AT: What are you working on now?

AB: Carnivore. Working title is Carnivore.

AT: What’s that about?

AB: About Lino. The character of Lino, that hopefully Carlo Aquino will also play.

AT: Lino? Not Lino Brocka?

AB: No, the name is homage to Lino Brocka. He went to Manila, he wants to be somebody. He’s admitted to one of the universities.

AT: Where is he from?

AB: It’s unknown, I won’t say, one of the provinces. It’s close to my life because I also came from the province. From San Jose, where Lino Brocka came from. I’m proud of that, I’m the only one who’s followed [in his footsteps] as a director, after him. So he goes to Manila, wants to be somebody. But he’s doesn’t get that because he doesn’t know anyone, he’s a nobody. So he joins a frat so he can build connections. He wants to be a senator in due time, the youngest senator. The story seems hard to narrate; I don’t know how to narrate it, whether I just talk about the metaphorical value or the story itself. He goes there, meets Ely, a bunch of four guys. It’s about corruption, you know the idealism of a person that’s broken by society; you don’t realize that you were corrupted even from the start. Hazing takes place. The final initiation is where they end up in the woods. When they get there, they’re blindfolded on the way. They’re asked to dig a hole and stay inside for two days, nodody is to leave. It’s the final test, before they pass. Two days go by, nothing. They start to feel paranoid, it’s dark, and the hole is covered. Lino falls asleep and when he wakes up, his friends are outside. They’re hungry, thirsty. They don’t know the masters are gone. So they wander in the forest until they lose consciousness and are rescued by a family. Eventually, they turn out to be a family of cannibals. It’s hard to narrate; Shugo can do it better… I’ll call Shugo, I want you to meet him; you haven’t met him, right? If the film is good, it’s all because of him. He’s a really good writer.

[interrupts with phone conversation]

We’re meeting at eight, he’s still writing, we’ve already laid out where it’s going, where it’s been. I don’t want to talk about it first, I wouldn’t be able to give it justice. All I can say is that it’s still about society. It’s not a genre film, it’s not horror. More of a psychological thriller.

AT: You mentioned that a big part of your film is to wake people up, awakening and you don’t like escapist films.

AB: It’s not that I don’t like it; it’s just not my voice.

AT: Then how do you reconcile the work that you do here? A lot of the shows might be termed escapist or just for entertainment purposes. And do you think that they contribute to the dulling of the consciousness of the Filipino. They do one thing and your film, you counter that, you’re trying to do something entirely different.

AB: That’s a good question. It’s like this, when you’re in prison, you have a uniform you have to wear. It’s like in the films we watch, if you don’t wear it, you’ll be punished. Or maybe, you end up dead. But while you’re in that prison, you’re thinking, you want to do something. So you go underground. Like what Rizal did before, they formed an underground movement and wrote then they smuggled their writing. That’s probably my answer; you’re there, and you have nowhere else to go. It wouldn’t matter if I was like Mike de Leon who has the means. It’s a compromise between what I want to do and what I can take.

AT: It’s like, the slaves, they tell you to dig, be in uniform, you do it even if you’re doing something just for their service. But it contributes almost directly opposite to what you’re really trying to attempt to do.

AB: But you’re born with it.

AT: You’re born with it and you have to do it, and you’ve learned and you’ve done it; now that you have, will you go back? Would you go and work on another TV show?

AB: I think so, I would. It’s been said that the revolution isn’t in the mountains. The revolution is in the cities. You do your revolution here in the industry. How do I get actors? How do I get my team? How do I know how to do this and how to do that? But I have no money. I’m not born with a silver spoon [in my mouth], man.

AT: Then push your film! Push it abroad, push it through festivals. The pennies they give you abroad is gold here.

AB: What I’ve tried to perfect—well we can never reach perfection, at least try to get there—is to hone my craft as a filmmaker. It goes hand in hand with marketing, something to do with business. One has to suffer. So right now I have spent years honing my craft, how I can sneak through, where I have to pass. Take a gun, for example, it can be good or bad, depending on how and where it’s used. Let’s say these shows; we know which shows these are. The least that I can do is get money from it and do something independent, do something different. Even without me, these shows are here, these shows will be there. They have been there even before we were born.

AT: That’s also like saying, these Star Cinema films are there, I’ll just do them.

