If you're a filmmaker and you haven't subscribed to Alex Ferrari's "Indie Film Hustle" podcast, do so immediately. On a recent episode, Ferrari talked about actor/filmmaker Ed Burns' excellent book, "Independent Ed: Inside a Career of Big Dreams, Little Movies, and the Twelve Best Days of My Life."
"Independent Ed" is a must-read for anyone who wants to break into the movies. Rather than a full-fledged autobiography, the book gives an inside look at how he's blazed a non-traditional path in the film industry. Despite having success in mainstream movies such as "Saving Private Ryan," much of Burns' career has been spent making small, independently financed movies ‒ often out of his own pocket.
In "Independent Ed," Burns relates that he grew up working-class on Long Island, N.Y. His parents were supportive of his dreams, but also practical. When the aspiring writer/director decided he wanted to go to NYU film school, his police-officer father told him, "Look at your grades and look at my salary. And let's rethink NYU."
Burns ended up going to Hunter College and eventually landed a job as a production assistant on "Entertainment Tonight." Rather than wait to be discovered, Burns decided to jump in and make an indie movie. His father helped finance his $25,000 feature debut, "The Brothers McMullen."
Burns edited the family comedy-drama in his free time, using the equipment he had access to at "Entertainment Tonight." Despite his hard work and ingenuity, Burns' low-budget feature was rejected by every major film festival, and even some minor ones. But as fate would have it, Burns found himself in the same room with Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford when the legend did an interview with "Entertainment Tonight."
Burns worked up the nerve to slip Redford a tape of his movie, and Redford actually accepted it and passed it along to the festival programmers. Through this unlikely chance meeting, Burns got into Sundance and his movie became the toast of the festival, acquired by 20th Century Fox and going on to earn $10 million at the box office (a decent sum for an indie flick back in 1995) and landing him a three-picture deal with the studio.
Despite this early success, Burns went on to have a hit-and-miss career as a director and actor. Some of the movies he wrote and directed, such as "She's the One" with Jennifer Aniston, earned critical acclaim and decent box office, while others, such as "No Looking Back," went ignored. And while he became a steadily working actor, he never became a huge box office draw like Tom Cruise.
Instead of giving up and quitting the industry, Burns decided to return to his roots and make no-frills, low-budget indie movies the way he did at the very start of his career. He made "Newlyweds" with just $9,000, using a camera he owned and asking actors to wear their own clothes and do their own hair and makeup. He managed to turn a handsome profit, releasing on iTunes instead of the traditional theatrical model.
There are two ways to look at Burns' story. One is to get depressed. If a handsome movie star who won the lottery with his very first low-budget movie and was mentored by the likes of Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg encounters rejection, what hope do the rest of us average joes have?
The other way of looking at Burns' story is inspiration, which is how I see him. Arguably, you can learn more by studying the up-and-down career of someone like Burns than those who have had a nonstop stream of blockbusters. Burns is a shining example of someone who has managed to continue to make movies on his own terms, simply for the love of storytelling and forged his own path through trial and error and a lot of persistence.
Reading "Independent Ed" will uplift you, show you that dreams do indeed come true, and prove that there is more than one way to make it in show biz.
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