When Pinoy stars were gluta, abs and botox-free

It could probably have been the best surprise during our forced incarceration due to floods and the habagat that we got to thinking about what ails our TV-movie industry today. The catalyst was a Mel Chionglo classic we had watched over GMA titled Lagarista. Written by Ricky Lee and released in 2000, it is referred to as Piolo Pascual’s biggest break as it transported us to a Manila when Filipinos were brown, unsullied and unglamorous when called for by the role. After Lagarista, the path to stardom came easily enough.

When queried as to how this happened, the answer Piolo gives is predestination. A quick background check on his showbiz history supports his position. In his early teen years, he became part of That’s Entertainment but his career failed to take off. After high school, he joined UST’s Teatro Tomasino, and soon found himself in Atbp., a children’s show on Channel 2. Then he made it to the giant network’s Star Circle, Batch 3. But before he could catch up with his more popular contemporaries, Piolo chose to live with his mom in the United States, where he did a string of odd jobs instead of pursuing a college degree.

Then he made the decision that changed his life forever. He went back to Manila, picked up from where he had left off and got into the weekly miniseries Sa Sandaling Kailangan Mo Ako and then Lagarista.  

Lagarista (Film Biker) tells of a bike delivery boy whose profession nowadays has become near obsolete. The central character, Gregory, is played by a fresh 26-year-old Piolo, who delivers celluloid movies to movie houses around what we now call Old Manila. Piolo is joined by an iconic cast including Cherrie Pie Picache, Pen Medina, Noni Buencamino, Janna Victoria and the legendary Koko Trinidad, known as the Father of Philippine Radio, as general manager of the Philippine Broadcasting Service (PBS) from 1947 to 1970.

Without much surprise, our cast delivered what the story called for. When Piolo embraces an ailing Koko Trinidad and begins to weep, our heart trembles with the evocative pain in this future superstar’s eyes and we nod to ourselves  thinking, “Papa P was made for acting.” In fact, each of the Lagarista cast, in their side stories of love’s improbabilities, gave us moments that sent us into a deeply emotional journey.

It was what the movie lacked, however, that drew us to it in the first place. In Lagarista, there was no kontrabida, no innocent victim with whining eyes to pity, no formulaic plot around characters created to either love or hate. What it offered was a refreshing 90 minutes where we could lose ourselves in a storyline that flowed through the back streets in Santa Cruz and Recto Avenue and the kind of people we see daily. 

We take note of the costumes of a Piolo from back then: The basketball shorts and oversized tees hid any hint of a heartthrob’s body. In fact, Lagarista contained no more than 20 seconds of a shirtless Piolo! And the scene was less about promoting an actor with a sculptured body to die for, but simply about a young man who just came from the shower after winning in a street fight.

Even Cherrie Pie filled her quota of unglamorous yet unforgettable moments. Following an artistically rendered and violence-free suicide scene, we cut to Cherrie Pie on a hospital bed with bandages around her wrists and her hair appropriately disheveled. This notable lack of make-up adds to the authenticity of the moment as she stares woefully through a window. We note how much more effective her acting is in this scene, a far cry from two practically identical pill-popping episodes we have seen these last two weeks on television.

Perhaps what was most interesting and amusing about the movie is that the extras, those unknown people who filled up the backgrounds, were all very much gluta-free. Yes, the Filipinos we saw were brown- and dark-skinned. The effect was like watching footage from a news channel, instead of a movie on television. Are we not used to seeing dark Pinoys on TV anymore? Have the Filipino people whitened over the years? Has our movie and television industry gone the way of all artifice in aping Hollywood icons in looks and in color?

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