(from his blog, which sadly no longer exists)
Finally found an envelope inserted in the pages of an old coffee table book at home. Inside the envelopes are negatives from 1985. They were pictures I took during the shoot of Virgin Forest in Atimonan, Quezon. Peque Gallaga directed the film, I wrote the screenplay and the great Mang Carding Balthazar was the cinematographer.
Here is an article I wrote when Peque received his Gawad CCP 2 years ago:
As they flew to the jungles of Bacolod, I was left in Manila with nothing but an hecho derecho measurement, courtesy of Don Escudero.
I tried to forget about the whole incident.
And then, in December 1982, the movie was premiered at the Film Center.
Unfortunately, the film spearheaded no such movement. But it started building a body of work from one who will prove to be the most innovative, idiosyncratic, and intelligent Filipino filmmakers. After just one film, he earned the honor to use the tagline “A Peque Gallaga Film”.
I met him again because somehow, he got a copy of one of the scripts I was developing and he offered to option it as his next project. But I promised it earlier to another director. He seemed disappointed.
Three months after Misteryo... wrapped, I found myself working on the script of one third of the first Shake Rattle and Roll series. Meanwhile, Peque was pitching a project to Lily Monteverde, and there was still no word about it. At that time, all the major movie directors were doing sex oriented movies for special screenings at the Film Center. As expected, our proposed project was of the same mold.
After the release of Shake Rattle and Roll, Peque called to announce that Regal Films was interested in our turn-of-the-century project.
Mother Lily finally gave the go signal.
In the next few days, the staff and crew invaded Atimonan beach. Two villages had to be built, one at the edge of a forest, and another near a creek. Several camp sites to be identified within the forest itself. A launch would have to be rigged to look like the ones plying the Tayabas shoreline at the turn of the century.
Peque ran a tight ship. With his staff, he made sure that a judicious schedule is formulated. Everything else is bound to that. It was almost like religion. Every department made sure that no delay occurred in the delivery of every requirement. The training they learned from Oro was applied here once again.
Under the huge trees or at the edge of a brook in Quezon Memorial Park, a protected forest, Peque would sit in his director's chair and meticulously break down the scene to be shot that day. In his tiny hand writing, he would make a shot list, each entry was preceded with a symbol signifying camera angle and general orientation. Lines of dialogue were cut into fragments that fit into his planned edited version of the scene. And he was set to go.
The actors arrived in the set prepared. Scenes were rehearsed. And then, the fun began. He was most active right before the cameras rolled --making final checks on the costumes, looking out for colors that don’t seem to belong, creatively disarranging things that seemed too ordered, adding an item that looked interesting and intriguing, giving his actors suggestions, reminding them of a moment discovered during the workshop. It all went well that first day. And at the end of the day, I caught him humming an Ilonggo ditty. On other days, it would be a Tom Waits song.
During the whole shooting of Virgin Forest, he would always be humming a song on the way back to the base camp.
After watching the finished film for the first time, Peque told me that Mother Lily could not believe that that was the movie she produced.
Aside from Virgin Forest and 1/3 of Shake Rattle and Roll, I wrote three more movies for Peque Gallaga -- Scorpio Nights, Unfaithful Wife and Once Upon a Time.
He kept his dedicated staff and crew that whole time. And making movies with that community of what we fondly called “the cultural sakadas” was almost not work. I suspected that what kept it going was actually beyond creative passion, it was like a curse which you had to feed and live with.
Peque treated all his films with equal care and attention. He made sure that the audience was not cheated and insulted. A horror movie went through the same preparations as did his action dramas. The performances were kept authentic and honest. Care was equally given to technical requirements and art direction. The phrase “pwede na ‘yan” was banned in Peque’s movie set.
I met Peque after more than 10 years since writing Once Upon A Time. Over the years, a few of Peque’s films had been invited to be shown at international film festivals, from San Francisco, Tokyo, Shanghai, France and Canada. In 1995 during a special retrospective of Scorpio Nights in Toronto, Canada, the late David Overbey who was a festival programmer challenged Peque Gallaga to do a Scorpio Nights for the 90’s. I found myself writing Diliryo and working with Gallaga again.
Like a movie gunfighter, he carved a notch on the arm rest of the director’s chair after he finished a movie. Now, it is easy to look at it as a private reminder of personal achievement. But if making film is a curse bestowed on him at the start of his career, the notches can also be seen as a prisoner’s reminder of his time inside a jail he does not wish to get out of.
A lot of people (all cursed) who worked with Peque Gallaga either as Assistant Director, Production Designer, and Scriptwriter have become film directors themselves. They may have learned a thing or two from Peque, the way he admitted learning from Ishmael Bernal (“not how to direct, but how to be a director”), but that is inevitable because Peque is a good teacher. He does not keep what he knows to himself, and always acknowledges lessons he has learned from you and things he has discovered with you during the process of making a film. He always calls to ask your consent whenever he feels that something you have talked about a long time ago could be used in a project he is working on. Decency like this is rare in an industry famous for all sorts of aberration.
It is unfortunate and sad that the Filipino film industry cannot sustain the continuing creative energy of filmmakers like Peque Gallaga who, I believe, still has a number of films waiting to be broken down into a list of camera set-ups and entered by hand into his clipboard. And I am sure there is still enough space for several notches on the armrest of his director’s chair.
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