Little ‘Brothers’ in Big Time : Ed Burns’ low-budget film made in his parents’ home is opening with the sort of buzz that a young filmmaker dreams of.

It feels like 100 degrees out, but Ed Burns is keeping up the frenetic pace befitting a New York-based filmmaker for whom things are hopping.

Casually hip in combat boots, shorts and blue-and-white checked shirt, his dark blond hair slicked back, Burns is leaving a mid-town Manhattan film lab where he’s been putting some finishing touches on “The Brothers McMullen,” his feature film about growing up Irish-Catholic on Long Island.

On this sweltering morning a few weeks before the film’s opening, Burns--who wrote the screenplay, directed and co-stars as one of the three McMullen brothers--is juggling post-production chores with publicity appearances and plans for a new film. Though he appeared the night before on “Charlie Rose,” then went with his girlfriend to a 24-hour driving range, there’s no sign of fatigue on his boyishly handsome face.

Suddenly, a projectionist thrusts a glossy of his daughter (“She dances! She acts! She skates!”) at Burns. “I have to admit, she’s fairly attractive,” says Burns, grinning slyly at the older man. “I’m quite surprised.” And he pockets the glossy, leaving a very happy projectionist behind.

Ah, life is good, when you’re 27 and being sought out by talk-show hosts and eager fathers, and your first full-length feature--filmed on a shoestring and a handshake, mostly at your parents’ house, and which opened in L.A. and New York Wednesday--is getting the sort of buzz that a young filmmaker dreams of. After being rejected by a host of distribution companies and film festivals, “The Brothers McMullen” walked off last January with the Grand Jury Prize, the top award for features, at the Sundance Film Festival. The rest may not yet be history but it sure feels good.

“First, getting into the festival was easily the greatest day of my life,” Burns recalls, hunkering down on his sofa, having scooted from the film lab to the Greenwich Village apartment he shares with Maxine Bahns, who plays his screen girlfriend as well in “Brothers McMullen.”

“Then Fox [Fox Searchlight Pictures, a boutique division of 20th Century Fox] buys the film, so there’s a new high to my life. And then, less than a week later, the film wins the Grand Jury Prize! So it was a good week.”

To put it mildly.

Sharing the good week with Burns was his father, ex-New York City Police Sgt. Edward J. Burns, and his mother, Molly. It was only fitting, after all, that they should be there: Not only did they help bankroll the film, which was made for less than $25,000, they opened the family home to young Ed and his “Brothers McMullen” team for eight months of weekend shooting.

“He would call on Friday and say, ‘We’re coming in two hours, and we’ll shoot in the attic,’ ” recalls the elder Burns, sitting in his living room. Burns served as executive producer of “Brothers” and helped with the publicity through his P.R. firm.

“After the initial shock,” insists Molly Burns, “we got used to it.”

Of course, there was that time when she came home from shopping and yelled for her son to help with the packages. He yelled back, “Mom, I’m directing.”

In fact, if there is an unnamed co-star in the film, it’s the house: A neat, gray model with white trim and an inviting brick stoop, on the corner of a Valley Stream street. The neighborhood, says Edward Burns, is occupied by “cops, firemen, truck drivers, guys who own small trucking firms. There’s an Old World plasterer down the block whose son is a good friend of Eddie’s.”

It’s this very street and house that the three fictional McMullen brothers share for a few months in Burns’ amiably loose-limbed film. There, they ponder questions of life, love and religion. Should the married Jack (Jack Mulcahy) continue a clandestine affair? Should the cynical, footloose Barry (Burns) give in to the pull of true love? Should the intensely religious Patrick (Mike McGlone) marry his pushy girlfriend? (“Dump her,” advises Barry.)

They sit on the stoop, drinking Guinness. They barge in on each other in the bathroom. They harangue each other in the attic. They act like brothers.

While the film’s story isn’t autobiographical, its sense of brotherly and neighborhood camaraderie comes straight out of the filmmaker’s past. “There’s nothing like coming home late at night, and sitting in the kitchen and having a beer with your brother, and telling him what’s on your mind. I still do it,” Burns says, noting that his “Irish twin,” as he jokingly calls his brother, Brian, who is only 13 months younger, lives near him in the city.

