We’re writing a short story when a shadow falls upon the paper, followed by furry feet.
Saffy, get off our notebook, we’re writing.
Please get off our notebook.
You can’t be hungry, you just ate. And we just cleaned the litter box so you can’t complain. It’s our writing time, go away.
– I am inspiring you.
– Thanks, but what’s the point when we can’t see the page.
– That is not my problem.
Movie #15: Blue Jasmine. Movie #16: Dallas Buyers Club. Movie #17: August Osage County.
This post has been updated as the Colin association made us too kind.
Oh, please. “Romantic” is not a synonym for “ludicrous”. This is a movie that tries to make everything “romantic”, including consumption (tuberculosis). Apparently consumption is a fever that makes the afflicted so hot, she has to sleep in a tent on the roof in the dead of winter to keep herself from combusting. She never coughs, though, cause that’s unattractive. Everyone has a miracle! Afterwards, they fly into the sky and turn into stars! Who buys this hooey? Oh right, 11-year-olds who dream of pink unicorns. Past 11, the sappy dimwit market. Marketing term: “Sensitive romantics”.
The lovely leads, Colin (Was it necessary to give him Three Stooges hair?) and Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey, work hard to evoke true love, but they get no help at all from the dumb script and prosaic direction of Akiva Goldsman. This is supposed to be an adaptation of Mark Helprin’s novel—really? If you’re going to make the audience believe in something so far-out, you need to bring the Spielberg, the Jackson, those guys. And does Russell Crowe intend to overact his way through the remaining decade of his career?
Beautiful horse, and the one magical moment was seeing Eva Marie Saint. Watch this movie with friends recovering from breakups. It’ll make them happy they broke up.
We shot this off a laptop so the sound is muffled. In this scene: Tesa Celdran, Ronnie Liang, Federico Olbes, and our band of extras.
Last year, filmmaker Elwood Perez (Lipad, Darna, Lipad; Disgrasyada; Diborsyada; Waikiki) asked us to write a movie.
“But we’ve never written a movie from scratch,” we said. “It will be terrible for sure.”
“Only you can write this movie!” Elwood declared.
“What’s it about?”
“Oh you know, East is East and West is West…the different types of gays in Manila…and the lead is Ronnie Liang. And Carlos Celdran must be in it, as himself.”
“Yes, but what’s it about?”
“Bahala ka na diyan,” he said, airily. “Daahling,” he added, like Tennessee Williams by way of Rita Gomez, “I’ll be busy all of next week, so just text.”
“But…but…but…”
The following week.
“Where were you?” we asked Elwood.
“Oh, my partner sold his car and I shot an indie movie,” Elwood said, as if this were something most people did anyway.
“In one week?”
“Yes, and I’ve edited it. The title is Otso. What do you think?”
We were floored by Otso and started working on a synopsis for the next movie. After many lunches and coffees, we had a sequence guide.
“Sige, isulat mo na yan,” Elwood said. “Make it sound like you.”
“Who’d want to watch that?”
“Hahaha, ikaw talaga. Can you add vampires?”
“Vampires??”
Weeks passed. We added vampires.
Elwood skimmed through the sequences. “Puede na ito. Write the screenplay na.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to add anything? Werewolves? Cause once we start writing, we’re not changing the plot.”
“Gawin mo na.”
That night, at 3am, Elwood sent us 10 text messages describing additional characters and changes to the storyline. Ordinarily we hate late revisions, but Elwood’s ideas were so outré, we had to use them. The barrage of text messages continued for weeks. The writing was slow at first, but once we realized that making sense of the whole shebang was not our problem and that the director would throw out most of the script anyway, we finished it in a few days.
“Ang mahal naman ng screenplay mo,” Elwood said. “This is a no-budget movie.”
“You said you wanted parties.”
Elwood’s solution was to call a friend. “Daahling, are you having a party next week? Can I shoot there?”
Elwood started shooting the movie. Next thing we know, the title had been changed from Object of Desire to Esoterica Manila. In January he showed us the trailer.
“I didn’t know Jon Hall was in the movie,” we said.
“That’s footage I shot a long time ago and never used,” Elwood explained. “It works.”
“What are all those socialites doing there?”
“Nag-shoot ako at a cocktail party.”
“Umm…do they know they’re in the movie?”
“They do now.”
Elwood wanted a scene in a bookshop.
“Our hero has a thirst for culture. Literature. Art,” he reminded us.
“We could ask Solidaridad to let us shoot there.”
“Perfect. We’ll need extras.”
So we put out a call for extras, and some readers gamely turned up. This being a no-budget movie, the crew consisted of Elwood, DOP Jopa, and Elwood’s driver Gilbert holding a microphone. Elwood blocked the scene.
“Alright,” he told us, “Turn this way, hold up the book, and sign it at this angle.”
