Factors that ail the movie industry

What ails Philippine cinema and the local film industry? A lot of factors.

On top of the list are the onerous taxes imposed on the Philippine movie industry by the government. Even during the time of the late President Diosdado Macapagal – or even earlier – the local film business was already the government’s favorite milking cow. And now, his daughter, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, vows to reduce the taxes currently being shouldered by the movie industry. However, I don’t see anyone from the film profession jumping up and down for joy over this development. You see, even if you lessen by half the taxes now weighing down the film business, that’s still quite a load. That only shows how heavily taxed the Philippine movie industry is.

And who is this government fooling? Even before it could get around to reducing taxes imposed on the film industry, it has already slapped its members with new taxes – like the stupid and arbitrary imposition of the 20 percent withholding tax off the talent fees of actors, directors, writers and other film practitioners.

Why doesn’t the government just gather these movie people in a firing squad position and shoot them? Maybe they can film this event and show it on television – like what they did with the film clip showing the beheading of the Abu Sayyaf kidnap victims.

No. 2 problem still concerns the government – or it’s lack of support (President Arroyo again vows to give incentives to the local film business, but we have yet to see the outcome of these promises).

Although I don’t like the Marcoses, I still can’t close my eyes to the fact that the local film industry received considerable support from the Marcos administration for quite some time. The Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, for instance, produced now classic movies like Oro, Plata, Mata, Himala, Misteryo sa Tuwa, etc.

Quite inadvertently, the suppression of political films by the Marcos regime (particularly during its dying days) challenged and brought out the creative juices of most local film artists. It was during this period when we had the socio-political films Sister Stella L. by Mike de Leon and Kapit sa Patalim (Bayan Ko) by Lino Brocka.

Ironically enough, it was right after we regained our freedom and democracy that the quality of Filipino films began to decline. I blame this on the fact that the government had done nothing for the local film industry since then, except to milk it dry.

Censorship has also stunted the growth of Filipino movies – no thanks to some unenlightened heads of past censors’ boards and to the self-appointed guardians of Philippine society who take to the streets to protest the exhibition of what they perceive as immoral films. For as long as we have these moral crusaders in our midst, we will never see the full flowering of local films.

Some of the major problems of Philippine movies and the industry actually emanate from within its system. In spite of the numerous organizations within the film community, there is still this utter lack of unity among its members. To each his own – that is the attitude of most of its members. A lot of them, for instance, join protest actions only if their interests are affected. But if not, then they couldn’t care less. They play it safe by watching from the sidelines.

Observers of the Philippine movie industry have long been pointing to the star system as one of the ills of the business. Maybe yes. However, I don’t think we should blame the superstars for charging exorbitant fees for their services. After all, it is they who carry the film (which is actually wrong because it should be the story that should be the selling point of any movie). And it is they who have sleepless nights prior to opening day. Once their film flops at the box office, then that could be the end of their careers. The supporting players, meanwhile, merrily hop to their next project – unaffected by the box office result of their films.

These days, it is not only the actors who charge astronomical talent fees per film project. (But with the crisis today, you can get the services of some superstars at half the price – just like in the 50 percent off supersale periodically conducted by SM Megamall.) There are also cinematographers who play superstar and insist on getting a large slice off the production budget. (Some of them charge close to a million pesos per film.)

What really needs to be corrected is the way the scriptwriter is treated in the film business. They are overworked and underpaid. Neither do they achieve artistic fulfillment with their works because in most cases, the director or producer alters their scripts. And if you will look at the movie layouts in all the newspapers today, you very seldom see the names of scriptwriters there.

It’s also sad that most screenwriters are forced to stick to formula stories and no longer get to write topics that are close to their hearts. Most of the time, the themes are dictated by the producers – based on the trend as set by Hollywood films. And this is sad – really sad. Some Tagalog movies today copy not just the stories of Hollywood films, but complete scenes – as in scene for scene. Remember that local action flick wherein Nanette Medved frantically drives a school bus with a bomb in it? That scene was lifted straight from Speed 2 – with Sandra Bullock driving the bus in the original version.

The death of Lino Brocka and, later, Ishmael Bernal also contributed to the decline in quality of local films. Although we are happy with the works of the younger generation – Joel Lamangan, Chito Roño, Carlos Siguion Reyna, Jose Javier Reyes and even the youngest of them all, Jeffrey Jeturian – nobody can really take the place of Brocka and Bernal in this industry.

What’s alarming is that our newest breed of directors seems to be so overly concerned with style and form, but not with content. True, our local films are now technically impressive. But what about the script? Nobody seems to be paying attention to the story and screenplay anymore. If our movie producers ignore something as basic as that, is it still surprising that Filipino movies are in the doldrums today?