He’d see this girl living across the street from where he was, turn on her TV set at 9 or 10 p.m. daily. He’d perch by his window and wait for the light of her TV set to flicker and create a shadow outlining his inamorata’s silhouette. That was sheer bliss for the then adolescent Mac. If he so much as missed seeing her for a day, the enamored teenager would feel his head throb in pain.
Feel like turning into mush inside out? Hear this:
"When a loved one asks me to wait for her at 11 a.m. and she’s not yet there, I’d hang around till 1 p.m. I’ll feel so angry, but I’ll still be there," Direk Mac reveals.
No wonder he turned Let the Love Begin into the first smash hit of the year, setting a trend that would see romantic movies being churned out one after the other. After Angel Locsin and Richard Gutierrez of Let the Love Begin, Sandara Park and Hero Angeles of Can This Be Love became the darlings of the box-office.
Direk Mac knows how it is to fall and — better yet – stay in love all the time. He has been married to the same woman, mother of his 11-year-old daughter, for 14 years. The fact that he stayed married that long is a testament to direk Mac’s capacity to hang on in there in the name of love.
This, and the box-office strength of Let the Love Begin, make direk Mac a shoo-in as take-charge guy for MaQ Productions’ romance-comedy-drama Say That You Love Me. MaQ executives figure that if the director can turn non sweethearts Angel and Richard into starry-eyed lovers on screen, he (Direk Mac) can do wonders too, with real-life lovers Mark Herras and Jennylyn Mercado.
Mark and Jennylyn are launched as a love team in Say That You Love Me, the story of a mismatched couple who find love in the most unexpected places.
Unlike Angel and Richard, Mark and Jennylyn are StarStruck winners. Their wide fan base is expected to translate to box-office success starting Day One of its exhibition in local theaters.
Besides, observes direk Mac, Mark and Jennyln have the makings of another Maricel (Soriano)-William (Martinez) love team: cute, lovable, endearing. So he expects no problem about public acceptance at all.
Factor in a familiar and romantic theme song with the same title as the movie, and the director believes he has another winner in his hands.
Other directors in his shoes will feel public pressure to make another hit breathing down his neck after Let the Love Begin. But direk Mac marches to his own drummer, and would accept pressure only from himself. His yardstick is his feel for excellence, his gut instinct about what will send moviegoers’ hearts a-flutter.
At thirtysomething, the guy is young enough to savor romance but mature enough to know when it gets too saccharine for its own good.
He also knows how to spread his wings to cover not just the syrupy side of life, but its comic (the upcoming Hari ng Sablay), fantasy (Lastikman) and even sexy aspects (Sukdulan). The bespectacled direk Mac’s love for all things compellingly readable (Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Isabel Allende, etc.) shows.
He doesn’t mind spending a fortune on books, which his US-based mom taught him to appreciate. It even got to a point where he read as many as 20 books in three-and-a-half months.
Another passion is music and film, of course.
"Directing is what I’ve wanted to do all my life. I know of no other skill than this," he admits. Watching 40 films in three-and-a-half months is no big deal, but sheer delight to him.
He has yet to do a serious film like the ones Joel Lamangan does. He’d love to, direk Mac says. But for now, his assignments are romances and comedies. No problem, he tells you. That’s better than staying idle at this time when jobs are scarce in the movie industry.
"I’m more comfortable in this genre," he says, eyes sparkling. And he’s just so glad to be a working director blessed with a job he won’t exchange for anything else in the world.
This enthusiasm and zest for work shows in Mac Alejandre’s films. And moviegoers, sensing this, are sitting up and taking notice.