An old man dies, leaving behind his new wife and estranged daughter to fight over his spoils. . A feature comedy-drama about childhood trauma, the pursuit of home, and the clusterfuck that comes of mixed families. A love letter to the 1.5 generation (RT: 1:28:00).
But of course this was indie-filmmaking at it’s best and worst. It’s the high that comes with genuine expression. That feeling, like any, is fleeting. I really enjoyed seeing Chode (Dominique Brillantes) and Levi (Christian Paolo Lat) bitch about their plans going belly up. I also loved seeing Marie Claire (Isabelle Lafond) dump her deadbeat boyfriend Flo (Emile Boudreau). At times, I felt at home.
What went wrong?
Filmmaking is simultaneously the death of your vision and the birth of something new. With little cash, you have to make do with what you got. And for a Type A like me, this is excruciating. The process is an ultramarathon and my knees were shot after 10 km.
It was a shoestring budget (thanks again Ontario Arts Council). If I didn’t get ahead of myself, however, I probably wouldn’t ever have the motivation to try. The jam I always find myself in (like so many other indie producers) is that for many roles and responsibilities, I am more skilled than I anyone can afford, so I end up doing too much.
Thus, I am a regular at the famous Burnout Hotel.
I filmed it at my mom and dad’s respective houses. The former for its lived in faux Victorian pretentiousness, which is common for Filipinos. It’s a throwback to the colonial era. A way for struggling people to feel they have power. I chose my dad’s place because it felt like a junkie den. Well, not quite. More like the pad of a functioning addict. His plants were all dry and shrivelled up. He told me he kept them that way for my film, but I knew they were a sign of neglect. His resignation set the mood.
I wrote this draft of the film after the 2016 US election (the first draft was a coming of age drama that I didn’t have the budget for). The politics of the day were all nostalgia. Leonard Cohen died November 7th. The album he released a month earlier was called “You Want it Darker.”
Ruby (Celestine Caravaggio) wants a place of her own that reminded her of “back home.” Ditto for Marie Claire. Levi and Chode want to live like kings back in Manila. Me and my friends weren’t that different. We talked about a motherland we never understood but were somehow sure of. When I lived in Manila in 2012, I was still a foreigner.
Maybe that’s why, 5 years out from wrapping principle photography, I do feel a smidgen of nostalgia. Everything about this production was about growth. It’s a strange thing to realize that we can look back at the darkest, most confusing periods of our lives and miss it all. It takes time to value the pain.
What if it was a booming success? That would have been nice, but I’m not convinced I’d be better off passion-wise. One of the reasons I still do this is because I can’t just give up after getting my ass kicked. I have to leave feeling a sense of mastery. The failure keeps me coming back.
Is that persistence admirable, or do I find myself in an abusive relationship? It’s probably somewhere in between: shades of grey all the way down…