PR.com (Allison Kugel): Why go back, at this point in your career, and make a film for only twenty-five thousand dollars?

Edward Burns: A couple of different reasons. Given what the movie is about, this idea of having your dreams and holding on to them, fighting for them, and what it could cost you and how you are going to disappoint people if you chase them… my producing partner, Aaron Lubin, and I had a lot of conversations about who I was as a twenty-four year old kid when I was trying to make The Brothers McMullen. So we had McMullen on the brain. When we were deciding our approach to this production, we had spent the last couple of years trying to get another film off the ground. You attach a bunch of well known actors, which we did, and then you take it out into the marketplace and you try to raise the money that way. We found that we didn’t enjoy that process. Any time we were asking somebody for money there is a lot of interference that comes along with it: notes on the script, ideas of who they want to cast, changes to the title. So we just thought, given all of these conversations about The Brothers McMullen, what if we tried to do that model again? What if we challenged ourselves and limited ourselves to twenty-five thousand dollars, shot it in under twelve days, only used a three-man crew and got the locations for free? And trying to get those name actors, it’s a long and painful process. We thought, “Look at all those kids [in New York].” I was one of them! [After] McMullen, we all got careers out of that movie, and it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had making a film. So we wanted to re-create that. Once we jumped in we fully embraced the size and scale of the production. The actors, Matt Bush, Kerry Bishe and Anna Wood were willing to do their own hair and makeup, wear their own clothes and help us out when we needed assistance, crew-wise.

PR.com: I watched the film, and it wasn’t short on story or on entertainment value. It certainly delivered in those capacities. You could tell that there were scenes where it was a single camera set up or where you were using natural light…

Edward Burns: That’s right…

PR.com: So why don’t more filmmakers make films this way?

Edward Burns: I think you have to be willing to make smaller stories. It would be very difficult to make an action film on that budget, or a thriller, or anything that would require car chases or a lot of extras. All of those things would be almost impossible to do with that small of a crew and with that low budget. But if you like small character-driven stories then this is a model that can absolutely work for you, and those are the only kind of films I’ve ever made. We made a film like The Groomsmen (2006) for three million dollars and had to deal with a bunch of headaches that came along with asking someone for three million dollars. We could have made that movie for twenty-five thousand dollars with a bunch of unknowns, and probably made a better movie and had a lot more fun. You have to look at the list of comprises that you’re going to be ok with. If you’re ok with working on a short schedule and re-working your script that so it’s smaller in scale, then this is a model that works for you. Or, you have to deal with someone who is going to give you the money and change your title and your dialogue, and tell you who to put in the movie. That’s a list of compromises I’ve never been ok with.

PR.com: You’re all about creative control.

Edward Burns: Yes.

PR.com: Are you a control freak in general, or just when it comes to making movies?

Edward Burns: I think just when it comes to making movies. Quite honestly, it’s less about being a control freak, and more just out of necessity. I’ve gone through the process where you don’t have all of the control. Then the movie comes out, and let’s say it doesn’t do as well as you had hoped. Ten years later that movie lives on a shelf, or on a DVD, or on cable television and other people don’t know the story behind it, only you do.

PR.com: They don’t know the politics of the situation, or the places where you had to compromise and you didn’t want to compromise.

Edward Burns: Exactly.

click to read interview with Edward Burns