My 15 Year Journey On Becoming A Screenwriter

(I will write a journal in every fifth of the script covered. This is part 1/5. If  you want to read now about the script, go to the last 6 paragraphs. If you want to read the story behind it, about my miserable and colorful life as an artist start below.)

“Unlearn.”

I’ve always wanted to write a movie script…uhum…a screenplay since when I saw Higher Learning at a student pub at San Francisco State in 1996. I was studying Fine Arts at that time. That movie struck a nerve on me for its uncanny critique on America’s old, yet, unsettled issues of racism and politics especially that I was new in the country. I moved to LA in January 1994, went back to high school for 3 sems, then moved to San Francisco in 1995 when SFSU accepted my application. I was educated right away on heated social issues in school and in real life. Proposition 187 was the initial current, Higher Learning was the switch, and Rage Against the Machine was the soundtrack. I became a revolutionary student of world history and culture, a reader of Marx in America, bastion of cut throat capitalism. Filipino nationalism became too narrow of an identity, not to mention of the burning shame it would cause in me due to the rampant corruption and abuses back home. The feeling remains. Manny Pacquiao, Arnel Pineda, Bruno Mars(yikes!), and Charice Pempengco’s(yikes!!!) fame in world sports and pop are nothing but cosmetics in the so-called Pinoy pride which is not really that proud. Most Filipino nationalists are pro-Americans at heart. It’s nothing but empty middleclass nationalism incapable of bringing real change in the country pillaged by neo-colonialism. I became a world citizen. And my rapid consumption of world culture in just a short time was part of the process.

I’ve seen many films, good and bad, and learned a lot from them. But that didn’t make me write my first script, yet. Rock en Español was my immediate passion in my college years. Back in the Philippines, I was a sucker on American rock. But in America I rejected it(although still appreciated some of it) for its bankruptcy to ease my deep alienation. The poetic and colorful music of Caifanes and other non-American rock acts became my new home. Their styles had introduced me, indirectly, to the works of Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Carlos Castaneda(introduced by my Chicano friends in LA who, also, showed me a Bunuel film), et al. The experience was cinematically surreal. I was living in an avant-garde film, living it to the fullest that denied me time to write it down.

In the same year(the radical year of 1996 at the same pub(a few months after I saw Rage at Rock For Free Tibet concert in Golden Gate Park), I was drinking with school mates. A white guy showed me a poem by Neruda. I couldn’t remember what it was. He first introduced me to his poetry, but it was Rock en Español which took me further. Then I showed him an English translation of the first verse of a Cebuano song I was working on.

You left the son of your cowardice

In one moment the past will never be forgotten

The love that has died has risen from the grave

The pages are now being written with horrific serenades

From the deep ocean

My anger has landed on the white shore

“What does that mean?” he asked.

I knocked my beer bottle on the table.

“Some abstract anger…surreal…romantic… One day, I will go back to my island Cebu and start a cultural revolution there,” I said.

He nodded, shook his head and smiled. Then gave me a serious look.

Those words became the critical point in my life. Years later, I quit college for my Baudelairean pursuit of music and poetry.

___

(A rare black and white footage starts to play, narrated by an early 20th Century American voice.)

In November 2003, rock ‘n roll Chey Gweyvera landed in Cebu, launched many surprise guerilla music attacks, shocked and awed the underground with his radical approach on classic rock. But he was met with stiff resistance from the conservative old guard in the music scene, which many Westerners were unaware it ever existed. The poet suffered heavy defeats and casualties. Now he hides in the impenetrable wilderness mountains to sharpen his writing skills until further reenforcements arrive. Mister Gweyvera agreed to give us a brief interview.

Mister Gweyvera, how do you consider yourself, a frustrated artist, a struggling, or both?

Che Guevara: Frustrated? No. Hitler was a frustrated artist; he could not take the truth that he was mediocre good only for drafting and architecture. The whole bloody war and mass murder started because of that. Strugglin? Obvious ba?

What?

CG: I mean isn’t it obvious?

Do you consider your self defeated? Some say you’re quitting.

CG: No. Game’s not over, yet. Who said that I’m quitting? Quitters never win; winners never quit.

Is starvation and high irritability a part of your life as struggling artist?

CG: (looks annoyed) In a way, yes… samtayms I starb a lilol, samtaym a lot. But luckily I don’t have to eat rats like back in Sierra Maestra when me and my compañeros were regrouping before relaunching our attacks against the US-back corrupt Batista regime.

