What’s up with Bayani Agbayani?
Last Sunday, Father’s Day, I asked Bayani Agbayani what his wishes are for his children.
“My wish for my children Thalia, Rosalina, Mary Mar, Sabrina and my two-month-old grandchild is for them not only to have perfect intellectual quotient, but also high emotional quotient, a social quotient, adversity quotient and quotiensiya,” he said.
Turning more serious, the comedian added: “And I really wish this pandemic will end because I want Sabrina and Vito to be playing outside and running in parks without masks.”
Last June 5, Netflix released Taiwanese film “Pinoy Sunday” starring Bayani together with Epy Quizon. Released by Good Day Films in Taiwan back in 2010, it is about two overseas Filipino workers spending their day-off in Taipei.
They find a red sofa in downtown Taipei and decide to carry it back by foot to their dormitory in the province which is hours away by bus. Director Wi Ding Ho, originally from Malaysia but has been residing in Taiwan for more than 10 years was inspired by Roman Polanski’s “Two Men and a Wardrobe,” a short film that was released back in 1958 in which two seamen carry a huge wardrobe (clothes cabinet) which they lug into town.
Ho, himself, a graduate of New York University, once scavenged a couch from the streets of New York and thought it would be fun to show a sofa being hauled around the city on foot. It made sense to have foreign workers, who could not afford to hire a truck, be the ones to do the hauling.
And who best represent the foreign workers in Taiwan but the Filipinos! This is where our Filipino actors Agbayani and Quizon come in together with Alessandra de Rossi and Meryl Soriano.
I watched the film and what makes it funny is not only the banter between the two lead actors, but the absurd circumstances they encounter on the way back to the province.
What touched me in the film, however, is the universal longing for home. This is probably the reason many Filipinos packed Taiwanese theaters to watch the flick when it was shown there.