He bounces between acting and directing and right now is thrilled with a project he's just finished, a movie called Looking for Kitty, that he wrote and directed. A comedy-drama set in New York City about a baseball coach (Burns) whose wife has left him, and who hires a hapless P.I. played by David Krumholtz (10 Things I hate About You) to find her, premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City the day after River King wraps. 

"I had the time of my life on that movie, but here the circumstances are different," Burns says earnestly. "I'm not responsible for all the shots, I'm just responsible for the performance. Being less responsible frees you up to play with acting. But I don't prefer one to the other." 

He says he doesn't direct himself. 

"There's one person on the set, a producer I trust, that keeps an eye on my performance. I know after a take whether I've done a good job or not. I'm so familiar with what I'm trying to say, it doesn't feel like I need to direct myself." 

Looking for Kitty is not Burns' first foray into sports films. The first script he wrote in film school was for Apple Pie, a movie about a high school basketball team. 

"It was a revisionist autobiographical story - the team was better than my high school team," laughs the former shooting guard, who started off in university at SUNY Albany as an English major planning to be a novelist before he fell in love with old American movies and switched to film school. 

Copyright © 2004 The Halifax Herald Limited