DUTERTE IS OUR PRESIDENT! (Divining the 2016 Presidentiabulls)

DUTERTE IS OUR PRESIDENT! (Divining the 2016 Presidentiabulls)

By JULIO CINCO NIGADO

Updated from the original, written Sept. 9 2011, for Opinyon newsmagazine 

EARLY birds catch the worms. And, already, they’re worming their way in.

     Now that Vice President Jejomar “ Jojo” Binay has signified his intension to run in the 2016 presidential elections, others are closing in to position for the kill. And you know what making a killing in the Philippines means—literally and figuratively speaking, that is.

Davao City's Rod Duterte, Man from the South

     At the Temple’s divination for the annual predictions (2012), Binay leads the way of all flesh and fortune fighting in 2016. But something will happen along the way, the psychic seers say, which will change and challenge the prevailing political landscape of the day. In the eyes of many, Binay is both bad and good as the scenes from his life are unfolded before the public. Old and new bashers will blog every possible space, and it will be a blast. (A word of advice to all would-be bloggers: Be careful not to take Jojo Binay for Roderick Paulate.)

     Side prediction One: There’s a stench of “dead meat” at the Quezon City mayor’s office, and people are starting to shout “Foul”! But the city hall sly operators have yet to decide on how to prepare the stinking steak—rare, medium rare or well done. Still, most people would prefer another dish, and no Belmonte, este,Del Monte products, please—expired or unexpired.   

     Filipinos have very short memories, and Bongbong Marcos will exploit that reality to the hilt with his catchy campaign calls. Besides, poverty of the mind breeds more physical poverty, thus providing a fertile ground for easy and powerful propaganda. The “final chapter” of the long and well-laid plans of Marcos mice and men will unravel and beguile the unsuspecting majority of the impoverished. Blessed are the poor in spirit…

     However, a death in the family will either cut short or catapult Bongbong’s ambition to kingdom come. What worked for Noynoy Aquino will not be operative in Bongbong’s similar bid for the presidency. There’s no such thing as “Marcos magic” in post-Macapagal Philippines. The ghosts of the past will always haunt the guilty in many ways. As the good book says, the sins of the father and mother are visited on their children. So be it.

      Side prediction Two: The Star Batangas beef will take a rough beating in 2012, the 50^th anniversary of some sort of a certain top official in the capital. And the current conjugal house is threatening to become a “colonial” Triad, with the planned entry of the rising son--soon. The so-called imported leaders from the Big City are bleeding the bulls dry, as they make the whole province their milking cow. Ricky was right: his brother’s “goldmine” has made them two of the richest politicians in the country today. Go and check the Senate list. Really now, it’s not all acting, after all.

      At any rate, the man to beat in the 2016 top derby is crowded with pretenders to the tarpaulin throne. This early, Bong Revilla has been floating his name and ambition but, fortunately, he won’t go past the murky waters of the Pasig River. Another incorrigible actor-womanizer in Malacanang will only bring back the black curse of the past, and poison the air. From jueteng to land grabbing to smuggling, what else do Cavitenos have to say?

      How does a Revilla love thee? Shall I count the ways from Candy to Angela to Ruffa to Gretchen to Dina to Joy to Rufa Mae to Katrina? Have I missed something that, for sure, the good senator does not?

     Another pretender who appears in the psychic’s crystal ball is defeated vice presidential candidate Mar Roxas. Well, people need not worry about this one, a Temple master reminds us, because defeat runs in his blood. In 1965, his father Gerry also lost in the same race vice another loser, Diosdado Macapagal.

     And no matter what Mar does at the DILG, it will always be construed as a “miscommunication” to many. Nowadays, they’re all campaigning anyway, so what else is new?

      So much for pretenders who pose as one with, and for, the poor, but in truth is actually anti-poor in their acts and mindset. The British say “entrenched mindsets” are the hardest to break. This explains why beating the odds, in Philippine politics, are almost next to impossible—from Bonifacio’s times to ours.

      Side prediction Three: A world-famous Filipino couple will head for the rocks on or after a visit from the Stork on the other side.

      This leads us to the next pretender, who apes another aper.  The Temple people are incredulous with this one but what can they do, as he figures, albeit faintly, in the prediction rites. He may not be the right guy, as they all are, anyway, but he goes for the jugular just the same. The Philippines is one big killing field all over and almost everybody is a killer, one way or the other.

