Straight Talk From `Crooked Hearts' Star

Peter Berg plays the hero in the family drama, "Crooked Hearts," which had its world premiere over the weekend at the Seattle International Film Festival and moves into the Harvard Exit for a regular run tomorrow.

But he could just as easily have turned up as the villain in another weekend festival entry, "Delusion," which was shot at the same time. He loved both scripts, the filmmakers wanted him for both films, but he couldn't clone himself. He's a busy young actor.

In addition to "Crooked Hearts," he'll be seen this year in an offbeat new Rob Reiner production, "Late for Dinner," and Keith Gordon's World War II drama, "Midnight Clear," about six young soldiers on a suicide mission just before the Battle of the Bulge. Most of Berg's previous films ("Genuine Risk," "Never on Tuesday") are relatively obscure, although he did have the leading role in Wes Craven's "Shocker" in 1989.

"I've worked really quickly, and I've been really lucky," he said during a visit to the festival. "I've had some great learning experiences, but I want to slow down now. The quality of the work is becoming more important. There is a real burn-out factor, and you have to be careful. I want to work with certain kinds of actors and certain kinds of projects."

In just three years, Berg has established himself as a serious young actor who will try almost anything but the commercial pap he loathes. His favorite filmmaker is the late John Cassavetes; he

regrets that "there's almost nothing human about movies anymore."

Looking over the list of Memorial Day releases, he's disgusted by the money spent by the studios on noisy junk: "I hope `Backdraft' and `Hudson Hawk' bomb, and I hope `Thelma and Louise' makes $150 million. I'm a big fan of `Lethal Weapon' and `Die Hard,' but most of those movies are total wastes of money. You remember `Die Hard' because the characters and the performances were engaging, not because of the spectacular effects. They do a film that works, then they forget what made it work in the first place. The industry is way too blockbuster-oriented."

He's also unhappy with critics such as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel who gave "thumbs up" to "Backdraft" even though they didn't like the script: "I know something about the making of that movie. Everyone knew the script was horrible, but they went ahead, and Ebert and Siskel recommended it because they liked the fire scenes. Well, shame on them, and shame on Ron Howard for going ahead and making a film that wasn't ready."

Berg is also not entirely pleased with the outcome of "Crooked Hearts," in particular the talkathon ending, which was added because of pressures from MGM/Pathe. More than three months after filming was completed, he and the rest of the cast were rounded up to reshoot the finale, "because the studio felt it needed to be tighter, more attainable. The original ending was less neat, less tidy. I'm a big fan of sloppiness."

Nevertheless, he calls the picture "a very honest look at how a family can destroy itself. There's a lot of contradiction and awkwardness in this family, and that's a difficult subject to put on film."

Filmed in Vancouver, B.C., but set in Tacoma, "Crooked Hearts" was co-produced by Seattle's Rick Stevenson and based on a 1987 novel by Robert Boswell. Berg admires the book for the way it "pulls you into this family. It's about the inevitable collapse of the family - almost an explosion - and about how that's a healthy thing. You stop looking at your parents as godlike, you awaken from this dream of what the family is, and other families are created from the explosion.

"If you're Cassavetes, you can go on for three hours, but we didn't have that luxury. Studios will not let you release a 2 1/2-hour family drama, so the audience has to watch the film actively. It's hard when you have so many characters and the actors have to establish relationships in just three or four scenes. The audience just has to participate more."

Some scenes were cut for length. Berg especially regrets that he didn't have more screen time with Jennifer Jason Leigh, who plays his girlfriend, and that the cuts included "a great scene between Vincent (D'Onofrio) and Wendy (Gazelle) that added a lot to clarify that relationship."

"I'm still very proud to be a part of the picture," he said. "The three films I have coming out this year are representative of what I like to do: they're pretty original films, very diverse, and their directors are stimulating people. `Crooked Hearts' is very provocative and well-intended, and we need to make more films like it. For what they spent on `Hudson Hawk,' you could make 15 films like this one."