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It's not often that a piece of flotsam from an alternate dimension drifts into your local subway station, but there it was: a poster for the upcoming movie Fifteen Minutes, with two names -- given almost equal billing -- running across the top. From left to right, the poster read: Robert De Niro and...Edward Burns. After recovering from our initial shock, we quickly deduced that the poster must have slipped through some crack in the time-space continuum, a refugee from another plane of existence in which Edward Burns is actually a movie star.
Because in this dimension, the only Edward Burns we're aware of is the one whose résumé is remarkably sparse: in 1995, he directed The Brothers McMullen, a competent but in no way exceptional indie romantic comedy. Then he remade the same film again, this time impishly calling it She's The One. Then he directed a movie called No Looking Back, which may or may not have been released in North America. Then he had a supporting role in Saving Private Ryan. All the while, he was displaying a canny if disarming knack for trading up, mate-wise, as he hooked up with, in succession, Lauren Holly (Hyundai), Heather Graham (Acura), and Christy Turlington (Ferrari), to the last of whom he's now engaged.
A tidy little résumé, sure -- no doubt good enough to secure a free ticket to the preview of a Robert De Niro film. But same-line, over-the-title, second billing in a Robert De Niro film? He's Edward Burns, not Robert Duvall. He's not even Ray Liotta, for crying out loud. In fact, let's compare Burns to another young director with one critically lauded supporting role in a war film under his belt: Spike Jonze. (Of course, Jonze has done one thing that Burns hasn't: directed a good movie.) Now, which of these two deserves more fame? And which one has more? And why is that? We'll give you a hint: the answer includes the words "Graham" and "Turlington."
Certainly, we've all marveled at the inspiring tale of how Ed Burns pulled himself up from a production assistant on Entertainment Tonight to become the darling of Sundance. ("Once I was promoting pap. Now I'm making it!") And yes, he enjoyed good reviews for his role in Saving Private Ryan, but they were largely of the "good God, he didn't suck" variety. But apparently, in the Bizarro World just on the other side of the inter-dimensional membrane, good-God-he-didn't-suck is enough to vault you onto the A list.
Or perhaps, on this side of the cosmic divide, it's possible, with enough pluck, to spin an Horatio Alger-esque back story, a single batch of good reviews, and a string of paparazzi-friendly relationships and smoochie photo ops into something resembling stardom.
Because who in America can't get behind a nervy young upstart/serial-dater with a gleam in his eye and a hand on the next rung up? Well, we can't. And Kelsey Grammer (who's also in Fifteen Minutes but who gets no billing on the poster whatsoever) might not be nuts about it. And we're betting Tom Sizemore, Adam Goldberg, Giovanni Ribisi, Barry Pepper, and Vin Diesel -- Burns's more talented co-stars in Private Ryan -- probably aren't doing cartwheels over the whole thing. But other than us, Frasier, and all the members of the supporting cast of Private Ryan who didn't date Heather Graham, then who?
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