The following story should warm the cockles of not only the heart of Tourism Secretary Dick Gordon but those of every Filipino as well, especially the fans (this one included) of heavyweight producer-director Francis Ford Coppola.
Parts of this story are excerpts from an article entitled Coppola’s Hideaway that came out in a recent issue of the US magazine Talk (sad news to readers: Talk is folding up soon) sent to me by my friend Raoul Tidalgo (the New York-based The Filipino Reporter’s columnist and entertainment editor).
Raoul was flattered by the story and so was I – and, I’m sure, many of you out there.
Back in 1979, Coppola was in the Philippines to shoot Apocalypse Now (a new version of which, called Apocalypse Redux, was shown recently in the US), which included in its cast several Filipino talents. According to the Talk article, Coppola has fallen deeply in love with the Philippines that when he created his own paradise in Belize on the Caribbean Sea, it owes "a certain debt of inspiration to the Philippine setting of one of his most famous films."
Coppola was quoted by Talk as saying, "Whenever you leave a place you like, you have a desire to hang on to some part of it. So after I did the movie, I started looking for places as beautiful as the Philippines but closer. In 1981, I read that British Honduras was becoming Belize and I became intrigued. Then I read about the high literacy rate and the fact everyone spoke English and Spanish and I went on a trip with my son."
The rich among us, I’m sure, can easily make a trip to Belize and enjoy the amenities of Coppola’s paradise. But for the benefit of most of us who can only dream about it, Funfare is printing more excerpts from the Talk article, the better for you and I to enjoy the place even only vicariously.
Once there, Coppola trekked to the jungle highlands and bought an abandoned lodge called Blancaneaux, which he opened to the public in 1993 (after using it for more than a decade as a family retreat). While waiting to be discovered as the next Al Pacino or Teri Garr, hotel guests could wander along nature trails, ride horses, dive off waterfalls, scribble in a hammock and, of course, eat lots of pasta accompanied by Coppola wine. If a little more adventure was required they could hop into a plane to the idyllic coastal town of Palencia for the day.
A small fishing village at the end of a peninsula resting between a vast lagoon and the sea, Palencia now boasts of Coppola’s second resort, the Blancaneaux Turtle Inn, which consists of seven huts on 650 feet of white sand and which Coppola bought from an American called Skip White in August 2000.
Viewed from the sea, Turtle Inn features one main house on the left (Coppola’s home in the compound, available to guests when he’s away), four large cabanas to the right on the beach and three smaller cabanas raised high on stilts directly behind the beachfront rooms. A few feet away from the sea is a large, thatched dome that houses a semicircular bar framing the sea just so, and a restaurant, the floor of which is sand. Throw in some swaying palm trees, a blinding sun and several terribly sweet employes and you’ve got the picture.
The Talk writer might as well have been describing a Philippine resort, wasn’t she?
The famous filmmaker must really love the Philippines so much that he can’t forget his memorable experience here in the late ’70s when he shot Apocalypse Now in Laguna. That movie, featuring then newcomer Elizabeth Oropesa in a cameo role (that was mercilessly edited out of the final print, leaving only another Filipino actress, Gigi Dueñas, in a brief scene with Marlon Brando), did a lot in promoting the Philippines as an ideal setting for Hollywood movies.
And now, this Talk article mentioning the Philippines in a positive light.
I could see Dick Gordon breaking into a smile as wide as the Pacific Ocean.
Photos Reprinted From Talk Magazine