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	Industry Buzz By Hugh Hart San Francisco Chronicle [California] March 4, 2007 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/04/PKGRJN88LN1.DTL&type=movies Raising hell: She may have lost the best documentary Oscar to Al Gore, but "Deliver Us From Evil" filmmaker Amy Berg at least has the satisfaction of knowing that her expose on pedophilia in high places within the Catholic Church has not gone unnoticed by legal authorities. "There's been a really strong impact globally because, for the first time, two U.S. courts ruled that victims of sexual abuse can go after the Vatican for hiding information and not taking priests out when there was documented evidence that they were abusing children," she says. Also, she adds, abuse victims who see the movie come away feeling less isolated. "Every city I went to for screenings of 'Deliver Us From Evil,' people came up to me and said that, because of the abuse victims who spoke out in my film, they felt more comfortable talking to their parents and peers about this situation -- they weren't just weirdos." "Deliver Us From Evil" focused on pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady, who, beginning in 1973, abused dozens of children in several Northern California parishes even though his superiors knew about his past. "Oliver O'Grady was free and completely unmonitored in Ireland before the film came out," Berg says. "He is now on a list." Berg believes Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles who formerly supervised O'Grady, has, so far, "gotten a total pass." "He never responded to any allegations in this film himself. He's still a guest at the Easter parade, standing next to the mayor. He's very empowered politically, and that makes you wonder if he is reachable," Berg says. "However, I do know Mahony is vulnerable in a case right now and that the district attorney in Los Angeles was very enthusiastic about some of the information in the film." As lawsuits wind through the courts, Berg has begun work on a film she hopes will call attention to another injustice. "It's something I've been working on for years," she says. "It's a film about the Americanization of Alaska and what we've done to the native people there." Placements aplenty: "Casino Royale" didn't get any Academy Award nominations, but it did take top honors in the category of 2006's most product-packed feature film. They're officially known as the Brandcameo Awards for Product Placement, and marketing firm Brandchannel singled out "Casino Royale" for showcasing 25 brands, besting runners-up "Night at the Museum" and "Scary Movie 4." The most common product? For the second year running, Ford snagged the most appearances, popping up in 40 percent of last year's No. 1 movies. "Memento II"? Guy Pearce stars in a movie about a man in deep denial about his past who is forced to question the nature of reality as circumstances lead him to doubt everything he once thought was true. No, we're not talking about "Memento." However, Pearce, who starred in that 2000 groundbreaking exercise in noir amnesia, does revisit similar turf in "First Snow," set for release next month. "There is almost a partnering of those two films, in a way," Pearce says. "If something really appeals to you, I guess you keep going back there, though you want to disguise it in different ways so people don't think you're just doing the same thing over and over." "First Snow" casts Pearce as a cocky salesman who's forced to confront past choices after a trailer park psychic tells him he'll be dead by winter. The movie was inspired by an incident witnessed by filmmaker Mark Fergus, who saw his friend emerge pale and seriously shaken after a discouraging session with a New Orleans fortune-teller. Does Pearce believe in clairvoyance? "I don't think all of this would exist if there weren't some kind of relevance, but I'm very skeptical about those who claim to be the be-all and end-all. I hope somehow there is some energetic force that draws us all together, but wading through the many frauds -- you have to add that to the equation." Pearce is coming off a critically hailed portrayal of Andy Warhol in "Factory Girl." "The great thing about playing somebody like Andy is there is a ton of research material to play with," he says. "I latched on pretty quickly to what his insecurities were. Listening to all these phone conversations between him and Bridget Berlin, you could hear how fragile, how sensitive, how clever, how funny Andy was, how controlling he could be, and also how needy. I tried to get to the heart of who he was as opposed to an almost cliched perspective on him, which I think Andy was probably responsible for cultivating." Pearce will take on another real-life subject later this year when he appears as magician Houdini opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones in "Death Defying Acts." But the Australian actor, who broke into pictures playing a drag queen in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," says that for him, there's not that much difference between fiction and reality when it comes to creating a performance. "Yes, you're absolutely mimicking but, funny enough, when I read a fictitious character in a script, I picture him in my head and end up mimicking what I'm picturing in my head anyway. Whether it's looking at real footage about a real person or seeing a fictitious character on the page, at the end, it sort of becomes the same process." Hugh Hart is a Chronicle correspondent.
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