DAY 54 : ECQ

There is this joke going around that one wishes that when he wakes up tomorrow morning that he will hear Christmas songs from Jose Mari Chan.  That can only mean that 2020 is about to end.  And everybody is wishing for that.  This year has been a series of challenging surprises.  It is not even midyear and we are already exhausted.

"Wala pang Hunyo quotang-quota na tayo." my businessman friend said.  He has good reason.  With a shutdown of almost two months, his two businesses have reached the point of bankruptcy.  He is not sure if and when the quarantine is lifted that he can still carry on his restaurant and mall store.  

Even Jack Ma allegedly said that 2020 is not the year of aspiring for profits.  It is a time when what is important is survival.  This year is teaching us to be strong ... and strong we must be if every day, every week we are given straight-to-the-solar-plexus punches that make us cringe in pain.

Just this week alone, people in media were shocked by the sudden closure of ABS-CBN.  As we were about to gather our wits about to understand how that happened, another piece of heartbreaking news came flying our direction.

Peque Gallaga, the legendary director of Oro, Plata, Mata and other modern classics like Scorpio Nights, Unfaithful Wife, Magic Temple, Aswang and Tiyanak has left us at the age of 76.

A little after noon today, I received a text message from Manet Dayrit of Central Digital Lab to tell me that Peque was gone.

Just yesterday, I called up his son, Wanggo, who is a co-teacher at the Digital Film Program of the College of St Benilde.  He merely said that his father was in the hospital and was suffering from a relapse due to ailments from the past.  Last night, there was word that it was only a matter of time before Peque would leave.   He has said his goodbyes to his family, resolved to the very end to exit from life according to his own terms and design.

I met Peque Gallaga through my friend, Don Escudero.

Don and I were classmates at De la Salle University from grade school through college. After college, he pursued his work as a freelance production designer which was how he met Gallaga.   Peque started out as a PD and his most noteworthy works include Ishmael Bernal's City After Dark and Eddie Romero's Ganito Kami Noon, Papaano Kayo Ngayon?  (with Laida Lim-Perez).  

I had only written one full length screenplay ( Problem Child  1979 with Elwood Perez) before I left for the U.S. for my graduate school grant.  When I came back, it was through Lily Monteverde that I was introduced to Lino Brocka to work on his film Caught in the Act (1981) and Marilou Diaz Abaya for Boys Town (1981),  In other words I only had three screenplays under my belt when Don offered me to meet Peque.

Don said that Peque had a story he had always wanted to work on as his second directorial job.  His first was entitled Binhi, co-directed with Butch Perez.  But this narrative in his mind is closest to his heart.  It was a story about the elite and privileged Negrenses, living in this bubble where manners, propriety and behavior were paramount.  It was tale of survival --- as to how all the social rules are demolished when war diminishes man into the animal that he truly is and will become when pushed to the limits.  It was a coming of age movie, a film about the brutal loss of innocence --- and a statement about Philippine society damaged beyond repair because of the Second World War.

I was stunned by the sheer magnitude of the project.  I had the story --- he wanted to know if I wanted to do this, to give this my own treatment --- to capture the world of bored matronas playing mahjong in order to consume their waking hours.  He wanted me to brutalize these people --- and turn them into mere survivors who were never the same after the trauma of the Japanese invasion.

To listen to Peque Gallaga is to absorb free-flowing lessons.

This mestizo de La Salle was not the cono kid that Teddy Boy Locsin mocked as a representation of the product of Christian Brothers.   There are very few men I have met with such brilliance and not merely knowledge of facts --- someone who could talk about Baroque music and at the same time give you detailed instructions on how to pickle bell peppers in olive oil.  Peque Gallaga was not a mere compendium of facts gathered together with the scope of an encyclopedia.  He was first and foremost --- a teacher.  And you listened to him.

In my life I have only met two such people:  Peque ... and my late friend, Don.  That was the reason why they hit it off so well despite the age difference of twelve years.  They were both --- mental supernovas.

What can I say about that first adventure working with not only a director but a master of cinema who has not yet realized that he is a master?  There I was, a neophyte writer, being asked to do an epic film which he casually branded as The Jungle Story.

