Photo Credit: Marguerite Hill (at the Albany Omni Hotel)

Edward J. Burns, director and screenwriter of the successful 1995 independent, The Brothers McMullen, will answer questions following a sneak preview of his latest film, No Looking Back.

Edward Burns was bom in Woodside, Queens in 1968 and grew up in Valley Stream, Long Island. He attended SUNY Oneonta and the University at Albany before transferring to Hunter College in New York City to study film. He left school without graduating.

In 1993, while working as a production assistant for the syndicated program, Entertainrnent Tonight, Burns began working on the script for The Brothers McMullen. The film, an Irish-American family drama, was shot on weekends at his parents' Long Island home with a $25,000 budget and took eight months to produce. It starred a no-name cast, including Burns himself as Barry McMullen and his then-girlfriend Maxine Bahns as Audry. The film appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995, earned the coveted Grand Jury Prize, and brought in $9 million at the theaters.

His second film, She's the One (1996), grew out of a $3 million deal with Twentieth Century Fox. It again starred Burns and Maxine Bahns, with rising stars like Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz rounding out the cast. The film also featured a soundtrack with new songs by Tom Petty.

No Looking Back (1998) tells the story of Claudia, a restless young woman living with her boyfriend in a dead-end seaside town; she encounters difficulties when an old flame comes to visit.