LAST SATURDAY was pretty hectic. I had two parties to attend. One was with Cecile’s MOM and the second was the QUESTMAS PARTY. We went to NEW MANILA around 6 and there were a lot of people milling about ion CECILE’S MOTHER’S spacious grounds.

I brought the DIGITAL CAM my assortment of lens attachment and a shotgun mic. I wanted to shoot something for the holidays and was planning to do a DOGMA style shoot involving VINNIE and CO.

As I placed the equipment underneath a large table I bumped into TITO HENRI FRANCIA. Who happened to belong to the first generation of INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERS. I asked him about the script he sold OLIVER STONE concerning THE BALANGEGE MASSACRE (I hope I spelled it correctly.) He said that it was in DEVELOPMENT HELL (meaning it’s on hold.) but that he was paid by OLIVER so he doesn’t care if it doesn’t pan or anything. He is currently doing a screenplay about the life and times of JUAN LUNA, which is pretty cool.

He then tells me that his concept was to make pictures here in the Philippines with the whole world as its target market. But I guess that’s what every filmmaker has in mind. Who wants to make movies for the public here, they can’t even elect a good president so that says a lot about their taste buds!

He then asks me if I ever got involved with a development hell project so I told him about the COMFORT WOMAN fiasco that I was involved in. How I spent 6 months doing prep work and developing the script and then after a series of aesthetic debacles the producer and me ended up splitting ways but I didn’t get paid a cent.

Despite the fact I came up with the genesis of the project and I wrote the script. He asked if I had proof that I wrote the script. Well I wrote it and mailed it to myself, which happened to be the most primitive but effective form of copyright.

He said that I should sue. HMMMM now this bears much thinking.

Then a few minutes after that I was introduced to this guy who had a striking resemblance to CHARLTON HESTON. DAMN! Must file him for future use.

AS always Cecile’s mother really knows how to throw a party. The food was simply mouth watering and the courses were too many to innumerate. I had a grand time drinking four glasses of wine and three beers.

Then it was off for THE QUESTMAS party in green hills. Had to past by a sari-sari store for some ice cream. Was cooking SPAGETTO but the domestics did a great job of domesticating a perfectly good sauce. (More on that in the future.)

Arrived at the building and was there first. Vinnie and the others camein a few minutes later. They all started eating when Dean and Gig arrived. They had the latest booster pack of CRANIUM and I was looking forward to a good game once the others arrived.

After dinner and a couple of smokes I told the group that I wanted to shoot a small improv movie. They gamely agreed. So the premise was that there was this package that was being delivered to Dean and that Carl was to be the delivery boy. Motivations were up to the individual actors on where they plan to take it.

Since I was just using a single cam set up I did a lot of pan and zooms to capture the performances I didn’t want to do a lot of cuts because I didn’t want the momentum that they were building up to be disrupted. I only cut twice. One to instruct Carl to grab a chair while they were having their argument and to sit on it and the second was to do insert shoots.

After that we viewed the rushes and played some mind games. Then we had an interesting film critique segment, which illustrated how diverse our filmic taste was. Too bad I already ate and was still full when the food was served .They had crispy pata from PATA QUEEN. I used to order that when we lived in NEW MANILA. But sigh…

Went home at around 4 and before sleeping my mind raced with ideas on how to complete WASTED THE MOVIE without the main actor who’s too busy getting married. The ideas that came up were pretty interesting. Pretty interesting indeed!