PUGILIST
As Tikoy Aguiluz put it, he grew up in a penitentiary (the Davao Penal Colony, or Depacol, where his father was prison auditor), learning how to box from one of the veteran convicts. With his six other brothers, all of them wearing shorts instead of long pants and speaking in a funny Tagalog accent instead of everyday Visayan, they attracted the attention and ridicule of all the other kids, not necessarily starting fights but finishing them wherever they went. Tikoy’s ambition in life was simple: to get a tattoo, and be a gangster; he ended up working briefly in Hollywood, then coming back to the Philippines to become one of the finest filmmakers in the industry.
You might say his youth in Davao was the root of Tikoy’s take-no-prisoners attitude. He played the game of kiss-ass poorly; he could be charming when he wanted, but had little patience for the incompetent or mediocre. When his debut feature Boatman (1984) became a smash hit, in the one theater in the Philippines that could screen the film without cuts (the infamous Manila Film Center that Imelda Marcos quickly erected, at the expense of construction workers still buried in its concrete), the offers came right and left to make Boatman 2. Tikoy dug in his heels and said no; he wanted to do something completely different — a series of well-written well-directed low-budget productions that would make their money back in cable. He looked for projects; did a documentary on Balweg (Father Balweg, Rebel Priest); after the 1986 EDSA Revolution he tried to develop a biopic on Ninoy Aquino.
Boatman (1984). First film I ever saw from the filmmaker was Boatman (1984). I remember how the whole film seemed to take place at night; how the toreros — live sex performers — having sex on a low cushioned platform with the audience sitting within arm’s reach; how unbelievably beautiful Sarsi Emmanuelle was (toreros were usually prostitutes too old or worn to make their living on the street), yet how effortlessly natural. I remember the circular narrative — how the film opens with the tip of Felipe’s (Felipe Paningbayan’s) little member trimmed in a rite of passage (chewing guava leaves for anesthetic), traces the boy’s rise from Pagsanjan rapids tour guide (now played by Ronnie Lazaro) to torero to lover of a powerful ganglord’s mistress — and closes with altogether more radical surgery. I was 18, barely of legal age, in a standing-room only crowd (might have been standing myself, or perched on the aisle steps); afterwards I stepped out of the cool dark into the broiling Manila Bay sun thoroughly shaken — could they just do that to people? Of course they could, and worse.
Bagong Bayani (1995). For almost 10 years I didn’t hear anything about the neophyte filmmaker; then the Flor Contemplacion case — a Filipina maid arrested in Singapore for murder — broke, and a docudrama (Bagong Bayani [Unsung Heroine]) was made on her life. I had started writing for The Manila Chronicle and attended a screening in the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). The film impressed me: the low-budget aesthetic, the unfussy unactorly cast (Helen Gamboa as a very human Flor, Chanda Romero as an intense Delia Maga, Irma Adlawan as a warm supportive Virginia Parumog), the documentary footage which rounded out the story and gave the film wider context.
Tikoy initially planned a drama based on footage he shot — interviews of Flor’s family, demonstrations demanding Flor’s release — but events leaped ahead of him; Flor had been hanged. Viva Films announced a big movie on Flor’s life and recruited the Contemplacion family, who promptly shut Tikoy out; he had little beyond the interviews and demonstration footage. “Finishing that film was one of the most difficult things I ever did,” he said. “Whenever I have a hard time on a project now, I tell myself ‘No matter how bad things get, they can’t be as bad as when I made Bagong Bayani.”
So he shot what he could from what little he scraped together, and when he stepped into the editing room he “didn’t have a main character… didn’t have a script… didn’t have half the scenes needed to tell the story properly. So I decided to base the film’s structure on The Meaning of Life.”
I thought I misheard. “You mean Monty Python? And Now For Something Completely Different?” Tikoy grinned: “Dramatizations connected by documentary footage and the occasional video clip. I finished the film.”
I wrote on the film and recommended it to the Hong Kong International Film Festival. By this point Tikoy was at a low ebb; he had sold property, taken out loans, hocked everything he could; he finished first, but because Viva’s was a multimillion peso studio production (with no less than superstar Nora Aunor as Flor) and Tikoy’s was a no-budget docudrama, every theater in Metro Manila refused the latter because they wanted the former (which, surprise surprise, did big box-office). Tikoy managed to arrange screenings at the CCP and the University of the Philippines but that was it; he was stuck with a film that cost a good chunk of his personal finances with zero prospects. The Hong Kong Film Festival invite felt like a godsent opportunity.
(Or so Tikoy said; of course it’s possible he was being kind, as the film screened in Fribourg the week before Hong Kong — though invitations and screenings tend to follow a schedule all their own — but in lieu of stronger contrary evidence I’ll go with what he told me.)
