I sat down with Ed Burns to talk about his role in the upcoming One Missed Call, and he candidly spoke about the horror movie experience and what he views as the death of small films, at least in the sense of people going to the theater to watch them.

He says he hasn't been in sci-fi before, so I hope that he's managed to excise A Sound of Thunder from his brain, because it's about one of the worst films I've ever seen. He's fine in it, and proves that he could carry an action film, but the look and feel of the film is terrible beyond belief.

Click on Ed to hear the audio, and listen to things like:

• He feels that Purple Violets is the best film he's ever made, but he admits it has "absolutely no audience," theatrically.
• Purple Violets will possibly be the first film ever released exclusively on iTunes. Starting October 9th, the film will be available for four weeks on iTunes, and they'll see how the numbers are after that.
• On coming to Comic-Con, "I'm not really the guy ... we just had a little clip reel, I've never done a horror film or sci-fi. I don't know how many McMullen fans were in the audience. They weren't giving it up for the Irish guys from Queens."
• He thinks the current appeal of horror movies vs. small independent films, is that people want that communal experience during a "big" film, but they want to watch the art house types of films at home.
• "Watching a movie on an iPod, for someone my age, is ... insane. However, you have to embrace it. Digital cinema is coming at us head-on."
• "Making small talking movies ... that business is a dead business.
• "He's working on a comic book (and writing the screenplay for it) with Virgin Comics called "Dock Walloper" ... New York City, Irish-American gangsters, that's kind of my milieu."
• He compares what is happening with music (digital distribution) to what is happening in movies. "You have to fall out of love with the old, y'know?"

Remember all the buzz that inexplicably grew up around Ed Burns after the vaguely offensive The Brothers McMullen came out? Though he's kept acting, writing, and directing, none of his subsequent work has lived up to the hype, and as a result he's faded from the public's radar. Well, friends, our peace is at an end: Burns is back with a vengeance.

Apparently having going through the same "I'm a man, dammit!" transition that turned Larry Fishburne into Laurence, Burns is now Edward, thank you very much. And Edward has got a whole boatload of movies for us, starting with Purple Violets, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in with Selma Blair, Dennis Farina, and Debra Messing. Having just finished that project, Burns will head to the Hamptons with everyone else this summer, but he's going not (just) to party and be posh, but also to shoot Five-Fourths, which he wrote and will direct. When that's over, because he's apparently used all of his free time over the past few years to write and is drowning in screenplays, he'll start work on "the first leg of a trilogy, a multigenerational drama about a New York family of cops." Oh, and he's also just agreed to appear with Jude Law and Cameron Diaz in Nancy Meyers' The Holiday, which is currently shooting in England.

Whew. Breath, Ed Edward. Breathe.