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Independent Ed
Inside a Career of Big Dreams, Little Movies, and the Twelve Best Days of My Life
1 of 1 copy available
At the age of twenty-five, Ed Burns directed and produced his first film on a tiny $25,000 budget. The Brothers McMullen went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995, and established the working-class Irish American filmmaker as a talent to watch. In the twenty years since, Burns has made ten more films (She’s the One, Sidewalks of New York, and The Fitzgerald Family Christmas), while also acting in big budget Hollywood movies (Saving Private Ryan), hit television shows (Entourage and Mob City), and pioneering a new distribution network for indie filmmakers online and with TV’s On Demand service (“why open a film in twenty art houses when you can open in twenty million homes?”).
Inspired by Burns’s uncompromising success both behind and in front of the camera, students and aspiring filmmakers are always asking Burns for advice. In Independent Ed, Burns shares the story of his two remarkable decades in a fickle business where heat and box office receipts are often all that matter. He recounts stories of the lengths he has gone to to secure financing for his films, starting with The Brothers McMullen (he told his father: “Shooting was the twelve best days of my life”). How he found stars on their way up—including Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz—to work in his films, and how he’s adhered religiously to the dictum of writing what you know, working as if he was just starting out, and always “looking for the next twelve best days of my life.”
Chronicling the struggles and the long hours as well as the heady moments when months of planning and writing come to fruition, Independent Ed is a must-read for movie fans, film students, and everyone who loves a gripping tale about what it takes to forge your own path in work and life.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 29, 2015 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780698186286
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780698186286
- File size: 6058 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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December 8, 2014
Director-actor Burns stormed the independent film world when his 1995 debut, The Brothers McMullenâmade with a $25,000 budget while Burns was working full-time as a production assistant for Entertainment Tonightâwon the top award at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Immediately, the 27-year-old Long Island man's world changed, as he explains in this earnest memoir. "I was put into bed with the best," writes Burns, who instead of seeking counsel from his dad, a NYC cop, had Robert Redford as a mentor. The buzz couldn't last. After critical and commercial disappointments (No Looking Back and The Groomsmen, respectively) and "the realities of the business," Burns's career as a filmmaker stalled; he revived it by returning to his low-cost roots. Now his movies are made for a pittance, he explains, with a small, devoted crew and no compromises. In this memoir, Burns exudes an approachable, everyman charm: it's easy to root for him. Too frequently, however, he covers his career as a filmmaker as if he's writing a self-congratulatory cover letter; the insight into the working life of a director is skimpy, but he provides an excellent lesson on the resilience, promotion, and reinvention required for a film career.
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