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Mr.Showbiz
December 9, 1999

Burns, Graham to Partner as Cops

Perks of being a writer-director? You can craft a custom film role for you and your current sweetie. Indie director Edward Burns, whose early films featured then-girlfriend Maxine Bahns, is now scripting a starring vehicle for himself and current squeeze Heather Graham.

U.K. film site Popcorn reports that the pretty boy auteur is working on a cop film called On the Job, which will draw from his own experience as the son of a New York City cop. The photogenic Ed and Heather will both play police officers, apparently.

Burns returns to the director's chair after acting-only stints in Saving Private Ryan and 15 Minutes, playing a fire insurance investigator opposite Robert De Niro's homicide detective. That film's been bumped from a March 2000 release to an October theater date.

Popcorn also reports that another much-photographed indie couple, Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, will team up for an ensemble piece inspired by Dylan Thomas. Hawke will make his directorial debut with Last Word on Paradise, a series of five tales set in a New York hotel, each inspired by the Welsh writer's Under Milk Wood. Wife Thurman will co-star with Kevin Corrigan, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Sean Leonard, Natasha Richardson, and Steve Zahn.

The husband-and-wife team, who met on the set of the underrated sci-fi flick Gattaca, have also been rumored to join the cast of the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the second or third installment.

Hawke hits the screen Dec. 22 in another literary adaptation, Snow Falling on Cedars, and Thurman is currently co-starring in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown.