N/SAQ: Manila Envelope

to my very few and very patient readers:
please be advised that I am continually editing and adding to this post;
until I can sort out a better way to reorganize..this is it...hence the date shouldn't change.

...as presently imagined; Manila Envelope opens with a newsreel clip of the Philippine National Anthem as would have been shown preceeding any theatrical film screening in Manila at that time (circa '85-'86). The Lupang Hinirang is a beautiful anthem, and this modern version which I found on YouTube is particularly stirring...when that shot of the huge flag, the brass and the big drums come in I start to mist up!...then of course, that is still to say nothing of the stratospheric production values!...




Lupang Hinirang
(official version used since 1956)


Bayang magiliw
Perlas ng Silanganan,
Alab ng puso,
Sa dibdib mo'y buhay.
Lupang Hinirang,
Duyan ka ng magiting,
Sa manlulupig,
Di ka pasisiil.

Sa dagat at bundok,
Sa simoy at sa langit mong bughaw,
May dilag ang tula
At awit sa paglayang minamahal.
Ang kislap ng watawat mo'y
Tagumpay na nagniningning,
Ang bituin at araw niya
Kailan pa ma'y di magdidilim.
Lupa ng araw, ng luwalhati't pagsinta,
Buhay ay langit sa piling mo;
Aming ligaya, na pag may mang-aapi
Ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo.



Never or (at best) Seldom Asked Questions

Q: So what is this unmade movie you're talking about?

A: My Unmade Movie (M.U.M.) is presently titled "Manila Envelope";
it is intended to be a romantic comedy/drama about a young(ish) Canadian guy who; after getting started in the animation industry in Australia, ends up spending ten months working in a cartoon studio in Manila. Part of the story unfolds against the backdrop of the first "People Power Revolution" of February 1986...which is also sometimes referred to as "the Miracle of EDSA".

Q: You say it's intended to be a romantic comedy/drama...why is that?

A: Right now; in its present form, it isn't particularly romantic, funny or dramatic...which is frustrating because in real life it was all those things.

Q: In real life?...is it autobiographical?

A: Maybe...mostly...with some embellishments.

Q: What really happened?

A: What really happened was I, or perhaps it was somebody else, was living quite happily in Australia with the intention of staying put and building a new life. Rather less happily this person was working in the animation industry which almost kept them fed and clothed and sheltered.
After three years in Sydney his visa had long since expired, and his various appeals through proper channels were rejected. He was told by the authorities that he had to leave...it was, for him, a complete tragedy and a disaster.
However, his Australian employers; Tinseltoons Pty Ltd. (a pseudonym) aware of his circumstances offered him a position heading up the Layout Dept. at their newly established satellite studio in Manila.

Q: Wow!

A: Not really, not to be churlish, but to some extent it was like being handed a poisoned chalice.

Q: Why do you say that?

A: Because the whole thing was a ghastly mess from the get go...except that the option of returning to Canada and no work in time for winter made it an offer he couldn't refuse...mercifully he was demoted to asst. dept. head before he even got on the plane.

Q: You were demoted?

A: Thankfully, he happily conceded to the seniority of another coworker who had arrived there a few months earlier. Ironically, this other fellow was a great guy and a good friend but not particularly good at running the dept.

Q: I see...so what was the project?

A: It was a Saturday Morning superhero thing, it was something like this...



...but for the sake of my story I've reimagined it as a thing about an 80s New Wave Pop band who are also a top secret tactical operations squadron. The band was going to be called HeatWave..but of course there was/is a real band called Heatwave...maybe I could get away with a different spelling...HEETWAAV?
Their alternate identities are as the HotW; "Heroes of the World"...not an official title but the way they were to be described in the media...which even then, in the real world, was hungry for sound bites.

Q: and?

A: and that's about it for now...aside from a blurb I wrote in the style of a studio press release; the sort that you might see in Variety, touting the networks new fall line ups...
...at some point I suppose I shall have to devise a couple of whole shows for the cartoon film within the film...suffice it to say that one idea is to have an episode titled "Intoducing Penny"...it's in homage to "Meet Pamela" in Truffaut's Day for Night.

Q: ?

A: I'm a pretentious git and I'm expropriating genius because I'm incapable of coming up with anything that good myself ...so why not celebrate the greatness of others...imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery...and possibly copyright infringement...besides I desperately wanted to portray, at some point; in montage, the now almost lost process of making an animated cartoon the old fashioned way; with drawings on paper, Xeroxing and hand painting of cels, track reading off of full coat mag film, shooting on rostrum cameras etc.
I also wanted to use some beautiful baroque music, preferably Bach, one of the Brandenburgs...after I'd hit upon that idea I rediscovered the montage sequence in Day for Night...call it cryptamnesia, subconscious plagerism...Truffaut's original will give you goose bumps!...if you love film...they used the same score (by George Delerue) for a montage at the Oscars a couple of years ago...so obviously I was onto a good thing...
There's also meant to be a reprise of this montage in the style of Koyaanisqatsi when they're frantically trying to hit a tight deadline...that kind of crap happened all the time.

Q: You seem to speak disparagingly of animation on the one hand and yet seem determined to celebrate it.

A: Basically, it is just the backdrop to the story, a triviality compared to what happens to the various characters and of course the huge, historically significant events of the revolution...but yes, people outside the industry have little or no idea how cartoons are made. It was certainly the case at that time that most shows were of such poor quality by the time they hit your TV screens that it belied the effort that went into them. Even then people who might feign an interest in what I did would ask, "oh yeah, they do all that with computers now don't they?" Not then they didn't!