Segurista (1996). Call it a pivot, or an offer Tikoy couldn’t refuse, but the filmmaker’s next project was with the aforementioned Viva Films. Segurista (Dead Sure) is an erotic noir about an insurance saleswoman who at night doubled as a GRO (Guest Relations Officer) at a high-class karaoke bar. An aspiring capitalist, Karen (Michelle Aldana), applying the concept of synergy, uses her late-night job to meet wealthy men, selling them life insurance and collecting fat commissions. Brilliant concept, and so logical one wonders why it hasn’t been done before (turns out it has: the story is based on a case that reportedly happened in Hong Kong).
Tikoy often maintained that his films combine two stories in one: Boatman was about toreros and the men guiding canoes down the Pagsanjan rapids; Segurista was about 1990s Asian prosperity complete with green-glassed skyscrapers and pastel nightclubs, and about the survivors of the 1992 Mt. Pinatubo eruption. The latter calamity is what drives Karen to venture into the big city and do what she needs to do — again, Tikoy uncovering stories no one else cared about, and retelling them as genre melodramas.
COLLABORATORS
Tikoy worked with talented people over the years — Nap Jamir, Yadi Sugandi, Jun Dalawis, Ely Cruz, Romulo Araojo, and Romy Vitug to name some cinematographers; Jesse Lasaten, Nonong Buencamino, Noel Espenida, Jaime Fabregas, and Joey “Pepe” Smith to name some musicians/composers. He approached Jose “Pete” Lacaba to write five of his features, presumably because he liked Lacaba’s lean and focused approach. The director seemed to go out of his way to find writers: Alfred Yuson, Rafael Ma. Guerrero, Amado Lacuesta, Ricky Lee, Lualhati Bautista, Rey Ventura, Roy Iglesias have all at one point or another written for him — even me, at one point (much to my surprise). More on that later.
Arguably Tikoy’s secret weapon was his editor, Marina Medina, who had been with him since Boatman. It was a unique relationship: Marina was involved as early as the script development stage, helping clarify what was crucial to the story and what, if things didn’t work, could be cut out. Checking her filmography – she’s directed shorts and documentaries but edits only for Tikoy, which is both interesting and a pity; call her Tikoy’s Thelma Schoonmaker — I consider Marina one of the best editors alive — and wonder what influence she might have had if she were ever willing to work with anyone else.
Rizal sa Dapitan (1997). The year 1998 was the centennial of the Filipino proclamation of independence, and the question on folks’ mind was: Where was the biopic of Jose Rizal? Rizal looms over Philippine history, a combination Victor Hugo and Dr. Sun Yat-sen, by turns intellectual, novelist, political activist, and educator. Also, heretic and dangerous subversive, according to Spanish colonial administration, who executed him by firing squad in Bagumbayan Field in 1896.
Tikoy approached me with a proposal: a film on Rizal’s years of exile in Dapitan, with Albert Martinez as Rizal. Tikoy thought of it as an exercise in historical mythmaking, not unlike what Tsui Hark did with Wong Fei-hung — a Once Upon a Time in Dapitan if you like. The idea excited me (Tikoy had that effect on people); I did what research I could, drew up a timeline, and actually hammered out a complete script where Rizal establishes a clinic and a school for boys, disarms a would-be assassin with arnis sticks, meets and falls for Josephine Bracken (Amanda Page) who’s being menaced by her lecherous guardian George Taufer (Paul Holmes), attempts to exorcise a boy possessed by a demon (he insists the child is a victim of hypnotic suggestion and uses counter-suggestion to treat him).
I’d like to think it was a wild and crazy script worthy of Tsui Hark and Jet Li and not some clumsy attempt at epic moviemaking but — Tikoy must have taken a look at it, noted the awkward Tagalog, tallied up the budget involved, and asked Pete Lacaba for a rewrite.
Ah well. I got partial credit (story and additional dialogue). A handful of lines survive — mostly involving Josephine Bracken and George Taufer (beautifully delivered by Page and Holmes) — plus a portion of the film’s closing titles. Here endeth my screenwriting career.
I was barely involved on the production side — well, I visited one set where they shot some indoor scenes, and made a brief cameo as one of Rizal’s patients (you can spot me around the 12 minute mark clutching my injured hand, waiting to be treated). I did hear Tikoy talking about the other Rizal production, the P100-million biopic financed by GMA Studios and directed by Mike de Leon, starring Philippine heartthrob Aga Muhlach. If that production finished first it would dominate the theater screens and shut out ours, same thing that happened to Bagong Bayani.
Tikoy continued filming; the GMA production kept a tight lid on its own production, lifting said lid long enough to present a three-minute trailer. The footage looked spectacular: Muhlach in a bowler hat and long coat, the camera gliding through the perfectly lit forests of Dapitan…
Dapitan? Not just Tikoy, all of us were beside ourselves. Was De Leon going to tell the story of Rizal’s Dapitan exile — our story we liked to think of it, though we knew better — as well? He certainly had the money and resources.
