Through the years with Direk Marilou
I became a fan of Marilou Diaz-Abaya after watching her first blockbuster film Brutal in 1980.
In 1985, I finally saw her for the first time in person at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) watching Cecile Licad perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.
2 with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. With her was Charito Solis and Dina Bonnevie who were doing their exposure research as part of their immersion for a coming film on musicians. Solis was cast as a soprano and Bonnevie as pianist. I also heard that Richard Gomez would play the role of a violinist.
I thought that explained their presence in that concert.
But when Mother Lily saw the rushes of Marilou’s film in progress with Solis singing an operatic aria, the lady producer was horrified, not so much by the “singer” but by the volley of high notes from the “screen soprano.” The film was shelved. When Ricky Lo accepted me as one of his contributors in the late ’80s to the ’90s, I got to interview Marilou more often and got to watch her other films after Brutal. In my book, Sa Pusod Ng Dagat, Jose Rizal and
Muro-Ami are gems of Philippine cinema. It was at this point that I re-discovered that Marilou was a fanatic music lover. I thought she was at the CCP with Solis and Bonnevie in 1985 as part of a research for a film on musicians. Our common love for music led me to personally introduce her to Licad who became one of her best friends. Licad was at St. Luke’s Hospital for Marilou’s first chemo session in 2007. I begged off. I told Licad I couldn’t stand the sight of Marilou in a hospital, much more in a chemo treatment session.
Even as I write this, I am not sure if I can go to the wake. When the news of her passing away was flashed on the TV screen last Monday night, I let out a scream startling my grandson Emman who is a godson of the filmmaker. Because right after interviewing her for
The Philippine STAR in the late ’80s to the ’90s and after introducing her to Licad, we became close friends. We were always together at CCP and Philamlife theaters for concerts; I watched all her films on opening day to monitor how they were doing at the box-office. I know that after
Brutal, her films continued to dominate the awards night but some of them didn’t do just well in the box-office. On the opening day of her Muro-Ami, which I thought was too serious and profound for the masa, I was at Robinsons Galleria at 10 in the morning and watched the film’s closest rival in the box-office, a Judy Ann Santosstarrer (the title of which escapes me at the moment). I asked the theater usher, “Where are the Judy Ann Santos fans?” when I noticed the theater was empty. “They are all in the adjacent theater watching Muro-Ami.”
That was when I realized the movie’s message couldn’t be that heavy after all.
By just looking at my face after the screening, Marilou knew I loved the film personally but with a reservation equally written all over my face: What about the
masa who will decide its box-office fate in the festival?
“In fairness to Mother Lily,” Marilou told me later, “it was she who predicted Muro
Ami will make money. It wasn’t Mother Lily’s production. It was a GMA film just like
Jose Rizal.
When she sensed I was worried about the possible outcome of her Noon at Ngayon (a sequel to Moral), she rued then: “You know I am more used to rejection than acceptance. Noon
at Ngayon is my 18th or 19th film. Since I am more exposed to criticism rather than commercial success, I had a lot of practice keeping calm. Patience and calm are what you need and a lot of trying until you find the common language with your audiences.”
As a person and as an artist, Marilou found herself loving her audiences more than the film industry itself. When her string of blockbusters came one after the other, she considered it a major turnaround.
She confided it had taken her decades to make friends with her audience.
A graduate of a film school in California and London, Marilou came to terms with her audience: “For once, I realized the setback and handicap of a very Western education in which I systematically and methodically exerted to reverse. Because I could see the richness of our audiences from the very beginning even in my TV work, I could sense they have something more important than my Western education could not provide. The people who loved Ai-Ai de las Alas in
Tanging Ina are certainly the same people who love and admire Randy David. They are certainly the same audience who will be moved to tears by the performance of Cecile Licad. They will avoid a movie if they cannot connect emotionally. It has nothing to do with intelligence.”
In one screening of Muro-Ami at Megamall, Marilou told me she sat long enough on the toilet bowl in the ladies room during the intermission to find out the feedback on her movie. “They loved the underwater scenes and they love the children diving into the deep blue sea,” she recalled.
What I discovered about Marilou as music fan jibed with my madness as movie fan (I told her I hiked from East Ave. to Gilmore Ave. just to have a glimpse of Susan Roces).
By then, Marilou could not have enough of Licad at the CCP; she wanted to follow us in the province as well. She went with us to Licad’s concert in Tuguegarao City. When I announced Marilou’s presence in the audience, the concert crowd responded with a long applause. After the concert, there were two long lines of autograph-seekers: One for Licad and another for Marilou.
In Baguio City, when Marilou found out I was doing everything myself in the Licad outreach concert, she volunteered to be my assistant. “Okay, Pablo. You take care of your other concerns and I will take care of Cecile.” Of that concert, I remember Marilou shouted at the piano tuner when she smelled liquor on stage. “Nobody touches liquor in this concert until the piano is thoroughly tuned!” she thundered and I thought it shook the