     How Jinggoy Estrada makes a killing has been revealed time and again, and we all know how to sing his coded jingle. Christmas time is fast approaching, and carolers beware!  “Jingle bells, Jingle bells, Jingle all the way…!”

      Can we afford that? Jingle all the way… All the way to the dogs? One Erap is a mistake; another is suicide. Levity aside, what are we left with?

      The Temple’s crystal ball blurs as another man from the non-august halls of the Senate comes into view. Too many hearings and investigations purportedly in aid of legislation have muddled the divining glass that the object appears oblique.

     Oh, it’s Chiz Escudero, and he materializes with some cheesy company. “Chiz wiz!” the Temple masters abruptly dismissed him from fully manifesting into their clear consciousness. Goodbye, Mr. Chiz! The least said about him, the better. And he is better left to his own device. Didn’t his wife (before Heart, that is) do just that?

     But, wait! The above-mentioned cheesy company becomes clear as the Chiz guy disappears into crystal oblivion.

     OMG! It’s Chiz Aquino! Good grief, it’s Kris Aquino, I hastily corrected myself.

      What’s she doing in such an illustrious company of wolves, immediately following the footsteps of her slow and undecided brother in Malacanang? Another Aquino for the moon?

     An Aquino after an Aquino is just soooooo much to take, I think we should all bay at the moon and wait for the next cosmic sign.

     One Temple master hollered:  “Break that ball!” It was meant to spoil the spell, but no one dared touch the thing. Some feared it might energize and make the image manifest.

      So, we let it stay that way until the Kris apparition in the glass gradually faded into fast fantasy.

      Only then did a defining colored image, from the South, begin to form from the center of the crystal ball. In pranic healing, dark colors are strongest as they obliterate all others with their mixed presence.

       Dark is powerful, very powerful. And when dark is beautiful, all others follow. The reign of the white—and all that it represents – is falling. Let the colors and the colored rise in all their united hues and splendor.

      Most politicians play both vultures and worms of society. And they prey on the unborn, the living and the dead. Indeed, two things are certain in politics: more debts and more taxes.

      So let’s all welcome and embrace the new colored Light from the South, and God bless the Philippines.

Ako Si Ninoy (Director's Treatment)

Director’s Treatment

                                                                                                           

AKO SI NINOY

(A MUSICAL ON THE LIFE AND ETERNAL TIMES OF BENIGNO AQUINO, JR.)

Written and directed by Vince Tañada

Cinema completes the continuum -- from the page to the stage and to the screen, where images are more or less immortalized in various forms.

            As a young student growing under the shadow cast by the larger-than-life image of Ninoy Aquino, I was wont to giving praise, fascinated by the facts and fiction of the man who would have been president that never was. Instead, his surviving wife and orphaned son became presidents whose respective terms were marked by military (Cory’s) and “civil” (Noynoy’s) coups d'etat.

            The play Ako si Ninoy (2009) was a commissioned work that I gladly and quickly embraced until its entire run. However, the film based on the same material is of my own volition. In a sense, it’s my way of disabusing the mind from a kind of hero-worship that has been overtaken by events, as it were.

            It’s a curious awakening about heroes and heroism that could be commuted to the Filipino Everyman, after all. The film depicts, in a slice-of-life fashion, the lives of 11 characters as they reflect or represent, individually or otherwise, the Ninoy in everyone. In other words, there’s a Ninoy or a hero waiting to happen in all of us.

            As a film, such is not an original concept though, having derived the idea in part from Mike de Leon’s Bayaning 3^rd World (1999). De Leon’s film posits the theme of “kanya-kanyang Rizal,” in the same manner that Ako si Ninoy themes with “kanya-kanyang Ninoy.”

            The play resounded as a musical, so there’s no reason that its musical film version can’t. (It’s about time, one might say, considering the history and dismal performance of movie musicals in the country since time immemorial.) Such syllogism is, of course, inaccurate, as various factors come into play, particularly in the marketing and distribution of the film. But I remain undaunted.

            While it’s true that our company, the Philippine Stagers Foundation (PSF), has almost perfected the marketing of theater or live performances, knowing our demographics and the nature of native circumstances, I realize that selling films is an entirely different ballgame. As writer, director, producer and actor in both disciplines, I indeed wear several hats of familiar or strange sizes and shapes.

