, like the rest of the country, was thrown into chaos. And Edward Burns, best known for his hat-trick work — writing, directing, acting — on such films as 1995’s The Brothers McMullen and 1996’s She’s the One, saw the release of his latest film, originally scheduled for September 21, pushed back to November 21. Now, with the movie finally arriving in theaters, Burns — who also starred in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan — sits down to talk about the decision to postpone his film’s release, life after September 11, and his fiancee, supermodel Christy Turlington.
Q: Where did the idea for Sidewalks of New York come from, and how long had it been brewing?
A: The first part of the idea came from walking down the street with a friend of mine, [and we] passed by a guy that he knew had [had] sex with his girlfriend. And then we got into this very goofy conversation about how New York, you know, it’s such a pedestrian city: you go out for a cup of coffee and you’re going to pass 300 people within two blocks, and I just thought, God, who are all these people and how are we connected, and are we passing people that somehow we’re connected to via some relationship we’ve had? So that was sort of the first part.
Then the other part was, I was on the set of Private Ryan, which is actually where I wrote the script, and just hanging out with all the guys one day, and everybody was trading stories about our worst relationships. And all the stories were hysterical. And I just thought, oh God, I should do a comedy one day that isn’t a romantic comedy, but more like a comedy about all the ugly things or the funny things that happen when men and women try and connect but it fails miserably. And that’s kind of how that part of the script came about. And then the documentary part came from, you know, also being on the set of Private Ryan, watching Spielberg work with handheld cameras and available lights, and how quickly he could work. And I thought, you know, if I adopt that style of filmmaking to my lower-budgeted films, I can cut my shooting schedule in half, my budget down to nothing —
Q: And your budgets were already pretty low.
A: Oh, they were already pretty low. But this one was extremely low. We ended up shooting in 17 days. You know, it was a way for me to maintain creative control, and the other good thing with a 17-day schedule is, I was able to put together a great cast. And when you have no money to pay the actors, it’s great when you can say, "Hey, look, I need you for a week." You know, Dennis Farina only worked one day. So it helps when calling in favors.
Q: So what was the worst relationship story that you told that day?
A: Um ... huh. I don’t remember. It was a funny one, I remember that.
Q: After Saving Private Ryan, were you itching to get back to working on a film that you could actually write and direct as well as act in, or was that a nice break?
A: You know, it was a nice break, and the other thing I did after that is, I kind of wanted to pursue the acting side of my career. So I moved out to LA for that year, and I ended up doing 15 Minutes, and it was more after 15 Minutes where I was like, okay, you know, it’s been two years since I directed a movie; I’ve gotta get back and do what I love doing. So that’s sort of when the decision came to make this film.
Q: Your bio says, "Edward Burns, director-slash-producer-writer-slash-actor." Put those titles in order of importance to you.
A: Writing, definitely, is the most important thing to me. I started as a writer, it’s the one part of the process that isn’t collaborative, and it’s the most rewarding, in a way. After that, directing, because it’s about maintaining control. You know, I became a director to maintain control over what I had written. Then I would say acting and producing.
Q: Do you think being an actor makes you a better director?
A: Without a doubt. And I think the fact that I got to work as an actor for other directors has definitely made me a better director and filmmaker, in that I get to watch how other directors do their thing and sort of learn some tricks of the trade. You know, all of a sudden on Private Ryan, I realized what actors need, whereas prior to that, I don’t know that I did. And the other thing that I think a lot of directors do is they feel that they’re supposed to direct the actors all the time. And what I learned from Spielberg is, that’s not the case. He would leave us alone until, you know, he would give us three, four takes to get it right. Only then, if we weren’t getting it, would he then kind of step in and say, "Oh, could you do this a little differently?" But the really nice thing was, he trusts actors, and, you know, like an athlete, you need to get a little warmed up in a game, you know? So it’s sort of the same thing: by your second or third take, you’re kind of feeling it, and fourth take, usually it kind of clicks in.
Q: And then if you weren’t getting it by the fifth or sixth take, then —
A: Then I got trouble. Then I have to step in and try and offer some kind of guidance. But the great thing about this cast, and I think the reason we were able to do it in 17 days, is very rarely did I have to do that.