The dialogue is not only frank, it includes a few swipes at Long Island by the very urban Barry, a screenwriter like Burns himself. “Instead of living in the Village, I’m out here on Long Island with you, Amy Fisher and the rest of the gang,” Barry complains.

And yet, overall, the movie’s view of the area is benign. “I think I’m one of the few people who loves suburbia,” Burns says. “You hear people bashing the suburbs but that’s where I grew up. That’s all I know.”

Born in Queens, in 1968, Burns lived in the house in Valley Stream from the age of 3. It was, by all accounts, a typical Catholic boyhood.

“There was never any fear. We could ride our bikes for miles or hang out on the block till 2 in the morning, and our parents knew we wouldn’t get into any trouble.”

Young Ed attended Catholic grammar school, where he showed a hint of his future talent: In the sixth grade, he won a poetry contest sponsored by the Catholic Daughters of America.

The poem, says his mother, was about a tree outside their house, its branches and how that related to the concept of family. Sort of like the Burns family; sort of like the McMullen family.

“That was it for my dad,” Burns chuckles. “He thought he had Eugene O’Neill living in the attic.”

After dabbling in high school basketball, Eddie Burns discovered his true vocation at the State University of New York at Albany: He was going to make movies.

In his unflagging push to develop his son’s writing talents, the senior Burns had given him a screenwriting book. “I was always a good storyteller and I’ve always had a good ear for dialogue,” the younger Burns says. “So I thought, jeez, I think I could do this.”

Transferring to the film department at Hunter College in New York City, Burns hit his stride as a film student. Afterward, he worked as a production assistant on “Entertainment Tonight,” all the while writing scripts. He has a framed collage of his rejection letters.

While Burns’ rejected scripts had all been built around big Hollywood budgets, “The Brothers McMullen” was constructed as a low-budget, independent film.

“That’s why a lot of the film takes place at the family home,” Burns says. Molly Burns’ kitchen was often the commissary. Salaries for the actors and crew were deferred. Still, getting the film made often resembled “The Perils of Pauline.”

That winter there were 18 snowstorms, wreaking havoc with schedules. Two months into shooting, Burns had an emergency appendectomy. Then the cameraman, who owned the production’s only camera, slipped a disk and went into traction. The schedule was so grueling that Burns, still a production assistant on “Entertainment Tonight,” fell asleep during an interview of Jodie Foster.

Finally, after his rough cut of “Brothers” had been rejected by seemingly everyone, it was accepted by Sundance.

Having run out of money to finish his film, Burns called Tom Rothman, head of Fox Searchlight, who had encouraged him after seeing a very rough cut of “Brothers.”

“The reason I liked it from the first moment was that it’s not just a relationship movie but explores the legacy one’s family has on one’s life,” Rothman says. Fox bought a “first-look option” that gave Burns the cash to complete his movie.

“He is my godfather in the business,” Burns says of Rothman. “I’ll owe him forever.” In fact, Burns’ next film, which he calls “a romantic comedy about a retired New York fireman with two sons,” will be made for Fox.

Meanwhile, Burns happily sifts through the advance press, most of which has been positive. When his father calls, he reads him the deliciously salient phrases over the phone: “It says, from one to 10, we got an eight,” he says, laughing. “That’s not bad for a movie that everyone ignored for a year!”

True, Burns has gotten a taste of negative comments for the movie’s female roles, which some viewers have called underwritten or stereotypical.

Like many other filmmakers before him, Burns bristles at the critics’ barbs. “The women are the only characters who know what they want,” he counters. “The brothers are three buffoons who can’t make up their minds.”

But this is the smallest of clouds on Burns’ horizon, and can’t spoil the fun of reading those other nice write-ups when his father calls again. Then Eddie Burns, who makes movies about families, says goodby to the man who urged him to start making them.

“OK, Dad,” he says fondly. “Be good.”