Filmfest brouhaha: The pros and cons

Curtain-raisers:

• Featured tonight at EDSA Shangri-La’s New Year countdown, starting at 9 o’clock, is Pido with Take One. The affair is informal. The party will be livened up by other bands, only at P3,000 per person.

• Ramon "RJ" Jacinto is reminding Beatlemaniacs (this one included) to tune in to RJFM nationwide and RJTV 29 on UHF (Sky 61 and Destiny 68) tomorrow, New Year, for 18 hours of non-stop Beatles music (and fun quiz) from 6 a.m. to 12 midnight. I tuned in same time last year and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Beatlemania 2003 should be as much, even more, fun, I’m sure. One request: Could RJ please play In My Life at least five times? Please?

• I didn’t know that Camarines Sur Vice Gov. Imelda Papin has a soap named after her – Imelda, Papaya Soap, Gandang Natural – until I got two sample bars last Christmas. It’s supposed to be "anti-aging and skin whitening." If it works for Imelda (such smooth, white skin, ’no?), it might also work for you. Try it!

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First, before we get wrapped up in another round of sound and fury (signifying nothing?) regarding the just-concluded Metro Filmfest awards night, let me congratulate and salute the true heroes of the annual event expanded nationwide this year and extended at the last minute by seven days (until Jan. 10) to accommodate two more entries (Lastikman and Spirit Warriors 2: The Short Cut, opening tomorrow, Jan. 1, 2003).

The three are no other than FPJ (Alamat ng Lawin), Rudy Fernandez (Hula Mo, Huli Ko) and Lito Lapid (Lapu-Lapu) who have kept their poise and silence, with their honor and dignity intact, in the trail of the brouhaha spawned by the Metro filmfest’s Gabi ng Parangal last Friday night, even if their entries didn’t win any awards (except for Hula Mo which got the Best Sound trophy) and aren’t doing as well as expected in the box-office derby.

FPJ, Rudy and Lito are the true gentlemen who should be the role models for their colleagues in an industry which is packed full with people with diverse and conflicting opinions that turn every movie event into a rousing one. Three cheers to the three Tunay na Lalaki who have kept their heads above the murky water in which the rest of the industry people are wallowing, forgetting the rules of sportsmanship and the real mark of an idol – this is, to sustain equanimity in times of crisis. For isn’t the best of any person brought out in the worst of times?

To FPJ, Rudy and Lito, may your tribe increase!

And now, down to brass tacks...

Thanks to Lualhati Bautista the 28th Gabi ng Parangal ended on a controversial note. If she just kept silent and didn’t lead that infamous "walkout" of the Star Cinema group in protest against the non-inclusion of the "Palanca-winning" novelist in the list of nominees for Best Story and Best Screenplay for Dekada ’70, the awards night would have gone with a whimper, with disgruntled and disappointed non-winners licking their wounds in (tearful?) silence.

Bautista has all the right to raise a howl. If I were a "Palanca winner" and I don’t get nominated in an awards derby, I wouldn’t just raise a howl and stage a "walkout," I would go to court to protect not only my bruised ego but also my literary reputation. If the local courts wouldn’t act on my valid and legitimate complaints and grievances, I would appeal to US President George W. Bush to delay the bombing of Iraq and attend to my case first. I would do that, dare me – believe me!

If a deceased komiks writer, the revered Mars Ravelo, could be nominated (Best Story) for Lastikman, why couldn’t a Lualhati Bautista, a living legend in her own perception whose body of work includes Dekada ’70, said to be her best effort? Fight on, Lualhati, let the rage wreak havoc where it should.

According to Caloocan City Mayor Rey Malonzo, the "beleaguered" chairman of the MMDA (Metro Manila Development Authority) Metro Filmfest committee, Lualhati’s name was, indeed, included in the list of nominees in both categories showing the list on national television as "Exhibit A", but it was unfortunate that that night’s presenters, Robert Arevalo and Lani Mercado unwittingly overlooked it.

I don’t know how this mess will be resolved; what I know is that Lipa City Mayor Vilma Santos and Christopher de Leon (stars of Dekada ’70), but especially Vilma because she is a public official besides a movie icon, have been dragged into it all because of their participation (never mind if delayed since Vilma had yet to present the three Best Picture awards – 1. Mano Po, 2. Dekada ’70 and 3. Spirit Warriors) in the "walkout."

You can’t blame many people for concluding that Vilma "walked out" not so much in sympathy with Lualhati and the Star Cinema group as a disappproval for Ara Mina’s (Mano Po) beating her in the Best Actress race and Christopher against Eddie Garcia (also for Mano Po) in the Best Actor race. Showbiz-watchers were asking: Have Vilma and Christopher, already multi-awarded, become so greedy and egotistic that they couldn’t take defeat from an "upstart" or any member of the new breed of actors like "one Ara Mina"? Do they expect to win everytime they get into a competition? If they are magnanimous in victory, can’t they be the same in defeat?

I don’t know Christopher but according to Vilma during a brief chat with Funfare the other day, she didn’t really have a choice and that it wasn’t her protest against Ara but "in sympathy" with Lualhati.

"I went to the Gabi ng Parangal not expecting to win," said Vilma. "Diyos ko naman, sanay na rin akong matalo but I never walked out. I have an open mind about competitions. Either you win or you lose. Ganoon lang ’yon. What happened that night was this: The Star Cinema people were walking out na, led by Lualhati, and I stayed longer pa because ako ang magpe-present ng trophies for the three Best Picture awards. That was when I realized I was caught in a fix. Should I join the walkout or should I stay? Had I stayed, para ko naman iniwanan ang Dekada group. I didn’t have a choice."

But she could have prevailed upon the walking-out group to cool down and stayed and, you know, just shrug it off as "one of those things that happen in the Metrofest year in and year out."

"’Yon na nga e," said Vilma. "Naipit ako. They were already outside, at the lobby, so I didn’t have a choice but to join them. But let me make it clear, hindi ako nag-protest against Ara who’s a good actress; nag-sympathize lang ako kay Lualhati who, I believe, deserved to have been at least nominated."

Oh, well, just like such "disturbances" in past Metro Filmfests, this one will soon be swept into the Metro Manila Film Festival dustbin which is teeming with the same old stories about protests, wranglings and in-fightings, charges and counter-charges and, that’s it, walkouts. Today’s controversy is tomorrow’s "history." Twenty-four hours more and it’s Year 2003. Goodbye, old issues! Hello, new issues!

That’s how the showbiz cookie crumbles.

Without these "explosions," the annual Metro Filmfest won’t be the same. Can you imagine a Metro Filmfest without the "disunited" showbiz folks lunging at each other’s throats, without the ugly issues ladled out, without all the brouhaha and the big to-do and all that noise? It would be oh-so-boring, I tell you. Ho-hum!

Incidentally, many people are wondering who made up the board of judges. Here’s the honor roll: Caloocan City Mayor Rey Malonzo (chairman), Marietta Tamondong, Rustica Carpio, Dennis Manicad, Dr. Orly Molina, Joey Papa, Josie Borromeo, Rebecca Vinaviles, Cora Cruz and Efren Montano.