A 'Telephone' conversation with Sunshine Corazon

I knew it would be a good Friday morning in Manila, despite the sudden downpour, when from my sleep I was roused by a girl singing Telephone on my cell phone.

“Hello, Tito Büm! Ninong Büm! Kumusta? Good afternoon,” said the girl on the other end of the line.

“Sino ‘to? Anong ‘Good afternoon?’ Umaga pa lang. Sino ‘to?” I answered, a little annoyed. I was in the middle of a beautiful, romantic dream.

Instead of directly identifying herself, the girl just sang: “Hello, hello baby you called? I cannot hear a thing, I have got no service in the club, you see, you see. Wha-wha-what did you say, huh? You’re breaking up on me. Sorry, I cannot hear you. I’m kinda busy.”

 “Oh my God! Sunshine Corazon!” Charice surprised me with a phone call last Friday morning, which was only Thursday afternoon in LA. She had just finished shooting for a Glee episode when she called.

“Napatawag ka, Cha? Kumusta?”

“Okay na okay naman po ako. I just called to thank you. I still can’t believe all these things are happening to me. Thank you po talaga,” she said. Charice, now 18, calls me from time to time, out of the blue. Despite her stature now, she remains grounded and sweet. She spoke Tagalog with the intonation of a girl from Gulod, the barrio where we met when she, her mother Raquel and brother Carl (“Coycoy”) transferred to when Cha was just seven. Her English was spoken with an obvious American twang.

 “Are you in your apartment?” Cha’s Palazzo apartment in Los Angeles, as she once described it to me, is “very nice.” She shares it with her mother Raquel and 15-year-old brother Carl. Her apartment is sandwiched by the units of Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus. 

“I’m not yet in my apartment. I’m still in my trailer, fixing my things. I’m about to go home in awhile,” she said. “But I really, really miss home. I miss my life in Gulod. I want to eat isaw. As in I’m craving for isaw now!”

Then Cha went on chanting for half a minute: “Isaw! Isaw! Isaw!”

Isaw, a street food, is the intestine of chicken that is cleaned and boiled with onion, garlic and pepper and salt. It is skewered in a slender stick then grilled like barbecue. Once cooked, it is dipped in spicy vinegar, too, before one eats it.

Despite her fame and fortune, who would ever think that Glee’s latest craze still craves for, of all food, isaw?

“I grew up eating isaw. I can’t find it in Filipino stores here in LA.”

“Hoy, hija, enough of isaw dreaming,” I said. “Can you please describe to me your trailer?

“Sure. Only if you promise that you will feed me isaw when I come home?”

“Okay. Done. When are you coming home?”

“A few days before David Foster and Friends concert on Oct. 23 (at the Araneta Coliseum). I need to eat isaw before our concert, Tito Büm,” Cha said, laughing impishly.

Cha continued: “You’re watching the concert, right? I already got you a ticket!”

“Talaga? Thank you,” I said.

“I’ll introduce you to David. He asked me before where I learned to speak English. I told him I learned it from my Tito Büm. So he said, ‘Will I get to meet your Tito Büm in Manila?’ I said ‘Yes.’ I already committed you, Tito Büm.”

“Sus, bolera kang bata ka. Echoserang palaka!” I lovingly told Cha.

“Hindi kita niloloko, Tito Büm,” Cha assured me.

“O sya sige. Now, describe to me your trailer,” I continued to prod her.

“It’s a little big. It’s like a house. I have a sofa, a bed, a ref, toilet. Mabango ang trailer ko. My trailer door says ‘Sunshine’ for obvious reasons that Sunshine Corazon is my character in Glee. This is where they put my makeup on. I have my own hairstylist and makeup artist. The artist who puts my lipstick is different from the makeup artist.” 

Cha continued that her trailer is usually parked far from where Glee shooting is taking place. When it is her turn to shoot, a production assistant picks her up and drives her in a car to the location of the shooting. No hangers-on allowed at the shoot, she said. If she is not needed in the scene, she is driven back to her trailer. She reports for work for Glee at 7 a.m. and wraps up at 7 p.m. She said no one comes late to the shoot. Charice drives herself to work via her brand new Ford car.

“Mabusising mag-shoot si Brad Falchuk,” she informed me. Falchuk is the director of Glee. He was the one who told Cha to make use of hand movements when she sang Listen towards the end of the premier episode of Glee’s second season. 

“The scene where Sunshine Corazon (Cha) and Rachel Berry (Lea Michelle) sang Telephone was shot for 10 hours,” she said. It took that long not because the actors had problems with their singing or acting but because the director wanted all angles covered — from top shot to peripheral shot. And talk about acting, Charice said she has the same acting coach as Meryl Streep — no less.

“When we shoot, there are tapes on the floor to mark our blockings. But I cannot look at those markers all the time. So, I memorized in my mind where the tapes are located. Nakakanerbyos magkamali. Nakakanerbyos ang first taping day ko,” she said.  

When the first episode of Glee’s second season was shown three weeks ago, Cha got a call from Oprah to congratulate her.

“What did Oprah tell you?” I asked.

“Something like this, Tito Büm: ‘I knew it that when I held the plane that was supposed to take you back to the Philippines in early 2008, I knew you would still soar! Congratulations, Charice’.” (Cha and her mother Raquel were already on board the plane to go back to Manila after Cha guested on Oprah’s show for the first time. The Queen of Talk stopped the plane and had the mother and daughter disembark for a meeting. Charice has appeared on Oprah’s show four times already and Oprah has never stopped becoming Charice’s mentor since then.)   

Cha is coming back in Episode 6 of Glee. She did not tell me what songs she would sing but refuted talks that she had already recorded Celine Dion songs for Glee.

“Cha, when you come home, can you please autograph a page of your script for me?” I asked her.

“I’m afraid I cannot do that, Tito Büm. Sorry. We tear and trash the script ourselves after the shooting day. As in sinisira namin yung script. We’re not allowed to keep it after the scenes have been shot,” she said.

She furthered: “No one is allowed to receive the script for the Glee actors. I have to receive my own script when it is delivered to my apartment. Not even my mom or brother can receive it for me. The Glee production is very strict.”

Cha kept it a secret from me how long she would stay in Glee. But my “Glee sources” told me the character of Sunshine Corazon would still be singing beautiful songs until May 2011, when the second season of Glee ends.

“O sya, Tito Büm, ba-bye na. Uuwi na akong apartment. Dadaan pa akong Filipino store para bumili ng iluluto ko.

“You cook?”

“Yup?”

“What do you cook?”

“The usual food that I eat — paksiw na bangus. I have never learned to eat American food aside from the garden salad.”

Then there was a short lull in our telephone conversation.

“Cha, hello, you’re still there?”

“Sandali lang po. Nawawala po yung wig ko,” she said.

“What wig?”

“My Justin Bieber wig.”

“You wear a wig?”

“Tito Büm, I disguise as Justin Bieber when I am in public,” she said, cracking up on the other end of the line. I cracked up, too. She finally found her wig inside her bag.

“O, sya, ba-bye na po. Libre nyo po akong isaw pag-uwi ko.”

“Sige, sige. Isaw on me, Cha.”

“Bye, love you, love you, Tito Büm.”

“Love you, too, Cha. Bye.”

 (For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com. You may want to follow me at www.twitter.com/bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday.)