Beautiful Courage

Once upon a time I joined a stand-up comedy competition and finished third.  I could say that I beat couple dozen other aspiring comics to finish third.  I could even make a case for that achievement by pointing out that the top two finishers went on to become full-fledged world-touring performers.

Not me.  For a reason, I chose to see the experience as an ordeal where I lost to two other people that I (on that night) believed I was better than.  I was second runner-up.  The second biggest loser.

The reason I felt like a loser was because I was in a competition where the winner was determined subjectively.  There was no finish line to cross ahead of the others.  There was no score tracking the number of points we made.

On that night, the winner was determined by judges.  In other words, a combination of opinions from a tiny sample of the entire comedic population – “a jury of my peers” – decided that I wasn’t going to win.  They said I lost, and there was nothing I could do to prove that I did not.

That was too long ago, so I’m not recalling this to be bitter.  I am actually going somewhere with this. 

It sucks to be judged. 

Our country has recently been done proud by two beautiful women who were sent off to foreign lands to capture the hearts of a panel of judges and bring home a crown. 

"winners"

Megan Young was crowned Miss World 2013, and yet I only heard about it because some strangers on the bus were questioning her heritage and whether she deserved to represent our country at all.

Mutya Datul was crowned Miss Supranatural 2013, and I learned about that because I overheard some men discussing that she was “in fact” a Tranny.

Later in the week I heard rumors that both would soon be dethroned because they couldn’t possibly be virgins.  A stipulation that says they can’t be married or pregnant was stretched all the way back to the state of their hymens.  I found it amusing. 

The judging never stops. 

My guess is that beauty queens are the easiest targets because they seem to be defined by judgement.  Just the idea that they willingly joined a pageant seemed to insinuate that their lives revolved around seeking affirmation.  If pageant judges could put a crown on her, surely public judges were entitled to take a shot at ripping it off.

In 2012, Joy Castillo-Pasidis was crowned Mrs. Universe Philippines, and I had a front-row seat to the proceedings.

Ah, the judging.  I remember the criteria because I remember being floored by my utter disbelief. 

40% Face, 40% Body, 20% Personality and Intelligence.  I am NOT making this up! 

 

now all she needs is a face...

Was this how we were supposed to judge a Woman?  I kept going over it in my head.  80% of her value was her appearance: of which half was vaguely referred to as her “Body” – how do they measure this?  Was there a further sub-breakdown for “Body”...?

Maybe 10 points for round breasts, and 10 points for a shiny areola.  Then 15 points for her ass, and another 5 for whether or not the bitch could shake it.

It was a gift that kept on giving.  Hey, as long as we are setting the women’s movement back a few generations, how about 20 points TOTAL for both personality AND intelligence? 

The Super Secret Law of The Headhunter and the Job Interviews:  “Smart girl, that one, and charming, but let’s hire the skank with the big knockers.” 

Way to reinvent the woman, good job Morley.  Well done, Trump. 

Back at the Mrs. Universe pageant, I sat pondering the mental state of whoever came up with an award to be given to the “Best in Sexy Wear” when my ears zoned in on the cacophony of random comments from the onlookers in the peanut gallery.

As the women on stage moved forward towards the panel of judges, I moved back to stand within earshot of the “unofficial judges” in the crowd.  Notepad in hand, I jotted down their comments (and my unspoken reactions). 

You could say I sorted through the cacophony, because a friend dared me to use that word two times within thirty seconds. 

"Ay walang suso." (“Yikes, she has no boobs!” - I was surprised they didn’t say “dede.”) 

"Walang bra, nakakahiya!" (“She has no bra, shameful!” - I immediately went to verify this, in the name of journalism, of course.) 

"Maganda to, ma-chubby lang." (“Pretty, if only she weren’t so chubby” - made me think of Jolina Magdangal for some reason.) 

"Ang sikip ng damit, halatang pinilit" (“The dress is so tight, you can tell it took her all night to put it on” - Ah, the poetry!  I had to see if that comment came from Gloc-9 himself!)

I finally had to stop my note-taking after this next one raised the roof and tore it down: 

“Dalawa lang ang maganda, pinaligiran na ng mga aso.” (“Only two of them are pretty, they are surrounded by dogs.”)

Gems.  Absolute gems were being thrown.  I felt wealthy beyond my wildest imaginings.  Was all this real?

Apparently there were considerations beyond “Best in Sexy Wear,” because the emcee proceeded to rattle off a list of consolation prizes.  The term “Door Prizes” came to mind, but all I ended up thinking of was that these were the “Dog Prizes.” 

Again, I am not making these up. 