But Tikoy’s production was too far along to stop or even pause. Rumor had it that De Leon didn’t like wrestling with a P100-million production and left; that the three or so minutes used in the trailer was the only footage that was actually shot. Tikoy won the race again, and again it was a mixed victory — it screened at the Manila Film Festival in June but an unspoken practice of theaters is that they often dropped a poorly performing film in favor of a more popular one and this, not being a comedy, a softcore flick, or a big-name star vehicle, was not an immediate draw.
The film did earn more after winning big at the local awards and had a second life in schools and the foreign festival circuit, eventually becoming a staple during the Independence Day holidays.
As for the film itself – it is hard to judge objectively due to my proximity but I thought Lacaba did a fine job telling the story of Rizal’s exile in a sober logical manner, while Romy Vitug and Nap Jamir deftly employed island light (Tikoy insisted on location shooting) and seaside air for lyricism. Albert Martinez was an intense Rizal and Amanda Page an understated, ultimately poignant Bracken; I can imagine the ideal epic production with Rizal swinging an arnis stick in one hand, spraying a bottle of holy water in the other — but this was the straightforward indie Rizal that the Philippines needed first, before more fanciful versions can follow.
That was the high point of my involvement in Tikoy’s films. He went on to do the intriguing Tatsulok (Triangle, 1998), basically Insiang told from the mother’s point of view; the incomplete yet fascinating Biyaheng Langit (Paradise Express, 2000), another double narrative involving both high-stakes gamblers and street-level pickpockets; and Tatarin (Summer Solstice, 2001) a stylish adaptation of the Nick Joaquin story — but by then I’d gone on to play the admittedly more comfortable role of outsider looking in, sussing out the filmmaker’s moves and motives not from insider anecdotes but from evidence on the big screen.
FILMMAKER
When I moved to the United States in 2003 I only heard of the later productions — www.XXX.com, Manila Kingpin (with accompanying stories of production issues, the upshot of which was the final cut had been taken away from Tikoy); and Tragic Theater, about (of all things) the unquiet dead that haunted the Manila Film Center, where Tikoy started his career.
I can’t judge the post-2003 films, not having seen them for one reason or another; of the three previous (1998-2001) I loved the output but can’t in good conscious say they were better than his first four (1985-1997) when he covered a wide range of genres and visual styles, from erotic noir (Boatman, Segurista) to docudrama (Bagong Bayani) to historical (Rizal sa Dapitan).
Along with Lino Brocka, Tikoy did socially conscious melodramas stiffened by lowkey noir camerawork and a strong verité feel. In a cinema notorious for its slack and arrhythmic films, he (with the help of Mirana in both the writing and editing) insisted on keeping his briskly paced — of the great Filipino filmmakers only Celso ad Castillo, Mike de Leon, Mario O’Hara, and Gerry de Leon featured comparably taut editing.
DREAMS
Tikoy was a restless soul, ever in search for the next great Filipino story to be told, often with others following in his wake: when Boatman told the story of toreros, Private Show and Live Show soon followed; after Bagong Bayani came The Flor Contemplacion Story; after Rizal sa Dapitan came Jose Rizal, Bayaning Third World (Third World Hero), and Sisa. He would tell me of projects he dreamt of doing: not just the biopic on Ninoy Aquino but on first Philippine president, Emilio Aguinaldo; a picaresque tragicomedy on Pedro Flores, inventor of the yo-yo; a mananangal (batwinged vampire) nanny caring for children in upper-class Los Angeles (the film would be titled Dark Maid); a project involving Dolphy — the Philippines’ King of Comedy — working as a housekeeper in the Marcos household (a satire, of course).
Tikoy dreamed of a thriving independent filmmaking industry and film-literate viewing public and founded the Cinemanila Film Festival to develop both. Named after Brocka’s short-lived production outfit, the festival showcased films from around the world and promoted local independent filmmakers — it ran from 1999 to around 2013, outlasting its namesake by years.
Tikoy also dreamed of nurturing independent filmmakers, not just in Metro Manila but in provincial cities like Tacloban, Cebu, Davao. The festival conducted outreach programs and singled out films with this in mind, and judging from some of the titles honored — Brillante Mendoza’s Manoro, Remton Siega Zuasola’s Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Eleuteria’s Dream), Sherad Anthony Sanchez’ Imburnal — provincial filmmaking has come a long way in realizing that dream.
Tikoy at first glance was a rough-looking man full of rough talk but, like his films, the abrasive surface belied a sensitive heart — his works (Biyaheng Langit, Rizal sa Dapitan, Boatman) often featured marginalized protagonists but some of his best (Tatarin, Tatsulok, Segurista, and above all Bagong Bayani) featured women. It was as if in his eternal struggle to champion the underdog — both in film and in real life — he recognized women as the ultimate underdogs, and paid tribute to their strength and endurance. Thinking of that young boy in shorts and funny accent loudly challenging all comers, I like to imagine the boy learning despite himself to become a nurturer and defender — that because he knew how to stand up for himself he made a deliberate choice to stand up for others, tell their story, help them develop the skills to tell stories of their own.
Paalam Tikoy; you will be missed.
