American New Wave 25: Anthony Burns

Indie filmmaker Anthony Burns officially became a part of the Indiewood landscape earlier this year when he preemed his directorial debut Skateland in Park City, but Burns who has a background in writing learned the ropes by cutting his teeth in the Hollywood system serving as assistant to the executive producer on CW’s Hidden Palms and CBS’s pilot Law Dogs. In an interview we conducted earlier in the year, Burns credits his start when he made the big move from Austin to L.A., “there I got involved with some strong producers working in television and film. This led to numerous projects including a featurette I co-wrote and produced titled ‘The Smoking Compartment’ in early 2008.” The following year is where he developed his feature film project and churned out a horror indie thriller screenplay titled Red Velvet for Bruce Dickson – the pic stars Henry Thomas and Kelli Garner (see trailer).

Since the Sundance preem, Skateland has been selected in the top tier of the early in the year U.S film festivals with stops at SXSW, Dallas Int. Film Festival and the Seattle Int. Film Festival this past May, and despite Burns’ great soundtrack ear, strong sense of storytelling and character development and him being technically solid behind the camera, the coming-of-age film starring Ashley Greene, Brett Cullen, Shiloh Fernandez and charismatic Heath Freeman is got picked up during Cannes by Camelot Entertainment. Expect to see the film theatrically released sometime late in the year or in 2011.