Mrs. Friendship (for the type who always ended up in the friend zone). 

Mrs. Personality (for that intelligent lady who scored only 20 points TOTAL). 

Body beautiful (or as men called it, “The Hipon Award.”) 

Mrs. Photogenic (for the lady who needed professional lighting to be appreciated.) 

Mrs. Cosmopolitan (for, um, wtf, I have no idea what this means.) 

Most Inspired (as opposed to Most Expired...?!?) 

Golden Girl (meh, This was Mrs. Universe, after all.) 

Best Smile (for the lady who was least aware of what was really going on.) 

Darling of the Crowd (for the lady with the most relatives in the audience.) 

Mrs. Tourism (I found out later that “Tourism” was being used as some kind of euphemism for “Exotic” – which was funny because “Exotic” was already a euphemism for “Ugly But Strangely Preferred By Foreigners Who Frequent Burgos.”) 

Mrs. Intelligence (for the most frightening woman in the room.) 

Fashion Icon (for the tallest contestant with the smallest breasts.)

Finally, there was a consolation prize for the “Woman of The Night” – which I was guessing was given to the woman most likely to agree to a one night stand. 

(It puzzled me that they could award someone as “Woman of the Night” and still go on with the rest of the evening to crown a winner.) 

Mirth and musing aside, listening to the list of awards gave me a slow realization.  It was the kind where the camera jump-stopped, then slowly zoomed in on my slowly widening eyes as the music swept in.  It was that moment when I was supposed to turn around and behold the truth. 

It absolutely sucks to be judged. 

I suddenly understood what this pageant REALLY celebrated – whether they intended to or not.  Stay with me on this. 

You ever watch a hopelessly outclassed boxer take a beating from The Champ for 12 rounds but never get knocked down?  With both eyes swollen shut and his nose broken in three places, this patsy would crack a smile so wide you would think his jaw would fall off.  After the final bell, he would face the crowd with both arms raised like he was the champion – all because he stood there and took everything The Champ had, and then walked off the ring. 

This is what separated a Woman from a Man:  a heroism I could never hope to match. 

bitch can take a beating

A Woman lives a life under constant scrutiny.  She is jabbed, hooked, and beaten down by judgement.  She cannot walk across a room without being measured.  She cannot offer an opinion without being doubted.  She cannot skip a shower, or order extra rice unnoticed.  She cannot be in a position of importance without being asked who she slept with to get there.

She cannot eat a banana, lick an ice cream cone, or drop a pen on the floor and bend over to pick it up without...well, you know what I’m saying by now.

Meanwhile, Men walk across the room all the time.  We are anonymous.  While Woman struggles daily with the weight of a thousand eyes on her, Man gets his business done without anyone getting in the way to ask for his phone number. 

The Super Secret Law of God’s Gift To Women:  It isn’t a Man, and it isn’t Beauty:  it is Courage:  The kind that can stand under a spotlight and say “Here I am, judge away assholes.” 

This is what beauty pageants celebrate – not Beauty, but incredible Courage. 

I was under a spotlight for one night and judged “third best.”  Then I drove off to a mountain booing and hooing.  Meanwhile, Women have to deal with being judged every minute of every goddamned day. 

Women walk into the ring and take that beating, then walk off with a smile. 

Courage is what gets a Woman across a room of Laiteras.  She wears her confidence – not as clothing, but as part of her skin.  She learns to love who she is – never losing grace, or the smile on her face – despite being ranked and treated like a horse in a race. 

I am a man and I know I cannot endure that kind of violence. 

My slow turn is complete, and I am at the Mrs. Universe pageant again - suddenly and completely amazed.  I am blown away with admiration for these women who I previously dared to judge for my own amusement.

It was now time for the dreaded question and answer portion – where the contestants got a chance to earn their whopping 20 points.

A man asked:  “Who do you think should decide how many children you can have - The couple or the state?”

Then a woman:  “As a married woman, what advice can you give to all would be wives and mothers?”

Another man:  “How can a candidate in this pageant weave positive change?” 

“Maybe she can weave baskets,” I shook my head at the questions.

I wanted to jump on the stage.  I knew the question they wanted to ask – the one that no one dared to phrase.  In my mind I slipped on my chauvinist gloves, grabbed the microphone, and threw down the clincher: 

Convince me that you're not just another person with a vagina.  That where you are in your life is out of your own merits and not from standing behind a man.  That you are more than a source of entertainment and a receptacle for birthing children.  That when people credit you for something, the sentence does not end with "...for a woman." 

I would follow that up with a math question.

