Dissecting relationships stories according to direk Dan Villegas

MANILA, Philippines – In the company of Gerald Anderson and Bea Alonzo in this afternoon presscon threatened by heavy rains, direk Dan Villegas looks pretty much like any other personality with the aura of “celebrityhood” totally absent in his persona.

Three years after his successful leap from indie glory to unanimous mainstream acceptance through English Only Please, direk Dan remains a humble handler of relationship stories.

He begins by giving us a quick outline of his latest film, How To Be Yours.

Says he: “Every project is a challenge and although I have a fairly good idea on how the finished product should look like, I rely a lot on my actors and their individual inputs. I always consider every suggestion and if I think it will be good for the story, I always listen and agree to the next move with their inputs in mind. Hence, I cannot say the whole story is entirely mine. First, I have to spend days and weeks conceptualizing with my writers. Initially, our idea is to develop something about choices on love and career. Then, we agree on the characters. After several projects, I realize I am not a story-driven kind of director. My foremost concern is always developing the characters and from there, I frame the story. Of course, you hope you will find the right actors. Believe it or not, I learn more by collaborating with my actors than reading books on the elements of filmmaking. So when I learned, I will be working with Bea Alonzo and Gerald Anderson, I thought half of the work is done. Working with Gerald in Always Be My Maybe, I have no doubts he can establish rapport with his co-actor even if they have not worked with each other in a long, long time. The right story should always come with the right actors.”

Gerald says working with Dan is not just hard work but a lot of fun as well. “On the set, he makes sure everyone is comfortable. We discuss the characters, he gives his inputs and I contribute mine. The first thing I realized is that the director knows what a woman goes through after every chapter of a relationship, happy or sad. To him, every dialogue, every camera frame should mirror that moment. I must say he knows more about women than I do. His perennial concern is that everything that we do should look real from the audience’s point of view.”

Gerald says he is glad it was Dan who handled his reunion film with Bea.

She was his teenage crush and the friendship later evolved into something they could not define. “It was beautiful while it lasted. It didn’t evolve into anything probably because I was too young and she was busy with work. I do believe in right timing and look, destiny brought us together again.”

Bea says she learned a lot working with Dan who has a way of opening up an actor’s acting arsenal. “Direk Dan taught me not to be afraid to feel something during the shoot. He would say, ‘Grab that moment and use it to define your character.’ Actually, I did something he didn’t expect from one scene and I told him, ‘Sorry, direk. I did it my own way.’ He reassured me what I did was just what he needed for that scene. Indeed, this latest journey into film was memorable because of him. He has ideas about the characters and he would always ask us if it was better if the characters ended up this way or that way. Whatever it is I accomplished in this movie is not wholly mine. Lots of it surfaced due to his motivations.”

Direk Dan says he has no concrete formula on how to make the best of relationship stories. His deft handling of Walang Forever where he won another Best Director trophy didn’t mean he could use the same approach in Always Be My Maybe and The Breakup List and now How To Be Yours.

Says he: “The thing is every project needs a different approach as you deal with totally new characters. It’s easy to journey into fantasy land just to make the love story look sweet. But audiences these days are very perceptive. They will know if you did the same thing from your past projects. And so the only choice is to make the story and the characters look real. Although the ideas came from the writers, the characters have to be thoroughly fleshed out with interpretative ideas from your actors. I actually ask them how they’d feel when they find themselves in the same situation like the story of the film we are making. I get interesting ideas and from them, I flesh out the finished product with the soul of collaboration present in every frame.”

How To Be Yours opens nationwide on July 27.