He told me, "Joey, can you find a nicer title for this movie if it gets selected by the ECP (Experimental Cinema of the Philippines)?"  I gave it some thought.  And it so happened that my Mother was having our house repaired, fixing the stairway insure sturdiness of the banister.  And each time she would be climbing up the stairs, I hear Mama say, "Oro Plata Mata."  I gave it some thought and took the chance.  We were at the living room of his apartment in New Manila with Wanggo, then about ...two years old? ... running around in diapers and talking his Sesame Street jibberish.  I told Peque, "What about ORO, PLATA, MATA?"  

Peque literally ... and I mean LITERALLY ... screamed.  We had a title for our movie.

                                                                -- 000 ---

Decades passed.  I went on writing and eventually directing my own movie.

And Peque Gallaga never ceased to amaze me as I watched him from the distance churning out all these visual feasts one after another.

The man who gave us Oro, Plata, Mata rocked Philippine cinema with Scorpio Nights,  not only for its boldness and sense of daring but because of its innovation in treatment and design.  Peque would soon be identified with the genre of horror with his various installments of Shake, Rattle and Roll as well as iconic movies like Tiyanak, Aswang and Hiwaga sa Balete Drive.  As if that were not enough, Peque also delved into the world of fantasy, obsessed with creating his own mythology and Philippine folklore in works like Once Upon a Time and Magic Temple.

There was no telling, no pigeonholing in what Peque was capable of doing ... or the kind of movies he offered his audiences.

Yes, Gallaga was brilliant.  There was no doubt about that.  He, together with Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal and Marilou Abaya were rock stars as they were cinematic titans.  Their mere presence, the opportunity of having conversations and discussions with them were life lessons and lectures about filmmaking and society which you can never find in books or classrooms.  They were living and breathing film at that time so much so that they became the inspiration of the generation that followed.

But if there was one thing I learned from Maurice Gallaga, it was how to be a director.

Nowadays it is too easy to be called direk.  

Technology has facilitated and fast tracked the craft of filmmaking so that all you need is your affordable video camera (even your phone), a couple of lights, a laptop with the right applications --- and you can make your movie  You can be direk.  But during our time, it took more than just skills and equipment to earn the honor of being called direk.  For our generation, it was never a generic term.

Peque always taught us that we were a team.  Film is collaboration.  Direk is not omnipotent. Direk is not a god.  Direk can only be as good as the people who work for him and his work can only be as effective as the faith his production staff has in him to lead the way.  Peque instilled the respect for each and every worker on the set --- making them feel that they are responsible for the task given to them and that all can only work well if everyone did their best.  Whether you are the camera man or the gaffer or the art director or the propsman or in charge of the carpentry repairs or the script continuity boy --- you are all vital to make this project work so you deserve the respect in your honorable job.

Precision and professionalism are things that Peque taught me and generations of young filmmakers ... because our job is not merely to deliver entertainment or even awe to the audience. The bigger job is to make it work in the most efficient manner possible.


                                                       --- 000 ---

A little after lunch today, I found out that Peque Gallaga had left us.

The last time I saw him was a three hour casual merienda in a condo he rented when he visited Manila.  

We were reminiscing.  We were laughing.  We were talking about Oro, Plata, Mata ... and what the movies have become today.  He wanted to know about my other world ... which was teaching. He wanted to know how I was inasmuch as I wanted to know what he was doing and how things were going.

We spent more than three hours making up for lost time but of course what was three hours to cover decades of being apart?  

I did not realize until today that that was the last time I would see and talk to my friend --- the man who introduced me to Philippine cinema as the writer of his masterpiece.

I told another friend that I console myself with the thought that Gallaga is in a better place now.

I imagine that right before noon, he was met by my friend Don Escudero and  maybe even his good friend Douglas Quijano --- and they all embraced (which is something we can no longer do) and started a conversation full of wit, intelligence, laughter, wisdom ... and they all of eternity to spend together.  And all of heaven to keep them safe and far from pain and harm.  I, together with so many others, are grieving, in pain and beginning to miss the master that he was.  But knowing Peque, he is looking down at all of us, smiling that smile of his and saying:  "Oh, come on!"