12 rounds of boxing.  Every round a loss.  Bullied.  Hopelessly overpowered, and yet both arms raised at the end.  And a big smile, oh what a big beautiful smile. 

100 points for “Taking it Like a Man.” 

What Beautiful Courage these Women have.

Don't Hate Wait

I once recommended a restaurant to a friend wanting to impress his date.  On the night of the event, I was the recipient of an irate phone call.

“This better be worth it,” growled my friend as the maitre d’ showed him to their table.  “We booked in advance, but they made us wait almost an hour!”

Growly then proceeded to make it sound like the wait was a hellish inconvenience.  Now I was under pressure.  Maybe what I hyped as the best lobster in the world would just taste like chicken.  I could not let him pin his evening’s failure on me.

“Wait, I don’t get it,” I suddenly realized, “You are supposed to be there on a date, so what does it matter if you had to spend an hour together before you ate?”

He did not have to answer me.  The fact that he was calling me this early into his evening was already an indication.  I could already conclude that he did not like who he was with.  The key piece of evidence was that he minded the wait.

“That bad huh?” I chuckle at Growly.  “I’m sorry you hate this blind date, but you can still make it fun for you.”

“It will be fun when this is all over,” Growly growls, “but right now all I can do is wait for the food we ordered, wait for her to eat it, and then wait for a cab to take her away so I can go to a strip club.”

That’s a lot of waiting, and my friend isn’t very good at that. 

The Super Secret Law of Bad Company Time.  You can’t have a good time if you don’t like who you are with.  (If you are alone and bored, can you guess who doesn’t like you?) 

Hating the wait is a product of not liking where we are and who we are with.  The alternative is to look forward to whatever should be next – so much so that we attempt to force ourselves into the future.  That can’t be easy at all.

Impatience – the choice to focus on the future instead of the Now we are presently in - sends out an invitation to Frustration.  We tell Time to “Go faster!” and then sit there while it does not.  My friend prays to all the forces of the universe to “make this date more interesting,” and then gives me an angry phone call when the universe lets him down.

Patience is a choice to embrace where we are and what is happening.  It is what it is, and we are here now.  In the absence of an interesting companion, I find that there are still many ways to enjoy a waiting situation. 

PLAY.  I like to make up silly little games and challenge myself.  How long can I hold my breath?  Can I zone in on a specific conversation happening across the room?  Can I memorize the items on this menu? 

BOOKS.  Every early arrival – be it at a doctor’s office or the airport – is an opportunity to catch up on my reading.  I have a book with me as a standby at all times. 

PEOPLE.  Unless I am waiting in a dark alley for some contraband, there is a good chance that I will have some people around.  Watching them can be extremely entertaining.  I can sit in a bus stuck in traffic and imagine fantastic stories about how that passenger got his deformed arm – and if his buddies call him “T-Rex” 

TALKING.  This is a stretch for me, because I am generally a very private person, but I’ve found that as long as I make everything up as I go along, I can have an entertaining conversation with a complete stranger fill up my waiting time.  I can make a new friend, and my new friend can go home and tell his wife how he met the man who invented Post-Its at the bank.  (And his wife would never believe him, because she knows for a fact that the lanky woman from Friends did that.) 

MUSIC.  I can put my headphones on and use this waiting time as an opportunity to just listen.  To actually hear the music, and not just use it as background.  I may notice a violin that I never really heard before, or realize that I’ve been dancing to a song that was actually about perspiration oozing from a man’s private parts. 

DETAILS.  I like to use idle time to appreciate.  It could be the sky, or the grain on the wooden coffee table.  I can in take the scenery in dramatic detail a step further by… 

WALKING.  In response to the question "What are men thinking?" Jerry Seinfeld dared to tell the truth:  "Nothing.  We're just walking around, looking around."

I am a huge fan of walking around, looking around.  With my headphones on I can combine walking around with music, people, and details.  I play my music loud enough so that it is being fed directly into my brain, and I make my eyes the camera.  I produce, direct, and watch my very own music video. 

SNOOZING.  Again, unless I am in a dark alley or somewhere unsecure, I can always catch up on my Zees while I wait.  My compensation for my insomnia has been to quit driving and instead travel by taking long rides in airconditioned busses where I lose nothing by snoozing. 

Houston’s Super Secret Law and The Dumb Waiter:  If I merely let moments pass until the moment I want arrives, then I will have lived for only that one moment in time. 

Things are happening right now where I am, so instead of looking for ways to merely pass the time until my moment arrives, I can make sure I enjoy the moments as they pass.

I have found that doing this keeps me excited.  I find reasons to arrive early.  I never mind when you are late.  I begin to look forward to waiting time.  I find myself smiling when I hear the announcement that my flight has just been delayed for another four hours.