“In mid-air? Isn’t that unnatural?”
“Basta, ako ang direktor!” he declared, turning to our band of intrepid extras. “Hijo, masyado kang matangkad, masisira ang composition. Doon ka sa likod. Okay, when you give her your book to sign, tilt it so we can see the cover, and then hand it to her, slowly.”
“He has to do his own slow-motion?” we laughed.
“Quiet. You there, turn right, crane your neck, that’s your angle. Hold that pose. Dapat maganda kayong lahat, lalo na’t walang bayad ito. Don’t look at the camera. Feel beautiful! Feel gorgeous! Okay, roll!”
Our shoot went quickly. We improvised our lines.
Last week Elwood sent us the rough edit for subtitling in English.
“Uh…Elwood? We don’t recall having written a gay rape scene.”
“No, that’s a movie they’re watching.”
“Did we have transgender characters?”
“Yes, isn’t she gorgeous? I couldn’t get a big star—no budget, remember—so I added her. So much more interesting.”
“There’s full frontal nudity.”
“Ang bongga, diba? That’s why I call it Esoterica. It’s not for everyone.”
“Why are those guys speaking in French?”
“Because they can! So our movie is in Tagalog, English, French and Spanish. Very cosmopolitan ang dating.”
We’re pretty sure we didn’t write it, but we can’t wait to see it. Here’s the scene we shot at Solidaridad with our reader-volunteers. Thank you for showing up! (Sinabi nang act natural, eh.)
Read our column at InterAksyon.
Bonus: At our sister’s insistence, Conan’s interview with the Sochi PR rep.
We enjoy political incorrectness, but when we compiled our 100 Favorite Books last year, we did find it strange that less than a fifth were by women. Recently we got acquainted with the work of two women writers we wouldn’t have heard of if their novels had not been reissued by NYRB Classics. So we looked up the literary reputations of Elizabeth Taylor and Olivia Manning, and learned that they had been well-regarded in their lifetimes (they were contemporaries) but have fallen out of fashion. What would you prefer: living obscurity, or posthumous obscurity?
Elizabeth Taylor would probably have more readers today if she didn’t happen to share a name with the movie star. We knew of her novel Angel (1957)—the film adaptation by Francois Ozon costarred Michael Fassbender—but didn’t know she’d written it. As for Olivia Manning, our former publisher had recommended her Balkan Trilogy enthusiastically, but it took us a while to connect those books with Fortunes of War, the BBC series from the 80s starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.
In the end we picked up their books because they were published by NYRB Classics, and because their covers feature cats. In Manning’s novel, the Siamese cat Faro is the young hero’s only ally. In Taylor’s, the spoiled Persian cats living in the anti-heroine’s ruined mansion reflect her state of mind.
Do you hate-watch certain TV shows so you can mock them and rejoice in their failings? We envy Elizabeth Taylor’s sharp, elegant prose so we can’t hate-read Angel, but we were rooting for the protagonist to fall flat on her face. Angelica Deverell is a shopkeeper’s daughter who lives in a fantasy world. She’s a monster—selfish, narcissistic, shameless, ilusyonada, qualities which help her become a wildly popular romance novelist. Critics rip her books to shreds, but the public laps them up. She becomes very rich, indulges her every whim (a grand estate, peacocks, expensive tacky furniture), and lands the man of her dreams.
Even as we loathe the woman, we have to admire her guts. Unlike her aunt and her mother, Angel doesn’t “know her place” or quietly “accept her lot in life”. She’s uppity, but she has the strength of her convictions.
Just when we think this horrible creature will get everything she wants, she encounters her true nemesis. Go self-sabotage!
The hero of Olivia Manning’s School for Love is Felix, an extremely naive English teenager who is shipped off to Jerusalem after the death of his parents in Iraq. It’s 1945, war is raging in Europe, and the city is crammed with refugees. Felix is taken in by his father’s foster sister, Miss Bohun, who runs the world’s most awful boarding house. Miss Bohun is the pastor of the Ever-Readies, one of the many religious groups that have hied off to Jerusalem to await the second coming. She keeps Felix in a state of malnutrition and actually overcharges for the privilege. Faro, the Siamese cat whom she keeps to control the rat population, becomes Felix’s confidant—cat and boy snuggle together to keep from freezing in that awful place.
Every time the hypocritical, miserly, self-righteous crone shows up we grit our teeth and wait for justice. Will it come? Will it be in the person of Mrs. Ellis, the charming young widow whom Miss Bohun regrets having invited to stay in the boarding house? Most importantly, will Faro be all right?
Manning’s prose is keenly observed and psychologically acute. We want more, so we’re finally going to take on Manning’s Balkan Trilogy. After the Balzac stories. And a Nancy Mitford novel or two.
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