Cholo Laurel: A direk to watch

I have already voiced out a couple of times before about how disappointed and frustrated I am with some of our new directors who are so overly concerned with the technical aspects of film, but completely forget in the process the importance of storytelling.

Two exceptions are Jeffrey Jeturian and Mark Meily because these young directors definitely know how to tell a story on film effectively.

And now you can add to the list Cholo Laurel, whose debut film, the currently-showing Nasaan Ka Man, is so impressive, you wouldn’t think it was done by a first-time director.

But who is Cholo Laurel? It turned out that although he pursued a career in advertising, he had always been a lover of cinema at heart.

Born and raised in San Juan in Metro Manila, Cholo (real name: Rafael) believes that it was his late mother who influenced him to love the art of film. In the late ’60s up to the early ’70s, mother and young son would regularly catch the full-length features at the nearby neighborhood theater Holiday along Aurora Boulevard.

At night, the visions that would come to his dreams are Hollywood premiere nights – mostly the glamour part. Strange dreams for a little boy then in grade school at the Ateneo.

In high school at Marist in Marikina, his artistic bent began to show in the countless campus plays he directed. Not surprisingly, he took up mass communication in college – at the UP, at a time when there was still no formal course in film in that school.

As an elective, however, he was made to do a short film, which he called Mea Culpa where we see what goes in the mind of a priest – lustful thoughts included. He finished Mea Culpa under the supervision of UP professor (and now Manunuri) Gigi Javier Alfonso and Ricky Lee, who was then teaching at the State University.

Back then, he knew already that he wanted to be a filmmaker, except that he didn’t know how to go about it – or if he was going to be good at it.

After college, the winds brought him to the field of advertising where he produced TV commercials. (Among his early works was Plinky Recto’s Close-Up commercial – directed by Laurice Guillen.)

Looking back, Cholo believes that this phase of his career enabled him to learn more about budgeting and logistics – two areas directors should be concerned with when making films (especially in the cash-strapped local movie industry).

In 1995, the itch to go into filmmaking resurfaced and at that point he took a major step toward the fulfillment of this dream: He went to NYU to take up filmmaking. It wasn’t an easy decision for him to make. For one thing, he didn’t have the finances. But a prominent man in the world of advertising – Amar Gambol – entered the picture and agreed to finance his studies on the condition that "You’d come back and work for me."

Cholo then left for New York and studied filmmaking, while caring for his mother who was then recovering from a serious knee operation.

After eight months, he returned to Manila and went to work for Mr. Gambol, but this time as a director for TV commercials.

Although happy with his work as a TV ad director, he realized he had yet to fulfill his dream of becoming a director for film. Three years ago, he finally sat down, wrote a sequence treatment and shopped around for a producer. His first stop was Viva. The studio people were obviously impressed with his advertising reel (a compilation of his music video and the TV ads he did) and had him called back. Initially, he was asked to direct the Jolina Magdangal film Annie Batungkbakal, but this project went to somebody else. Then he was asked to do a love story, but nothing came out of this deal with Viva either because, well, this is how things are in the movie industry: If it’s not meant for you, then it’s not meant for you.

Strangely enough, the minute he left the Viva offices, Star Cinema called and to this day, he has no idea how this film arm of ABS-CBN got his number. Star Cinema wanted him to submit a sequence treatment and he did and they liked it and were willing to produce it – on the condition that it would be in collaboration with Ricky Lee. Oh, how he relished the idea since Ricky Lee was one of his mentors after all when he was doing his short film in college.

The result of that collaboration is Nasaan Ka Man (originally titled Lihim), which was graded B (actually it almost got an A) by the Cinema Evaluation Board (CEB).

Cholo Laurel obviously knows the film medium – how to put together the technical aspects, motivate his actors and more importantly, how to tell a story. I have this strong feeling that given more projects (Star Cinema is already giving him a follow-up movie – especially since Nasaan Ka Man is doing well at the box-office) he will be joining the ranks of our major directors in no time at all and will probably be hailed among the best in the field in the near future. (I do sincerely hope he doesn’t disappoint me with his succeeding films.)

It may have taken Cholo Laurel this long to realize his dream of becoming a filmmaker, but based on his impressive film debut that is Nasaan Ka Man, I swear it was worth the wait.