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He's the one >> Ed Burns goes dramatic with No Looking Back by JOANNE LATIMER
"You know, I'm not a big romantic comedy fan at all," states Burns, with the air of someone telling a secret. "The films I love are Five Easy Pieces, Tender Mercies, The Last Picture Show, Streetcar Named Desire, Midnight Cowboy, Hud--films where the filmmaker never cared if the audience loved the protagonist. There were no clear-cut good guys and bad guys. Characters are constantly disappointing the audience, and that's what I wanted to do with Charlie in my new film." Charlie (played by Burns) is certainly a disappointment. He grew up in a dead-end town, dreaming about escaping to the big city with his girlfriend Claudia (Lauren Holly). He took off without her, four years before the film's starting point, after a bit of nasty business between them. Claudia, a waitress at a diner, ended up with Charlie's best friend, Michael (Jon Bon Jovi), who's struggling to make a decent living and keep up with his extended family. He'd also like to plan a wedding with Claudia--until Charlie returns and starts messing with everyone's future. If their lives sound dull, that's not the half of it. This sleepy ocean-side community is an ambition killer. Burns films everything in a flat, gray tone and the dialogue is commonplace chitchat that has nothing to do with the sophisticated, self-analytical banter of his other two Manhattan-set films (She's the One and The Brothers McMullen). It's a straightforward drama with very few curveballs. "I didn't want this film to be about a girl who's torn between two guys," explains Burns. "As much as she's got these two guys in her life and she wants to leave town with one of them, it's tough for her to leave her mother and sister too. It's not about her finding the right guy. It's about her finding herself." Like Burns' other films, No Looking Back is about people who feel unjustly pressured by the decisions involved in growing up. Betrayal is in all the action. "When trust is broken, a lot of damage is done," adds Burns, for whom friendship and family are an all-important thing. "I think I write about betrayal because it's the thing that we most obsess over. Family and friends are what dominates most of our conversations and the things you're the most passionate about are the things that upset us the most." For the first time, Burns places a woman in the centre of the action. He made her role "honest" by soliciting the opinions of women friends, actresses cast in the roles and his mother. "There were times when I got beat up pretty good," recalls Burns, laughing at his own humility. "They explained that sisters wouldn't talk that way. I have to get support from women on this--if they don't like it, I'm dead!" No Looking Back opens Friday, April 17
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Ed Burns is such a darn nice guy on the telephone. And earnest too. I could hardly tell that he had spent his entire day answering the same questions over and over again about his new film, No Looking Back.