How can I hate when I can wait?

Did The Job

I RAVED about OTJ ("On The Job") after I saw it on the big screen.  It was a big moment for me, as there were a lot of personal “Firsts” - things I never thought I would live to experience while watching a Tagalog movie.

I actually CARED about (some of) the characters.  This has NEVER happened before.  Halfway in, I looked over at my companion and felt it:  "They must be doing something right, because honestly, right now I want these guys to escape..."

I thought about the movie days after I saw it.  In itself, this is not strictly a “first,” since I think about how AWFUL every Tagalog movie I ever saw was for days on end as a matter of amusement.  OTJ was different.  I was thinking about the story.  I was reliving some of the characters in my head.  Joel Torre and that potentially annoying arrogant kid Gerald Anderson GOT to me.  Joey Marquez became my hero.

I did not want it to end.  I hated to admit it to myself, but as the story seemed to approach the close, I was screaming in my head "No, not yet!" - I wanted to see more of Acosta and Tatang!  I wanted this to be the pilot of six-episode mini-series.

THE SOUND.  Oh my God.  I said it in a comment I posted elsewhere:  "Magugunaw na ang mundo!" - I say this because the unthinkable has happened:  This Tagalog movie had sound that made sense.  The dialog was in sync (and when not in sync, well hidden by edits).  The sound properly conveyed space.  The foley was just right - not overdone.  The entire audio experience was magically just right.

And the soundtrack?  Gimme that OST!  Seriously.  Most Tagalog films I had the displeasure of watching (read: giving a chance) had to have some cheesy music sung by one of the actors worked into the movie.  OTJ had scoring that simply did the job.

THAT BEING SAID, OTJ won't score more than 7 or 10.  I Rave within a context - and that context is in comparison to all the Tagalog Films that tried before.  No, OTJ is NOT the best movie of the year.  And PLEASE do not put it up there with "City of God" or "The Departed" just because of some similarities we insist on seeing.

 

Get excited, but slow down.  We have a good thing here, but let's recognize where we are:  we are pointed in the right direction.  We have careful technical consideration and a good story in there.  We have powerful inspired performances that can even be described as "haunting."  Those are all big deals!

However, a lot of the elements that make me sigh at Tagalog films still found their way into OTJ.  So now off to the "room for improvement" section - the Rants in this Rave.

The Title.  How long was the brainstorm on this one?  It seemed like a wasted opportunity to title this film with some better thought-out combination of letters and words that could have made a great statement.  "Inside Out" comes to mind, or even "Borrowed Lives."  As trite as those suggestions may sound, my point is that a better title is expected out of a roomful of geniuses creatively considering collectively.

The Story POV's.  I was totally immersed in Tatang's POV.  I could bounce over to Acosta's and feel his world as well.  Coronel's...?  Seemed like a waste of momentum every time.  Some of us feel that Coronel’s side of the story may have been better served in shadow.  As important as all his conflicts seemed, his POV could not deliver.  Wait, I blame...

Classically Pathetic Performances.  Oh my, Piolo, when are you ever going to bring something to the table besides that one expression and your rock-hard nipples?  You know how Ben Stiller had "Magnum?"  Piolo has "Mopey."  That's all he brings to the table.  Is he hopeless, or did the director fail to reach inside him to pull out something even passable?

And then you have the cliché that was Leo Martinez’s delivery of what was supposed to be the most complex character of them all.  One does not become that cold without the “calculating” part of the package - that gleam of superior intelligence that we only see when it is too late.  For someone that height-challenged to reach the rank of General and have that amount of influence, I was expecting to meet a mix of inexplicable charm and massive but subtle power.  What we got was a cartoon character.

Let's throw into this item THE WOMEN in the Film.  Each character had the opportunity to be integral to highlight character conflicts and moral dilemmas...but they did not.  The women in this film were used as background noise.  Coronel's wife made Piolo look like an Oscar nominee.  Some chick with no breasts who needed a career jumpstart made an appearance in the middle to show some nipplage.  Tatang’s hot supermodel wife seemed grossly undirected.  Acosta’s wife gave great background noise, and not much else.  Wait, I blame...

The writing, or the editing.  Yes, the story was very moving, but the supporting characters were massively undeveloped.  It's almost as if the writers focused so much on Tatang and Daniel that they left the others - especially the women - to fend for themselves.  I could not care about any of the women - couldn't love them, couldn't appreciate where they were coming from, couldn't see much reason to keep them in the edit at all.  Except we needed...