AB: But that’s different. TV is different from film. When they talk about filmography, when you do your personal work or independent work and it still looks like a Star Cinema film, there’s something wrong. I’ll give one example. During my stay here in ABS, I make it a point that everything I do is done with quality. I make it with quality. I try to defend the quality, I try to defend a vision which of course is very hard, which is why I’m jobless. The music video, it’s in black and white; I had an idea which the producer doesn’t approve of, but I fought for it and it was shown. There are certain ways to approach –for lack of a better term—an enemy. From the time I was born, there was compromise already. We live with compromise. But don’t do it for those things which you can control. If you compromise in the independent [scene], in what you do personally, then there’s a problem with you. With this film man, personal film, I’m the producer; my only compromise here is that I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted because I didn’t have the money. That’s it. The vision, what I wanted to say, I make it a point that it’s there because I can do it, it’s in my hands. I share the same vision with those people I worked with, the ones who gave money. It’s hard man, say you have money, man and give it to me to use in making a film, like they say, put your money where your mouth is. Don’t put others’ money where your mouth is. The most that you’re probably capable of doing is smuggling your ideas. It’s like that. That’s why there’s endless struggle of businessmen and artists because artists aren’t born naturally good in Math.

AT: Say for example, you can eat, you have your food, your rent is paid, and then you’re getting funding for your film, you wouldn’t work here?

AB: In a heartbeat man, in a heartbeat. The only constraint is that we have to live; we need the tools to create. Like I said, many times, why I don’t just become a poet, all I need is a pen and paper to do my art. Why didn’t you just make me a good painter; all I need is canvas and paint. But even painters compromise. Even poets compromise. What about me? I’m a filmmaker who needs a lot of people, who needs money, who needs these kinds of things to fill the canvas. It’s very hard, you know. You have filled the canvas, it’s there, but where are you going to show it, that’s another problem, fuck. Like I told you, my ultimate dream or of any filmmaker for that matter that is true to what they are doing, is to just do what they want, tell the stories they want to tell. Besides that, their lives can be taken from them while on the set or while watching a film. A friend of mine asked me once, what do I feel when I shoot. I feel: this is life. This is where I feel most alive, when I’m shooting. If I was shot there and I died, I would die happy if I was shooting a film. Many people would find it weird because it’s rare that people talk about it, man…

I’m telling you man, we’re not rich, and we don’t have money. My father is a cop; my mother just caters [food]. But I made a film because I wanted to. I don’t have a job, but I was able to make a film.

AT: How much is your rent?

AB: My rent is seven, if you include the lights, eight. Every year, every month, days go by where I don’t do anything. That’s why I have so much respect for Jon Red. Jon Red makes a film every year, fuck it, I can’t do that. Maybe if I was born into wealth, I wouldn’t be a filmmaker. Life’s ironic.

AT: The other thing is, you really have to fight, so you don’t have to make those compromises.

AB: Like you man, 2bu. You started as a 2bu writer. You’ll do that. You’ll eat shit, man. You’re so familiar with that taste, you don’t even recognize the taste of shit anymore.

Carnivore is my voice, that’s what we’re going to say in Carnivore. Before you reach wherever you destination is, you’ll eat shit, you’ll definitely eat shit. That’s just it, until you can barely taste that you’re eating shit. The only thing is we reflected this in the flesh of human beings. That’s just it. I used to be so real, man. But you can’t be like that. I have learned that you can just keep quiet; you don’t have to talk or if you need to, just look for something nice to say. Man, if I had a place to live, if I could eat everyday, I would have given it up already. It’s hard to stay in Manila, I can’t go back and forth from San Jose City, Nueva Ecija to Manila, that would be costlier. There’s no contest in San Jose, how am I supposed to make a film there, there’s no equipment there? It’s still hard. When you watch Sex and the City, you get jealous of Carrie. Think about it, she’s a columnist in the newspaper, she buys Manolo Blahnik shoes. Fuck, she’s just a columnist, how can she have that kind of lifestyle? But in the Philippines, you’re a film critic, you come out on TV, you get what, P500? It’s not even enough to pay for our beer.

[pause]

You know to tell you honestly, you know how I wasn’t able to make a short or anything for two years? I figured that after I made a full-length, maybe the emptiness will be gone. Fuck it, it’s like Batman, the Batman syndrome. He gets back at the people who killed his parents until he became a vigilante. What I feel is something like that. It’s almost as if I became hungrier, like I wanted to do more. You realize that there are still so many stories that you want to tell.
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(Interview transcribed and translated into English from Tagalog by Tiffany Limsico)

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