Mr. Lifetime

Scene: interior, nearing midday. Fade in to close-up of director Jeffrey Jeturian saying to the camera: In a way I’ve been luckier than most directors, because in the seven films I’ve done so far, it’s been my call. Some did well at the box office, some didn’t. But over the years you can eventually tell what will click and what won’t. Now is the time to be daring with concept and experimentation.

Cut to: Gina Pareño, lead actress in the latest Jeturian film drawing raves both here and abroad, Kubrador (The Bet Collector), up on the big screen playing the role of Amy, jueteng kubrador, as she does her rounds in the slums of the city, surrounded by squalor and a hyper realism that all the more accentuates the people’s humanity. Suddenly, Gina P is not up on the silver screen but accepting the best actress trophy at a film festival abroad, and a Russian woman in the audience is walking up to thank her.

Cut back to Jeturian, in a 7th floor law office of his producer Joji Alonso, in a building just a stone’s throw away from Greenbelt in Makati, where "Kubrador" alternately baffled and touched a relatively upscale audience. The director is talking to a reporter in a mid-sized conference room, over the necessary cup of black coffee, about his adventures with "Kubrador", his seventh film since he started directing in 1998, or an average of about one movie a year.

On a writing board by the side is listed the places where "Kubrador" has been invited to festivals abroad, around 16 in all, about a handful of which the 98-minute film would be in competition–Valladolid, Amien, Hawaii, Brussels.

"We were naïve to have thought it would do better than it did at the box office," he says, referring to the film’s local run, which extended to its second week in some SM cinemas. "But it has legs in the international festival circuit."

Lately the producers are in talks with Cinemavault, international distributor that marketed the successful "Drunken Hor-ses."

"If we clinch that, the domestic market is just a slice of the whole market potential."

The film festival experience has also reaped some modest cash awards for "Kubrador", which could help the producers break even, apart from the 100 percent tax rebate afforded by its A grade from the Cinema Evaluation Board.

"This shows that a non-commercial, serious film is not a losing proposition," he says, maintaining that he chose to stick with La Pareño even if some quarters suggested he cast a younger, perhaps more "bankable" actress.

"At first Gina thought she wouldn’t do any acting at all, but later she got the hang of it," direk says, describing Pareno as a "natural actress" like the late Nida Blanca. At location shooting, Jeturian says that onlookers at the set would recognize Gina, and remark "Lola ni Darna! Lola ni Darna!"

Jeturian says it’s all a matter of telling the actors what you want from them. "When they are given good, well written roles, they can deliver."

And deliver Gina did, leaving many of us dumbfounded. Jeturian says if the kubrador were played by anyone younger than Gina, credibility of the film would have suffered.

Flashback to Jeturian’s boyhood in Quezon City and the drive to school in Manila, whenever they would pass by Quiapo he was star struck by pictures of actors and actresses, would revel under the huge imposing façades of the Globe and Life theaters, and before that, along España, the Roman Super Cinerama. It was a childhood where he would go to sleep watching black and white Sampaguita films on TV, and when schooldays meant setting aside part of his allowance in order to save up for a movie ticket for him and his faithful yaya, the cost of a general admission ticket then only P1.20. Sometimes he would skip lunch altogether to save extra money, and cut classes at San Beda high school on Mendiola to catch a movie at a nearby theater, Life or Globe, or one of those theaters along Recto or Avenida now since eased out by the Light Transit System or else long since reduced to certified fleabags.

Finally with his yaya he was able to watch his first movie, "Dedicated to You" starring Susan Roces and Eddie Mesa, which made him a lifelong Swanie fan, but he remembers most the huge screen and images blown up larger than life, and planted a seed in his mind, same as years later when he watched "Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag" by Brocka, and Bembol Roco’s silent scream in the end just as he is about to be beat up by toughies stuck to him, because that is what cinema does to you, some scenes never leave you no matter what you do, could be the Tommy Abuel character extinguishing a cigarette in his palm just before telling Bembol that his girl Ligaya is dead, or Maya Valdes gyrating as a go-go dancer under the strobe lights of Gallaga’s "Linggo, Lunes, Martes…" or Freddie Salanga as the toro impresario Goma shouting to Ronnie Lazaro and Sarsi Emmanuel "Mga ingrato!" when the live sex couple fly the coop. It was the time of "Daluyong at Habagat" and "Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon" of Brocka and Bernal with their adult situation tragicomedies and Mike de Leon whose movies were a feast for the eyes, that were worth cutting classes for and even letting a teenage stomach go hungry.

