When Edward Burns debuted in 1995 with “The Brothers McMullen,” I was just graduating college and my love for film had grown exponentially the years prior through my work as a newspaper film critic. And when I saw this low-budget story of three Irish Catholic brothers, I fell in love. I am neither Irish nor Catholic; didn’t matter. “The Brothers McMullen,” to me, was my generation’s answer to Woody Allen. The film became, and still remains, one of my favorites, and I pledged to follow Mr. Burns to the ends of the earth (or at least to the movie theatre every time he made a film).
A big-budget follow-up, “She’s the One,” held up well for me, incorporating some of the same actors and themes and, in my mind, further cementing the “Irish Woody Allen” image of Burns. But then, for whatever reason, Burns sort of fell off the map for me. I don’t know what happened. Part of it was because his films stopped playing in theatres near me and there were times that I wasn’t even aware of a new picture from him. And for a while, he became more recognizable for an ensemble role in “Saving Private Ryan” than for any of his own work.
But I started following Edward Burns on Twitter a few months back, and was more than just a little impressed with the passion and effort Burns has put in to marketing his latest film, NICE GUY JOHNNY, a return to his true indie roots. I noticed that Burns took the time to personally respond to comments made by fans who viewed the film, something relatively unheard of coming from a known film star and director. And I started to feel guilty about having lost touch with a guy who really moved me years before. I had to get my hands on the movie.
I should probably talk about the actual film, huh? NICE GUY JOHNNY is the story of a sports talk radio DJ engaged to an uptight and controlling girl who flies to the Hamptons for a weekend to go on a job interview forced upon him by his fiancée and set up by her father. While there, his Uncle Terry (Burns), a walking case of arrested development, does everything in his power to put debauchery in the path of the calm and strait-laced Johnny (newcomer Matt Bush). These escapades lead to Johnny’s introduction to Brooke (Kerry Bishe), a lovely tennis instructor, who challenges Johnny to consider the life path he’s on and its consequences.
The best part about NICE GUY JOHNNY is that it is firmly in the camp of what I love best about Ed Burns movies, which is the conversations between characters that reveal so much about relationships. Burns has a knack, I think, for writing dialogue that is familiar and believable but still engaging and revealing. And while he takes the lines for his own character a little over the top, it’s fun to see him having fun on screen with a slightly silly part.
Unfortunately, NICE GUY JOHNNY also treads fairly worn ground. It is another entry in a multitude of stories about a guy with a dream being controlled by a woman who’s not right for him but he’s the only one who can’t see it until he meets a girl that the audience likes better instantly, leaving us to wait in frustration for him to come around to our way of thinking.
The lead performances in NICE GUY JOHNNY are charming but not particularly magnetic. Bush is a doe-eyed frat boy who looks more like a party animal than an uptight and faithful boyfriend, though this aspect of Burns’ casting of him was, for me, one of the most refreshing things about the film. Likewise, Bishe is pretty in a plain way, and though it’s easy to like her more than Johnny’s fiancée Claire (Anna Wood), it’s not like she’s a forbidden movie star of a girl. Then again, I think Burns is smart enough to have cast her specifically for that reason, too. As clichéd as I found this story to be, it’s a credit to Burns that just about everything here is quite believable.
Burns himself plays a character not unlike the one played by Campbell Scott in “Rodger Dodger,” another one of my all-time favorite indie films. But Uncle Terry is much crazier and childish than Scott’s sophisticated womanizer in that film. And Burns is, I think, at his acting best when he’s allowed to smile and use his considerable charm.
Ultimately, I found NICE GUY JOHNNY to be a pleasant but slight viewing experience, but I haven’t even mentioned the most engaging thing about the film yet, which is its marketing and distribution. I did mention that Burns himself has taken to Twitter to promote the film, which played at various film festivals as is customary for many independent filmmakers. But what I haven’t added yet is the fact that Burns has eschewed a movie theatre release of NICE GUY JOHNNY in favor of a relatively new distribution strategy that I find both ballsy and shrewd—he is using video on demand (such as Comcast/X-finity), iTunes and Netflix, in combination with DVD sales and bundle sales of the film with other memorabilia related to the film. In other words, Burns is putting the movie right in people’s houses immediately. And while he’s not the first to do this, he is attacking this strategy with gusto and I admire him tremendously for it…so much so that I went straight to my Netflix account and lined up all of those Ed Burns-directed films that I missed, the ones that fell through the cracks, for a Burnsy marathon.
I sure hope that Burns finds his current business model to be a successful one. It’s especially perfect for quiet little stories like NICE GUY JOHNNY that play nicely on computer monitors and flat screen TVs. I’m not sure I would have found NICE GUY JOHNNY to be worth a trip to the multiplex, but it was certainly worth a click of the mouse. In his own way, Edward Burns might well be on his way to being the filmmaking equivalent of a short story writer, telling low-key but watchable stories bursting with humanity on a frequent basis in a manner that, like a good book, puts the stories right in our laps at home.
Film: 2.5 out of 4
Distribution and marketing campaign: 4.0 out of 4
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