            The scope of a musical film usually mixes style and challenges genre boundaries, yet I prefer not to fall into a pastiche. The many but distinct characters of Ako si Ninoy have a solid unifying center in (Ninoy’s) heroism and kindred spirit. 

Pushing the limits shall enhance the film’s epic spectacle, and varied locations in different places/regions must be engaged for each of the 11 major cast surrounding Ninoy and Cory. The music by Pipo Cifra (of UST and ABS-CBN) is all original, studied and composed, hewing closely to the text of the musical material. Ako si Ninoy is not strictly a period piece; the production’s design showcases what’s casual and customary at present, juxtaposed with Ninoy and Cory’s not-so-distant time. And the cinematography breezes the scenes bright and lovely in most parts.  

            To portray Ninoy, Jericho Rosales (or Dennis Trillo) is apt for the role that demands top acting with good singing ability to boot. Cory’s role has been settled, if unanimously, in favor of Heart Evangelista, who fortunately belongs to the same pedigreed class.

            The rest of the cast shall be performed mostly by the Stagers, the PSF’s pool of talents, long in the wings to be discovered by mainstream entertainment. I also dream of casting about for James Reid and Nadine Ilustre, or their equivalents, in significant juvenile roles.

            As president, artistic director and main marketing man, I manage and direct the full operations of PSF from dawn to dusk to dawn, in a manner of speaking. But cinema offers an entirely different challenge, really a world apart from theater, although I’m not exactly a stranger to it. (I’ve done and dealt in two films, 2013’s Otso and 2014’s Esoterika Maynila, both directed by Elwood Perez.) The film arena is more complex, and in perilous times, but definitely more widely engaging and interesting, despite ,or because of, its current video and digital format.

            With the most successful theater company in the country behind me, I look at filmmaking as the next sphere of endeavor to explore. The field may be crowded and madding, but I believe there’s always room for a new seed to grow and bear fruit.

            Up until now no feature film on Ninoy Aquino -- or a similar film feature on Cory, for that matter -- has fired the imagination of filmmakers enough to put it on the big screen. Except for some documentaries, the definitive Ninoy or Cory film is yet to come.

To a certain extent, Ako si Ninoy serves as a fitting finale to a presidency and administration that have been straddling between the question of and the answer to heroes. Either way, let history judge the good or evil that men (and women) do, to paraphrase the Bard. Time and the memories of mice and men, with due apologies to John Steinbeck, shall be the final arbiter to scare or beat the living daylights out of so-called heroes or heels in any nation’s life.

Finally, Ako si Ninoy proposes a timely interpretation, an oblique view to the fabled life and politics of Ninoy through dance and song.

SPJCN Budget: Ph 15M

Ako Si Ninoy (Synopsis)

Synopsis

                                               

AKO SI NINOY

(A MUSICAL ON THE LIFE AND ETERNAL TIMES OF BENIGNO AQUINO, JR.)

Written and directed by Vince Tañada

Forget subdued. Ako si Ninoy is a film spectacle that traces the lives of  11 individuals in contemporary Philippines, and how they relate to the public persona and private character of the late modern-day hero, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr., which resonate in our national life.

An overseas Filipino worker (OFW), a housewife, a teacher, a journalist, a labor leader, an activist, a doctor, a student, a teen star, a war veteran and a child hero: Their parallel lives, single and collective, and told in episodic style, are reflected on the screen, as they weave a tapestry of entwining stories that bear the stuff of heroism and what eventually makes a hero in everyone, just like Ninoy, the guiding thread of the film.

But heroes need not be dead.

            Freely inspired by Mike de Leon’s Bayaning 3^rd World (1999), this film biography is adapted from Vince Tañada’s multi-awarded play of the same title, which suggests the Ninoy Aquino in every Filipino. A breakthrough in Philippine theater, the same play hit the boards, successfully touring the country with almost 500 performances in 2009 and 2010, to coincide with the campaign and election of Benigno “Noynoy” Simeon Aquino III for the presidency in May 2010.

            The biography’s narrative is character-driven, redolent of current issues and historical reflections, and the plot, such as it is, simply drifts in sequencing the formation of the whole film structure.

            In the end, our individual take on Ninoy’s heroism defines our own living heroism, as we struggle, survive and prevail.

SPJCN Budget: Ph15M