The Filmmaker In His Lair

You can begin with a close-up, maybe of a pair of spectacles being laid down on a table. It doesn’t have to be in the script or storyboard, but the close-up could lead to essential development of character.

You can begin with the director Eddie Romero laying down his eyeglasses on the coffeetable in his living room in a house on Orestes Lane, off Mariposa in Cubao, a stone’s throw away from the old storied LVN studios.

And Romero, national artist for film, is saying that you can begin with a close-up that isn’t in the script, because this is what is called director’s instinct, oido, something which cannot be taught in any film school.

Film can be taught, but only up to a certain extent. After that you’re on your own, Romero says. It is early afternoon and he has just finished his coffee after a late lunch, and this is as good a time as any to reminisce over the past years, it’s all coming back to him now, post-prandially.

He poses for some pictures taken by the magazine photographer, before varied paintings that hang on the walls of the house, in his den with the directing awards and trophies, pictures of his ancestors and of himself as a young man looking almost like James Dean, but with a hand over his face.

"That’s normal," Romero laughs when asked about his take on the recent Metro Manila Film Festival controversy and attendant mudslinging. "It’s the controversy that keeps it alive. The worst thing that can happen is if hindi pinansin."

Romero, a member of the Cinema Evaluation Board, acknowledges that a lot of Grade As were given by the board in the past year, which he attributes to the dawning of the digital age.

"Since the cost of production is lower you can afford to make movies that are not telenovela style," he says. "Max Oliveros, Pusang Gala, Kaleldo would never have been made on film."

At the age of 81, Romero has started pre-production on his first digital film. The concept and story of "Nasaan ang Pagibig" are by the director, while Rica Arevalo, who did "ICU Bed#7," is presently working on the script.

"It’s basically a love story of older and younger people. It’s partly a mystery, but I use the term mystery very loosely, in the sense that the characters are searching for something.

"Like Aguila has the senator searching for his father, and Kamakalawa has the anitos searching for fire.

"Unlike, say, Banta ng Kahapon which is a legitimate crime story."

It was in fact a detective story that first ushered a pre-teen Romero into the public eye. His father, the former Negros congressman whose constituency included Siaton and Siquijor, had sent the young Romero’s story to the Philippine Free Press magazine, whose publisher was a friend of Rep. Romero.

"We went to the Free Press office and the American publisher right then and there said he would buy my story. He fished out a five peso bill from his pocket and gave it to me. Five pesos then was a huge amount... You could have breakfast at the Manila Hotel in pre-war days for one peso.

"It was called ‘The Curtains and the Clock’ and ran for two installments. I hope that no one finds a copy of it now." He said the real fictionists of the time preferred contributing to Philippine Magazine, published by the American Hartendorp, but which Romero describes as "too literary."

During the war the teenaged Romero was constantly mobile, though he "was not exactly wanted. Pero malapit nang maging wanted".

He was in Negros, whose oriental side is his home province, in Cebu and Leyte.

Bohol? Strangely, it was his first time to visit Bohol only last November. And he hasn’t been home to Dumaguete in two years. When he does he ventures southwards towards the beaches of Siaton. He had sold the old Romero homestead on San Jose Street in the town center after none of his siblings expressed interest in living there.

"Marami," the director says of his films made in Dumaguete and environs. One of these is "Passionate Strangers." "Kama-kalawa" also was mostly shot there, and he recalls how once Boyet de Leon visited nearby Apo Island during a break in shooting and failed to return before nightfall as Romero had advised him. The motorboat hired by de Leon and company was carried by choppy waters to Siquijor.

"They were lucky they landed in Siquijor. If not, they would have been carried away to the Pacific ocean, and no more Boyet."

Romero remembers visiting Siquijor when he was six years old, but hasn’t been back since. In fact he has a book on Siquijor lying somewhere around his house on Orestes Lane, a travel book written by a French couple based on the isla.

"There are many things I have which I cannot find," he says.

Now, perhaps with a painting by Darnay Demetillo of a pregnant teenager in Baguio listening in, Romero recalls the Sampaguita years, as well his friendship with fellow national artist for film Gerry de Leon, who died in 1981 (see sidebar).

Shortly after the war he had spent some time at the British Film Institute in London, which incidentally is not a film school but a museum, and where he learned the fundamentals of directing from the likes of Roberto Rosselini and David Lean, the latter described by Romero as "a compleat master of the medium" and who taught him the importance of editing.

It was also in London, at the Philippine embassy there, that he learned to speak Tagalog, although in a somewhat crude form.

After returning to the Philippines, he directed his first blockbuster hit for Sampaguita, "Kasintahan sa Pangarap" (1951), which starred the hottest love team of that generation, Pancho Magallona and Tita Duran, the late old folks of the present-day rapper FrancisM.

Next came "Roberta" with Tessie Agana, the studio’s biggest box office hit.

He credits Sampaguita owner Dr. Jose Perez for being "good at knowing what the public wanted in his time."

It was Dr. Perez, he says, who contracted such stars as Susan Roces, Carmen Rosales ("I thought there was only one Mameng"), Leopoldo Salcedo, Alicia Vergel, Gloria Romero.

In 1953 he left Sampaguita to help found an independent production outfit, having grown tired of the seeming formulaic stories of his mother studio.

Then there was Romero’s Hollywood sojourn, where he tried his hand at making Fil-Am co-productions, but which he now describes as "exhausting."

Romero says in American-produced films the director is involved in everything "from pre-production to shooting all the way to post-production and marketing."

It was with a couple of American friends that he set up Hemisphere Pictures in the 1960s, which released the movies co-directed by de Leon-Romero, "Intramuros" (The Walls of Hell) and its remake "Manila, Open City."

The cult films "Brides of Blood," "Mad Doctor of Blood Island," and "Beast of Blood," Romero has gone on record to say are his worst work, quality-wise.

"But I have to reconsider," he says of the films that have garnered a faithful fan base and earned him fan mail from around the world. To this day there are still orders coming through the Internet for DVD copies of these movies about a mad scientist in his campy isolated island.

In the 1970s the tide began to turn for the director Romero with "Black Mama, White Mama," followed by the sequence of films that won for him the filmmaker of the decade that was awarded by Pope John Paul II during his first visit here: "Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon," "Aguila," and "Sinong Kapiling, Sinong Kasiping."

One of his regrets is that he knows of no extant copy of "Sinong Kapiling," lost to some forgotten studio or the elements... "nabulok na siguro."

Romero remains upbeat about the possibilities of film even in the digital age, and names Lav Diaz and Laurice Guillen as two directors who have a very fine film sense–"they have a good grasp and awareness of what the medium can do".

As for Lav’s 10-hour epic, Romero doesn’t believe it was specially made for film fests, but that Diaz did it "because that’s what he wanted to do."

Mario O’ Hara? Romero thinks he’s one of the best we have around. Another underrated one who’s been missing in action is Celso Ad. Castillo. "Of course, he’s now no longer a kid."

By having good film sense, Romero also means that the director knows when to open a scene with a close-up whether or not it’s in the script or storyboard, maybe of a pair of spectacles being laid down on a table.

"When you finish a movie, that’s it, you’re done and you can’t go back to it, just like a love affair," he says.

Is he satisfied with what he’s done so far? "I don’t even know what will happen five minutes from now. But I never begin shooting a film thinking this will be a masterpiece. I always start scared."