Finally, Fox Searchlight Pictures, a new division of Twentieth Century Fox, advanced Bums enough money to get “McMullen” in shape for the only festival smart enough to have him: Sundance. The movie won top prize, and this month it’s Searchlight’s inaugural release. “McMullen” is a funny, beguiling and neurotic picture about three Irish-American brothers foundering in the choppy waters of romantic commitment. After the death of their alcoholic father, Patrick (Mike McGlone) and Barry (Burns) crash with Jack (Jack Mulcahy) and his wife, Molly (Connie Britton), and the three men try to talk each other through various crises of faith and fidelity, though each brother is more screwed up than the last. Mulcahy was in “Porky’s”– “He played the guy with the crooked penis,” says Burns –but virtually everyone else is a newcomer and some of the acting is clunky. Still, Burns makes a great, raspy-voiced cad. McGlone is a hilarious, Roman Catholic Woody Allen. And Britton’s shrewd and earthy betrayed wife is a ground wire for the whole fluttering movie.
Burns grew up on Long Island, the son of a New York City police sergeant. He didn’t have the grades or the money for film school, so he shot “McMullen” while lugging lights and fetching coffee for “Entertainment Tonight.” He couldn’t pay his east or crew. He auditioned actors in “E.T.’s” offices and clandestinely borrowed their vans, their editing facilities, their sound engineers, a cameraman and all of their interns. Burns filmed in Central Park and lower Manhattan without permits. When stopped by police. he dropped his father’s name.
Burns made “McMullen” for about $16,000. though it took Fox Searchlight’s $500,000 to pay back salaries and get the film ready for theaters. The director’s second feature will follow a retired fireman and his sons. one of them (to be played by Burns) a cabdriver who marries a passenger hours after picking her up. His dream movie is a “God-father”-size epic about Irish-American cops. but he knows that’s a long way off. Fortunately, Burns is still riding on the high of recent coups, like introducing his mother to Robert Bedford at a Sundance party last winter. “He took off his hat and he said. ‘Oh. Mrs. Burns, you should be very proud of your son’.” he remembers. “And then he gives her a friggin’ hug and a kiss! You could see her melting in his arms.” The underdogs are having their day.