Gratuitous love scenes.  You are not a Tagalog movie without this, so I was expecting a beach ball to come in at the end as well so the cast could break out into an ensemble number.

 

Seriously, if I see a scene that does not move the story along, it has to go to the cutting room floor, doesn’t it?  It’s a tough call, but aren’t tough calls and broken celebrity egos part of the big picture?

Maybe Direk wanted to do another parallelism montage where everyone is giving it to someone all at once, but the attempt was not properly setup for me.  For love scenes to work, I have to feel the emotion.  Even if it is just revenge-booty, I have to feel it build and blow up!  Remember the notebook?  When they smash into each other to kiss, we all went "Yes!  Finally, f**king YES!!!"

When the OTJ men grabbed their chicks, we just cringed and said "Meh, whatever, fast forward."  Wait, I can blame...

Erik Matti?  I have built a prejudice on his work over the years, so I must apologize for my own perceptions.  To me, an Erik Matti film is like an Ice Skating routine.  You have a checklist of technical stuff to pull off for the judges, and you try to string the tricks together and hopefully tell a story.

Erik Matti strikes me as a guy who watches what other directors do and sets out to prove he can do what they do.  All the tricks are in there, somehow, somewhere.

There's the fluid one-shot - which stumbles when the camera is struck along the way.  I am of the opinion that a well thought out fluid one-shot montage is supposed to lead to a climactic event, important element, revelation, or hero shot.  Something has to put all those elements together after that long take - whether it's all the Avengers converging into a circle, or something exploding.  In the case of the OTJ prison tour, it ended with Daniel tossing some clothes onto his bunk bed.

 

Watch OTJ again and see what other devices Matti uses like he is checking them off a list.  The hospital shootout, the foot chase into the trains.  Like I said, an Ice Skating routine.

Did I say skating?  I also mean SHAKING.  I am not a fan of camera-shaking for style's sake.  When Daniel makes his first kill, it is one out of anger.  That scene was crucial, and I needed to see Daniel barrel through it.  Unfortunately, the director shook the camera all throughout the scene and said to the poor foley artists, "Make sense of this please!"

I expected the grit of the opening scene to color the rest of the movie.  If you are going to show me someone’s head splitting open after a bullet rips through it, I want you to show me how a rusty sharp object breaks skin and creates a faucet under someone’s ribs.

The Super Secret Law of Cinematic Honesty.  If it’s ugly, make us want to look away, even though we can’t.  If it has beauty, make us want to stare.

If we were being honest here, we are saying this:  Killing is ugly, and it ain’t easy, but these guys develop the necessary calluses.  It takes more than a shaky camera and a blur with lots of sound effects to convey that nastiness, and how one can administer that kind of evil and then stash the experience in some corner of their being where their conscience will hopefully not find it for a long time.

There was potentially some great ugly-beauty there, but Direk just chaos-edited his way through it.

talk about a missed opportunity.

I won’t even get into the plot-holes.  Oh, hell, here’s a few.

When you are with a potential murder victim – and you are a cop – you do not:  a) leave him alone while “you get the car” if the car cannot drive into that little alley all the way to his door; and b) ignore two mean strapping jacket-wearing shady characters walking in the alley towards the person you are supposed to protect.

 

When a murder target is in his hospital room and you post cops to protect him, those cops do not leave their post – no, not even when a gunman makes a ruckus and runs out of the hospital.  That is what is called a distraction, and only amateurs empty the fort.

Ah, the old clueless cops cliche...

OTJ had massive substance, so when gratuitous devices and plot shortcuts are forced into it, I get distracted and find myself saying "pssh!"  Was it also style - or producer-meddling - that influenced the choice of scenes and events as the film unfolded its ending?  I leave that up in the air, as I personally felt that most of the film was setting up for a kill-shot that just grazed the target at the end.  A kill, but not quite the headshot.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, I must end with a RAVE.  This last "First" is an invincible testament to how I feel about OTJ.

I have NEVER willingly seen a Tagalog movie TWICE.  If I represent the Filipino snob that is holding back the local Film Industry with my cynicism and lack of support, OTJ has scored a major victory.

I say all this not as a respectable Film Critic.  I have no clout or MowellFund background here.  I am hardly a student of the industry.  I am nobody.  What I am, is the guy you are selling tickets to.  I’m the one who walks in there and wants to be entertained by a story and moved by five-dimensional characters.

I bought your ticket twice.

Bravo, OTJ!  You are magnificent in your own right.  A blue-chip in your Junior League.  Take the 7 of 10!  We can work out those three points if we stay honest, open, and passionate with the details.  What really matters now is that you have set us on the road that leads to a breakthrough!

I celebrate this Job.