Hot director Ed Burns is 27, a former production assistant on Entertainment Tonight and the winner of the grand-jury prize at Sundance for his captivating debut feature, a brash romantic comedy about three sexually screwed-up Irish brothers from Long Island, N.Y. Burns shot this low-budget talkfest on weekends in his parents' house with a cast of unknowns including himself and his girlfriend, Maxine Bahns (cleverly cast as his girlfriend). Now he's being hailed as the Irish-Catholic Woody Allen.

Success stories are a bigger kick when the success is deserved. Burns is a striking new talent. He knows this working-class background, and his dialogue catches the teasing cadences the brothers use to dodge emotional hardballs. Burns plays Barry, the lady-killer McMullen who's afraid of commitment to Audry (Bahns). Younger brother Patrick (Mike McGlone) thinks he might go to hell if he marries the Jewish Susan (Shari Albert). Older brother Jack (Jack Mulcahy) considers cheating on wife Molly (a superb Connie Britton).

That's the setup for Burns to tweak flesh and spirit as the brothers drop their macho bravado in the face of women who demand a deeper response. The women's characters are as well drawn as the men's in a splendidly acted film that captures the confusion of love in ways that are ardent, affecting and wonderfully funny.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.