Q: Can you imagine writing a movie that doesn’t take place in New York?
A: Huh. I mean, I can imagine it, but I can’t see doing it in the foreseeable future. Although I wrote a Western a couple years ago. I’d like to do a Western one day. The funny thing is, I actually set the first 10 pages of it in New York.
Q: On the subject of New York: obviously the film got a lot of press for pushing back the release date after September 11. Was that ultimately your decision?
A: Um, no, actually, on the 11th, you know, I live eight blocks from the World Trade Center, so my phones were out, and I couldn’t get any reception on my cell phone, and everybody at Paramount who was making the decision were up at the Toronto Film Festival, and the flights were grounded that day, so they couldn’t even get back to LA, and everyone was just having trouble getting in touch with one another. So I found out two days later via e-mail. And I have to admit, it was the furthest thing from my mind, and really, I didn’t give it any thought. I knew some people who were killed that day, and you know, this movie meant, quite honestly, nothing to me at the time. It wasn’t until about four weeks later, when it was time for me to start doing publicity again for the film, that I had to think about, okay, the movie’s coming out again, I gotta think about what do I want to say about it, in light of what happened.
Q: Was there ever any discussion of changing the film’s title?
A: No. No. Not as far as I know. I mean, the studio may have, but that would happen over my dead body.
Q: Your father was a police sergeant and your mother worked for the Federal Aviation Administration at JFK Airport. Given both of those jobs, did September 11 hit particularly close to home for your family?
A: Yeah, I mean, we all knew people. Fortunately nobody in our immediate family or in our close group of friends, but we all knew people who were killed that day. I grew up on Long Island, and my high school had 62 people connected to the school killed; my sister’s hometown I think had 35 people killed, so it was very close to home and very immediate. And like I said, out my apartment window, my view was dominated by the World Trade Center. So I can’t sit in my living room without every day thinking about, oh man.
Q: Do you feel a greater responsibility as a filmmaker since September 11 to entertain people, or to try and heal them through your work?
A: That’s a good question. I don’t know, because it’s only two months, and I haven’t sat down to write anything since. I don’t really know where my head will be when I sit down to write something. And the thing is, it’s still so close. It’s very hard to process what that day has done to your head. And I think everybody’s having a different reaction and on different timetables. I’m sure there are some people who it won’t even hit them, the enormity of it, until six months from now. So I don’t really know. I don’t know.
Q: Did you ever imagine, back when you were working on Brothers McMullen, that you’d get to where you are now, so quickly?
A: Not really. Not on Brothers McMullen. The intention with that film was not to get a theatrical release, it was to get an agent to read one of my screenplays. And all the actors, you know, no one had been in front of a camera before, with the exception of one of the guys, and those guys were thinking, let me just get a reel together, I can get two decent scenes, so maybe I can get an agent, so maybe one day I’ll get a Wendy’s commercial.
Q: So this is way beyond any expectation.
A: Way beyond. But then once you’re in the business, and I got to make my second film immediately, then all of a sudden you start to think, okay, I’m in now. Because I had spent all of my 20s sort of mapping out, how was I going to get a movie made? A little, tiny $25,000 student movie. And then all of a sudden, once McMullen happened, then I’m like, okay, how the hell did that happen? I gotta figure out, what am I supposed to do now?
Q: You have to re-draw the whole map.
A: Yeah, exactly. So it took a couple of years to figure out, you know, what that map is. And it’s constantly changing.
Q: Is any part of your life still the same? Or has everything changed?
A: You know, it’s all changed, and it’s all the same. I mean, I still live in New York; it’s different in that I know a lot of people in the business, yet it’s the same in that I don’t really hang out with them. I mean, I’m friends with them, we have dinner occasionally, but my friends are guys I went to college with. I still live close to the neighborhood that I lived in here in the city when I had no money, so I go to the same restaurants, the same bars.
Q: You are marrying a supermodel, though.
A: That’s a little different. But she’s so sane and normal ... she’s just like a regular girl.
Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com
