Hollywood Pair

You might call Mike and Kristi Burns a Hollywood power couple – except they live in Spokane.

Mike Burns spent six years working on “The Cosby Show,” one of the most popular sitcoms of all time. Now he’s known as the go-to guy when reality TV producers desperately need police chase and arrest footage. He owns his own video production company called Code Three Media.

Kristi is a professional voice-over artist, best known as “the voice of time” on the Food Network’s “Iron Chef America.” She’s the soothing voice who says, “15 minutes have elapsed” and “30 seconds remain.”

“I’m also his voice of reason,” she said, gesturing to her husband.

So all of their experience is in TV, which made it all the more surprising when they packed their four kids in the car in 2007 and moved from Los Angeles to Spokane. They were seeking a place that was quieter, slower and more family-friendly.

They also had one other reason for choosing Spokane. Mike was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997. The heat in L.A. exacerbated his condition and he found that Spokane, besides being cooler, had a number of fine doctors who specialize in MS.

They also discovered that Spokane is a perfectly good place to do Hollywood work – although it does have its challenges.

Up until a few weeks ago, Kristi was recording her voice-over work in her daughters’ closet. Now she has traded up to, well, a bigger closet downstairs.

“I have a home studio set up in there, and I have two different microphones, and I read into the computer,” she said.

As for Mike, his closet is also key to successfully working out of Spokane. It’s filled to the brim with police videos.

At one point in his long L.A. career, Burns became what he called “the police guy” for “Real TV,” a syndicated show featuring home and amateur video. He became adept at persuading the nation’s police chiefs and sheriffs to send him video clips.

He amassed a huge collection – and kept it all in his closet.

So when the Court TV cable network was putting together a show called “Hot Pursuit,” they needed footage and lots of it.

“Somebody said, ‘If you can get hold of Mike Burns, your whole first season will be taken care of, because of all of this footage he has,’” said Burns.

The producers gave him part ownership in the show, which is in its eighth year on what’s now called truTV.

When he’s not in the business of aggregating chase videos, Burns is also editing and producing. Since coming to Spokane he has even made a few local TV ads, including one for Splashdown and another for Caruso’s Sandwich Co.

He loves it, even if it’s not as exciting as his first TV job in 1984, with “The Cosby Show.”

Burns began as a lowly driver – despite having a degree in broadcast communications from the State University of New York-New Paltz.

He was working as a cheesecake deliveryman in New York when a friend called and said Bill Cosby was doing a sitcom pilot in Brooklyn and needed drivers.

Burns jumped at the job. He gradually worked his way up to writer’s assistant, and finally, to stage manager.

“Basically, you corral the talent, get them into hair and makeup, keep everyone organized, keep everything moving and make sure they don’t keep the director waiting,” he said.

His big thrill came when the writers named a character after him: a dentist named Dr. Michael Burns, played by Danny Kaye.

The cast presented him with a script of that show, signed by Kaye, Cosby, Phylicia Rashad and the rest of the famous “Cosby” cast.

However, his favorite day came during the first year, when he was still just a humble driver. Burns was assigned to drive Cosby around town one day to shop for his wife’s birthday.

“I literally got to spend the entire day with him,” said Burns. “I used to play the drums, and Cosby is a crazy music person, especially jazz, so as soon as he heard I was a drummer, he was completely fixated on that.”

They ended up at Colony Records, the famous Manhattan record store.

“Bill pulled out these four albums, some out of print – these were like $70, $90, $100 albums – and he handed them to me and said, ‘Mike, you need to listen to these and get back to me.’ I was so blown away. It was such a great day.”

This was long before he and Kristi got married – and long before she was even working in TV.

“I was just watching the Cosby show,” Kristi said.

She’s from Massachusetts and graduated from Marquette University with a degree in broadcasting, journalism and performing arts. She headed straight to Los Angeles and landed a production assistant job on a short-lived sitcom titled “American Dreamer,” starring Robert Urich.

Then she worked on ABC’s “America’s Funniest People” and the Fox paranormal show “Sightings.” Her job was in “research and clearance.”

“It’s not a real sexy, fabulous job,” she said.

A research and clearance person identifies items that appear on screen or in the background – a painting, a soda can, a box of crackers – and gets permission for their use.

Or, if the producers want to use a clip of, say, “Frankenstein,” she acquires the rights and makes sure all of the guilds (writers, actors, directors) get paid.

Mike Burns was also working on both “America’s Funniest People” and “Sightings.” That’s where the couple met. They were married in 1996.

Kristi continued to do research and clearance work for various shows on the Biography and A&E channels. Today, she is the research and clearance supervisor for “Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels,” an A&E reality show.

It’s work that can be done just as easily from Spokane as from L.A.

“They send the DVD from the production company and I screen it,” Kristi said.

She got started in her other career –voice-over artist – through pure serendipity.

Years ago, she was working with editors who needed what are called “scratch tracks.” It’s a temporary, fill-in narration, used before the real narrator is brought in.

The editors wanted a woman to do the scratch track. “They said, ‘Put Kristi’s voice in there, they’ll approve the story faster,’” she said.

When the producers heard it, they liked her voice so much they hired her to do the final narration. Her voice-over career was born.

Talking came naturally to her.

“My nickname is Motormouth,” she said. “The fact that I get paid to talk is funny.”

Besides “Iron Chef America,” she has also done voice-overs for a series of CBS specials titled “A Home for the Holidays” – a job that changed the couple’s life.

“It’s about adoption and foster care,” Kristi said. “I did that show for three or four years – and we became foster parents. You find a calling in different ways.”

They have four children between the ages of 3 and 9. Three were foster children, now adopted.

Mike runs Code Three Media from an office in Steam Plant Square downtown. Because of his MS, which limits his mobility, he now does a lot of video editing, which he said “allows me to use my experience and still be viable in a wheelchair.”

He still supplies police videos to various shows – “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Maury Povich” – but Code Three Media has also branched out into producing ads, corporate videos, police training videos and real estate sales videos. (For a fee, they’ll shoot a video of your home and Kristi will narrate it.)

Sometimes they have to scramble a little harder for work, but the Burnses don’t regret their move to Spokane for a minute.

“We wanted to live in a place that’s family-centered, in a community that takes care of its own,” said Kristi. “It’s a small-town feel in a big city.”