In his young adult years, Jeturian frequented the UP Film Center, a building at the time perhaps half-done with rough cement floor but already showing those wild and crazy films that further fired up a young man’s imagination: Kurosawa, Almodovar, Fassbinder, which imparted to him that there were ways to tell a story different from the accepted Hollywood style, a film doesn’t have to follow a certain formula, no, on the contrary, cinema opened up a whole new world of possibilities just waiting to be explored.

Flashforward back to the present, and Jeturian again in a Makati office saying young directors these days have it so much easier with all the technological tools at their disposal, such as the video assist, when he himself had worked as script continuity production assistant during part of the 15 years (1983-1998) before he finally made his first movie, "Sana Pagibig Na" with Nida Blanca and Gerald Madrid, in the first batch of Regal pito-pito movies along with, among others, Lav Diaz who did "Burger Boys."

"I had to wait a lifetime to make my first film," Jeturian, 46, says of the years he worked as a PA for directors such as Marilou Diaz Abaya, taking manual note of the continuity of scenes, whether Sharon spoke first before drinking a glass of juice, or drank a glass of juice before speaking. "It helped hone my editing skills because I was already picturing the progression of scenes in my head."

He recalls having no problem working with Blanca, who followed instructions down pat, and the camera started rolling only when Madrid had mastered his take.

"Pila Balde," his second film, fulfilled all the promises of "Sana Pagibig" and then some, and launched the career of Ana Capri beyond being a bold star. Set in a Bliss-like lower class tenement, the movie already bore echoes of his idol Lino Brocka with its unromanticized depiction of the masa.

But when he saw it again in Munich many years later, Jeturian says he felt rather embarrassed with the profusion of sexy scenes, admitting that many of them could have been shortened. "My line producer Joey Gosiengfiao then had insisted to put in a sex scene here, a sex scene there," he says.

In "Tuhog" he was at first hesitant in casting Ina Raymundo as the real life rape victim, but eventually realized that the girl grew into the role, or was it the role grew into her. While having its fair share of provocative scenes, the movie is a satire on moviemakers’ penchant for sexual sensationalism and exploitation.

"Bridal Shower" at the outset seems merely about three women looking for Mr. Right, but direk says it is actually about manipulation and the devaluing of love as a commodity in the modern world.

"Minsan Pa," also produced by MLR Films’ Joji Alonso who hails from Cebu, had that bittersweet twist where the protagonists don’t wind up together in the end, a definite plus for its unpredictability in an age of predictable, formula scripts. And that camera lost to the underwater elements, wasn’t that a metaphor in disguise?

"Bikini Open" was another satire that was largely uneven but had its screaming inspired moments. Leading up to the present "Kubrador," where Jeturian learned that plot is not necessary so long as there is tension, the film making more or less cinema history and already hailed by some quarters as the year’s best. More than likely it is.

"In workshops I always tell the young filmmakers not to end up as Hollywood clones and be true to one’s culture, and for your work to be noticed it must at the same time be universal. It depends how you tackle the subject matter."

Direk says that the topic need not be earth-shaking "as long as one is honest with the material," and one takes care not to over-dramatize or romanticize the people. One should also be careful that in depicting scenes of exploitation, one does not in fact become a tool for re-exploitation by sensationalizing the material for the sake of the box office or mere reflex of a constant Hollywood diet.

"Bawas, bawas," is his favorite directorial advice.

In conclusion, a final dream sequence not necessarily in slow motion. There’s another movie that Jeturian wants to do, but he says it might land him in jail: based on a script by another of Bing Lao’s students (same with "Kubrador"), it is about a security guard monitoring for shoplifters at a mall, perhaps a day in the life, where he catches a few in the act and apprehends them and charges five times the shoplifted item’s listed price, as per rules, and the petty thieves pay except for a grungy kid who can’t and is henceforth dragged to the police station, where the mother is summoned to try and bail her son out. A lot of high drama among mother, son, police, and security guard when he gets home and turns on the TV, who should come on but the President in her famous or infamous "I am sorry" speech, and the guard’s reaction and expression are similar to whenever he catches a shoplifter in the mall monitor, maybe in the way he lifts his cup of coffee, or drinks it. The title is "Nenoc," about how only the small fry get caught and the big fish get away.