The author (middle) and Sonata directors Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes.
When I was in third grade, I wanted to join declamation contests. I liked the attention. Being the youngest in a family of seven, with larger-than-life parents and siblings, I was always struggling to be noticed. I was a competitive kid. My dad alone was enough reason to feel invisible. He was a popular movie director; in school, my teachers knew who he was and saw me as the ‘son of’ rather than just a regular student. I didn’t do too well in the declamation contests. I couldn’t perform under pressure, so I went into writing instead.
When I was 13, I wrote nine poems and handed them over to my dad. He was in bed at that time. He put down the book he was reading, took my poems, looked at them, and asked, “Is this on file? Have you saved these?” “Yes,” I said. He ripped the pages apart. “These are cat farts,” he said. “Stick to the essay.” That was my first encounter with my father as my harshest critic.
Two years later, he had a hit movie, Batang X, about children with superpowers who become superheroes. He had an option to turn it into a comic book series. I was 14, and he asked me if I could handle writing it. “You would have to submit the script every week. Can you meet your deadline and not let your schoolwork suffer?” It was a turning point in our relationship. In the year and a half that I worked on the comic book, he gave me pointers and criticisms, pushing me further and further in my writing career, even if I had no idea it was going to be a career at that time.
When I went to university to study Literature, we added a new layer to our relationship: mentor and trainee. We discussed all my readings on literature and literary criticism, swapped books, and shared stories of his experiences with the writers whose works I was reading in class. By my early 20s, I had already written for magazines and advertising agencies, and was getting into television. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but my dad gave me a film script and asked for my opinion, and we discussed it at length. I think I was able to prove to him I understood cinema on an artistic and technical level. We had been watching movies together since I was six years old, after all, and he would tell me why this was a good film or a bad film. I knew the language. I knew the territory. In the years that followed, we would work on nine stories for full-length films. Not one of them was produced. We felt like the universe would not allow us to work together.
It wasn’t until last year, when we both left Bacolod to move back to Metro Manila to work on movies, that we had a chance to work on a full-length film that would find itself on screen: Sonata. The Sineng Pambansa National Film Festival (All Masters Edition) had asked my Dad and his long-time collaborator, Lore Reyes, to produce a film set in their hometown. My Dad turned to me and gave me a story that had been in the back-burner for the past five years.
By February of 2013, I had a working script, the grant money from the Film Development Council of the Philippines had come in, and we were working with the talented Cherie Gil, who also came in as a producer. March, we had an approved final working script. April, we were in Negros Occidental shooting the film.
I was present in five of the eight shooting days. It was my first time being in my Dad’s set as someone more than just his son. I was now 34 and I was the film’s writer. I would be sent to a room to rewrite scenes on the spot. When I wasn’t re-writing, I would be near him, his concerned son, asking if he was comfortable and if he had all that he needed. Other times, I was a student, asking him why he chose to shoot the scene a particular way. After some scenes were shot, I became a colleague again and he would tell me how good he thought the script was. I reacted like his son, though, beaming with pride. At the end of the shooting day, we were like buddies, talking and joking about the day’s events like you would with a friend over drinks.
All these layers came crashing over me during the wrap party. When our film was completed, and we were able to show Sonata at a special advanced screening for friends and family, it was a triumph against the many years of battling what seemed like a curse that prevented us from having both our names on the end credits of a full-length feature film. The days that followed the special screening, we talked about how great it was that we finally got to work together: my dad, his son, my director, and his scriptwriter. Sonata has become this personal testament for us. It’s not just my first full-length feature working with my Dad. It’s the reason why he told me, 20 years ago, that my poems were “cat farts.” I wasn’t old enough yet, I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t good enough yet. But I am now and I don’t think I would have been if he didn’t do that to me, when I was a young teenager, with nine pages of badly written poetry. He knew then that I could take it. And I did.
Photos: Wanggo Gallaga
Catch Sonata during the Sineng Pambansa National Film Festival (All Masters Edition) from Sept 11-17 at all SM Cinema branches nationwide.
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