Being irritated is normal in this f***ed up system. I don’t wanna mention names, but I’ve known people who are real petty ass bitches and assholes. And they’re talentless windbags. Can we change the topic?

Has your set backs taught you some important lessons?

CG: My set backs in rock has put me in The Long March. Although the situation has been a real bitch…thanks to that pig Stalin’s betrayal of the Chinese communists and militant workers that allowed Chiang Kai Shek to butcher thousands of them…sorry I got carried away… Where was I? O…yes, I learned some lessons.

What are they Mister Gweyvera?

CG: Stop calling me mister. Call me comrade.

Can I call you Chey?

CG: It’s Che with a strong accent. Yes you can.

So Chehh…

CG: (grumbles to himself) Ugh, pinche gringo! We study English seriously, even in pronouncing Anglo names. Now they mess up all the time saying our names! (speaks more loudly now) The set backs taught me just one lesson.

And that is…

CG: Stick to your guns. Also, the set back, ironically, allowed be to become a better writer, though I still make many grammatical errors. That’s why we need judgmental and dismissive editors; they are God’s gift to writers. I wrote a novel for 3 years; now, a screenplay. Finally!

Chehh, one last question. What would be your message to the Cebuanos who aspire to become artists?

CG: Keep an open mind. Read a lot. Practice. Be ready to make sacrifices. Be ready to suffer. Be inspired and be an inspiration. You can kick pretenders’ asses when necessary… Can I say a message calling for support in front of the camera?

We journalists have a rule in our profession to remain neutral, but what the heck. Go ahead.

CG: If you want to support my cause by donating like a bag of rice, noodles, and sardines, please do. So I can work full time in revising my novel and finish my movie script without me having the risk of being overthrown by a revolution in my hungry belly. I’ll guarantee you a role in it…well, if you meet the theatre standards. If you act like Kris Aquino forget it.

(rebels behind raise their arms and shout): Viva La Revolucion! Que Viva!

(the footage stops)

___

“So what happened to your revolution?” asked a German girl.

“It has run out of funding, so now I’m doing henna,” I answered.

“Boang,” she said.

It took me 15 years before I finally started to write my first screenplay. Early this month I was at my friend’s house. He showed me a Bollywood flick comedy. And that started the whole exciting thing that’s rolling right now. If Higher Learning made me aim to write a script in 1996, 3 Idiots triggered me to do it last month. Funny that two college movies have inspired me to write a script. Coincidence? What have I started to write? A college movie… film.

This script is in Cebuano, mixed with some English dialogues. As future director, I may have to snap at actors who would try too hard to sound and act like white Hollywood stars.

It’s about a freshman IT student who landed in a literature class he was not supposed to be. Deciding not to drop the class, he’s pressured to double time improving his poor English writing skills in order to catch up. His remedial studies becomes less relieving when he meets one of the tutors, a beautiful senior student who teaches him more than just vocabulary and grammar.

It’s about an hour and 45 minutes long. Big production(small by American standards). It would probably take me like 9 months…like a pregnancy to finish writing the first draft. I’m still less than half way of the script. I’ve been playing the different scenes in my head, including the sound tracks and everything. The real challenge is on giving life to all the characters and the tension of the story. Camera angles and gimmicks? Piece of cake; the least priority. Any amateur( who claims to be a “film maker”) with a camera and computer schooled by too much MTV can do that. I’d refer to the innovative classics by Eisenstein, Bunuel, or the works of the highly awarded but disgraced Elia Kazan, for example, and blend them naturally with ‘70s Filipino cinema.

I’m more into the hard discipline of theatre captured on camera, like a subject captured and reinterpreted on canvas by a trained artist. I learned a lot from Dr. Anton Juan’s two month workshop in 2007, though it wasn’t even enough. This script is, also, my way of thanking him, and my plea for apology for not showing up in the final rehearsals and presentation of a big play I was supposed to be in. It was the Filipino adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. My role was Simon, a frustrated, drunk, and volatile church choir conductor.

This work in progress is my path to a higher artistic learning, inspired by the intelligence of the movie that was opposite to its title. I will be conducting my musicians and singers, again, like Simon. But more sober and ecstatic now for being back in my own Art, Literature, Theatre, and Film School, both as a diligent student and patient teacher. The studio is in my imagination, and my cluttered room.

October 7, 2011