Mel Chionglo: It pays to be nice

Carmelo “Mel”  Chionglo would be the first to agree with the accusation of many that he is one of the nicest directors in show business. “Masyado daw akong mabait,” he says. To most, mabait would be tantamount to non-controversial, non-headline grabbing. In other words — boring.

But Mel being Mel, couldn’t care less. It is less stressful to be amiable on the set. It puts the actors more at ease, more relaxed and therefore more prone to better performances, he declares.

One of those who graduated from production designer to director (like Peque Gallaga, Don Escudero, Jeffrey Jeturian, Dante Mendoza), Mel started late in the industry in 1976 after returning from studies in New York. Instead of going into theater for which he took training, he found himself in a whirlwind romance with the motion picture industry, working with the biggest and the best, and picking up nominations for Best Production Design for many of them from the Urian.

Mel was first invited by friend and former classmate Mike de Leon to do the production design for the latter’s initial forays into direction Itim then Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising. Soon he was doing Gumising ka Maruja and Ina, Kapatid, Anak for Lino Brocka; Kasal for Laurice Guillen; Salawahan, Walang Katapusang Tag-araw and Ikaw ay Akin for Ishmael Bernal; Aguila for Eddie Romero; and Temptation Island for Joey Gosiengfiao, before going into direction.

Although LEA Productions had initially offered Mel his first film direction for Anong Kulay ang Mukha ng Diyos, (which eventually went to Lino Brocka), he ended up megging Playgirl for Regal where he early on had a 10-year contract. The movie which had the stellar cast of Charito Solis, Gina Alajar, Phillip Salvador, Gabby Concerpcion, Jimi Melendez, Al Tantay, Alicia Alonzo performed well at the tills which made Mother Lily love the new director even more. It also gave Mel an Urian nomination for Best Direction.

Direk Mel was on a roll. Summer Holiday, followed, then Anak, Sinner or Saint (for which he was nominated as Best Director by the Urian), Dear Mama, Teenage Marriage, Company of Women, I want to Live, Dyesebel (which introduced Alice Dixson), and Lagarista (which gave Piolo Pascual his first lead role) among some 40 or so other films. It was beginning to prove that being mabait was indeed an advantage in the industry peppered with directors who screamed expletives to their cast and crew.

And as if this were not enough, the best breaks were still to come.

Shock enveloped the Philippine motion picture industry with the death of prime mover director Lino Brocka in May 21, 1991 in a vehicular accident. Brocka was all prepared to start shooting on a story he entered and won in a BBC competition on the environment. Script was written by Ricky Lee, Lolita Rodriguez and Gina Alajar were to star in it, locations had been chosen. Brocka at this time was the toast of the festival circuit, having successfully penetrated Cannes as well as other festivals around the world. The BBC project Lucia was another entry into the foreign market.

The producers at BBC were stunned as well as everyone else. But the contract had to be fulfilled and they asked for a Filipino director to continue the project. Lucia’s line producer immediately thought of Mel and within weeks after the burial of Lino, Lucia started grinding.

Mel tells us that all of them on the film, all very close to Lino, were still numb while they were shooting. After two weeks the shooting was done, possibly through the guidance of the original director who had obviously served as their inspiration.

Lucia remains Mel’s favorite movie for obvious reasons and the sentimental value of continuing a Brocka project. However, it, too, is the project where absolutely no compromises were asked of him, and when submitted for competition in the UK won Best Picture. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a copy of it, although one could acquire a copy though BBC Television with English, Tagalog, Spanish subtitles. It dramatizes the real story of a Filipino woman and her family who leave their fishing village after an oil spill, move to the ghettos outside Manila, and how they struggle to keep family together amidst terrorism, crime and corruption. It could easily be as truthful today as it was 26 years ago.

In 1994, another turn of events gave Mel’s directorial career a new boost. This was Sibak or Midnight Dancer, followed by Burlesk King in 1999, and Twilight Dancers in 2006. When Brocka’s Macho Dancer (1989) started making waves abroad, festival programmers and buyers from Toronto and Rotterdam started asking prominent directors in the Philippines for projects that would tackle male prostitution. Mel rode the wave of this foreign interest and with script by Ricky Lee came up, although quite unplanned, with these three films that came to be known eventually as the gay trilogy.

This year, Mel returns to filmmaking with Bente again with script by Ricky Lee in a political thriller that sounds as interesting as reality TV of the highest level. A co-production series between the Director’s Guild and Tony Tuviera (of Urduja fame), the digital project involves picking six winners from story and sequence treatments submitted by DGPI members for theatrical distribution. One of the winners is Mel and he is already on his location hunting phase. Two other winners Joel Lamangan and Lore Reyes have completed principal photography. P3-M per film is the budget provided by Tuviera for the Director’s Series.

The soft-spoken doer is happy over current developments in the movie scene. The technical revolution has made it possible for films to be available to the greatest number in various forms. Movies in the digital format have also made it more accessible for filmmakers to produce their own movies at an affordable cost. It is also now possible to preserve films for posterity, so many of which have been lost in the past through negligence and lack of foresight and funds. There is also, Mel says, the upcoming true digital cinema house in the SM malls. “We are very lucky in this way to be living in these times,” he ends.

(E-mail me at [email protected].)