Q: It's seldom spoken of today; was the revolution in the Philippines that big a deal?

A: Yes!, absolutely, although you're quite right...you wouldn't know it.
The will of the Filipino People had been frustrated by a corrupt regime that stole the election...sound familiar?
Sadly the phenomenon that started in the Philippines probably had less effect there than anywhere else...the Filipino people are still too self effacing to give themselves credit where credit is due. They are, or can be very...not neccesarily pious; but reverential in a fatalistic way; which is probably how they came to credit the almighty for the "Miracle of EDSA"...as if they couldn't do it themselves! They are, or could be, a great people.
When the time came the People took to the streets in a peaceful revolution of organized civil disobedience...nobody had done anything like that since Gandhi!...civilians formed a human shield around the break-away anti-Marcos military, who were, initially, outnumbered by the Marcos Loyalists...Filipino's demonstrated to the world that it could work...it was undeniably, grass-roots Democracy in action!...Kalayaang Democrasiya!...curious that it was only after the phrase "People Power" entered the language (and public consciousness) that the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain finally came down...
Reagan and Bush snr. might have liked to claim that they had won the Cold War...a War of attrition and outspending the other guy...maybe they did...but don't you think that just maybe, the People of the Philippines helped awaken the sheepish Eastern Block from it's apathetic stupor?

Q: Good point, but don't you think you sound like a bit of a propagandist?

A: the Latin root of propaganda translates as something like, "that which is worth disseminating". In the Philippines advertising of any kind is referred to, even in a positive context, as propaganda.
I had something of a political epiphany in the Philippines, I try not to take what freedom we still have too much for granted...

Q: You mentioned some interesting choices of music; Bach, and by inference Philip Glass...

A: The Philippines is an extremely musical country...I can't stress that enough...I need to find a way to work more of that aspect into my story...MTV launched that year...it was in Manila that I first saw Karaoke machines!...everybody had them, from the poorest of the poor to the super rich...the GMA supershow ran every Saturday morning...I think it was three hours long and there was always a new, very polished dance number to some current hit...The Vietnam War is sometimes referred to as the Rock and Roll War...it follows then that the People Power Revolution could be considered the MTV Revolution...I was glued to channel Four for most of it...that was the station that the rebels took control of first...

Q: So, obviously aside from Baroque music?...

A: I hope to include lots of contemporaneous Pop music...mostly as incidental BG stuff...how you can ever hope to "sell" the historical accurracy of recent history without it I don't know...unfortunately I was never a big fan of what is called O.P.M., Original Pinoy Music, which tends to the shlockier end of the international Pop spectrum...however I did and I do like the APO Hiking Society, the exquisite Kuh Ledesma...unforgettable...and Freddie Aguilar; but then, Aguilar in particular is a serious folk artist. I also remember the now very famous Leah Salonga as a kid; a Bobby Soxer in an ad for toothpaste with a Tagolog jingle sung to the tune of Madness' Baggy Trousers. I was hardly surprised when she was discovered, only a few years later by the producers of Miss Saigon and became the toast of London...here she is on Wogan in 1989...I seem to recall watching this at the time, when I was living in Finchley...



...a tad precocious in this interview perhaps, but still very young, and so charming and beautiful...

Q: What about the late Yoyoy Villame?

A: Yoyoy was and is a lovable cornball...I had in mind a scene in my film which recounts a rather tense episode in comedic form and again pays homage to other films; my protagonist and a friend thwart some banditos in a recreation of the pat-a-cake routine from the Hope Crosby Road pictures when they lead a group of villagers in a rendition of Mag Exercise Tayo...

Q: Bandits?

A: Yes that's an embellishment which I probably won't use...why would I?... the truth was more than interesting enough.

Q:?

A: I spent an incredibly tense day with a friend who had a complete and total mental break down...a serious psychosis...I was reticent about putting it in the story at all...but it still is just a dramatization...who can say if it really happened that way?

Q: Your friend wasn't you was it?

A: No, although I certainly feel that I earned the right to a melt down myself, especially after that day...I think I might have taken a day or two off work but perhaps not, because I did at one point tell the Studio manager to go F--- himself!

Q: You didn't get fired?

A: I didn't; it was in the heat of the moment...and by then I didn't really care....strangely enough it was soon after that that they asked me to extend my contract.

Q: Why was that?

A: At long last, they realized that I was the guy who had been trying to get the FX done that the client in the States was demanding...and that we weren't delivering...mostly because their man on site; the camera supervisor; had been turning down and otherwise sabotaging every request I made.

Q: So who was this guy?

A: I call him Jack Hackle (or High Jacker or Jack Hassle), he was a jaded, career animation cameraman who had worked for, and probably pissed off; everybody!
He turned fifty in Manila which is a year younger than I am now. Picture Tim Allen's Santa Claus with a permanent nicotine stain on his beard, and an attitude rather more like Billy Bob Thorton's version and there you have it...

Q: He sounds horrible...

A: Not really...he's probably the principle antagonist...the only real nemesis to our main character, but he isn't all bad either...in fact it was/is my intent to portray him in a somewhat more sympathetic light...almost tragic. As it stands he's quoted or alluded to in the epilogue...he has the last word; if only indirectly.

Q: Tell us something about the other characters...the plot...

A: There's our protagonist, the aforementioned antagonist...



a foreign guest worker foreign to work.

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