Catching up with Brillante Mendoza
It is not every day that one gets a chance to have an audience with Brillante Mendoza, the first Cannes Palme D’Or winner for best director.
Together with some media friends, we were invited by the award-winning director to his humble abode in Mandaluyong City last week. Called Secret Garden, the place has changed so much since we last saw it many years ago.
We had a long chat with Direk Brillante but some of the information he shared are off the record. But he promised to give us the go signal if the said statements can already see print.
Of course there were other items in the chat we can write about, like his reunion project with Coco Martin, star of his debut film “Masahista” which was shown at the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival. His reunion flick with Coco, which has no title yet, pairs the actor with Julia Montes, who is romantically linked to the ‘Probinsyano’ star.
Direk Brillante said Coco has improved a lot as an actor.
“Even if Rodel (Coco’s real name) is playing the role of a cop in our new movie, you won’t see any trace of Cardo Dalisay,” said Direk Brillante, referring to his character in the long-running ABS-CBN series.
“It was a good thing he had a short break when I offered him this movie that’s why he was able to fix his schedule and find time. He told me that he is just an actor in our film and I can ask him to do anything because I am the director,” he related.
Direk Brillante also said that Julia is wonderful to work with.
“I’ve worked with Julia before. She is a very good actress. She also knows my artistic and creative process. As you all know, my movies don’t have scripts. Parang improvisation lang. I just explain the situation to my actors and it’s up to them to do their own lines. That’s why the dialogues come real and natural. It comes from the heart and not scripted.”
According to him, if there is a script, the actor’s tendency is to memorize his lines. “I want their lines to be spontaneous and natural.”
We were also the first batch of people who had the chance to watch his latest movie “GenSan Punch” which will surely appeal to boxing fans.
This is the story of an Okinawan boxer with a disability and his journey to have a professional boxing license. Playing the lead is a Japanese actor named Shogen who trained for a year in boxing before doing the movie. In the engrossing “GenSan Punch,” he got to fight with real boxers.
Also in the cast are Pinoy actors Beauty Gonzales, Ruby Ruiz, Jomari Angeles, Jun Nayra, Vince Rillon and Ronnie Lazaro.
Direk Brillante is still hoping to do a movie with Vilma Santos. He had a project for her before but the actress-turned-politician couldn’t accommodate it owing to her busy schedule so another actress took her place.
He also would like to work with Joshua Garcia who he thinks is a very good actor. And if there is no legal impediment, he has a beautiful horror script that he’d like Nadine Lustre to star in.
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“Maalaala Mo Kaya” (MMK) was quick to the draw as they presented the story last Saturday of Nesthy Petecio, the Pinay boxer who won a historic silver medal at the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics.
It was the first silver medal won by a female boxer from the Philippines. Nesthy is now eyeing to win the gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
We hope that MMK will also feature the story of Carlo Paalam, who also won a silver medal in boxing. The medal is more meaningful for Carlo since he was a former scavenger and the Olympic medals were made from scrap materials.
Who would have imagined that a former scavenger will be an Olympic medalist?
The win of our boxers in the Olympics, together with Hidilyn Diaz for weightlifting, is a proud moment for all of us.
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