Festival of controversies

In the past 32 years, the various people in charge of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) have thought of the most outrageous ideas that often end up disastrously – with the participants and the public howling in protest over the results of the awards night.

In 1979, the MMFF included family values as part of the criteria to win Best Picture. Family values are fine by me and should be promoted. But when the lightweight comedy Kasal-Kasalan, Bahay-Bahayan won over the more superior Lino Brocka drama Ina Ka ng Anak Mo in that year’s MMFF Best Picture race, you know that something went wrong somewhere and you realize that the rules should never have been tampered with in the first place.

Then in 1992, somebody from the MMFF committee had this bright idea of requiring each entry to carry an environmental theme. Shake, Rattle & Roll sacrificed one of its episodes and made its story revolve around environmental protection – unsuccessfully.

Another film went all out by doing a film where actors are trees, plants and saplings. (Then teen star Susan Lozada had braces on her teeth and these looked so off because she was playing a tree and prompted one of the judges to remark: Siguro nataga siya nuong baby plant pa siya.) But how much excitement can you get from a film where everything and everyone is green? Come awards night, the producers of the movie turned green with envy when an Eddie Garcia action flick – with nothing environmental in it – went home with the bulk of the prizes at stake.

The producers of the environmental film had all the right to complain (and they did) after the awards night. After all, they complied with the rules, while the Eddie Garcia action movie didn’t. But then, the Eddie Garcia action film was still more deserving of the Best Picture prize because at least something was moving in it, while in the environmental movie, nothing moved because – as plants – they all remained rooted to the ground and bored everyone to tears in the process.

If you analyze the situation here, what started the problem was this stupid idea of including a theme because you already tie the hands of the filmmaker with your rules. In any contest for Best Picture, we should select only the best – regardless of topic.

I think that was the last time the MMFF required entries to conform to a particular theme – to everyone’s relief.

In most MMFF competitions, results became controversial because for a long time (between the latter part of the ’80s up to the mid-’90s) the quality of entries was so inferior the judges had to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to come up with winners. The result: They had a stuntman winning Best Actor twice.

And there were years when the judges just selected the wrong winners, but all that is a matter of taste and there’s nothing much we can do about that.

This year’s controversy, however, could have been avoided if the MMFF didn’t include that 40 percent commercial viability criterion in the selection of Best Picture winners. I learned that about three weeks ago and I knew in my heart that things could get ugly come awards night because of this new ruling.

And so it happened. Jaws collectively dropped when the winner of the Best Picture was announced: Enteng Kabisote. I thought it was just fitting that it was minor cast member Angelica Jones who went up to accept the trophy.

No, we shouldn’t take it out on Enteng Kabisote. The producers didn’t ask for it and neither did they expect it (no one did!). And just so we are clear on this, the Enteng Kabisote people didn’t "buy" the award because I don’t think anything of that sort happened in this year’s filmfest (not even in other years – in due fairness to the MMFF). Enteng Kabisote doesn’t need the award. The film winning Best Picture, in fact, put it in an awkward situation. But its producers really don’t need to explain anything.

It’s the MMFF committee that should do the explaining: Where did that new ruling come from?

If all the MMFF people care about is box-office receipts, then why don’t they just have a tie-up with the Guillermo Mendoza Memorial Scholarship Foundation, which hands out the Box-Office King and Queen awards every year?

The 40 percent commercial viability ruling is highly irregular because – as Cesar Montano put it in Startalk last Saturday – what happens if Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo overtakes Enteng Kabisote at the tills at the end of the festival on Jan. 7? Is the MMFF nullifying the Best Picture win of Enteng Kabisote and give the award to Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo?

Basing the Best Picture winner on commercial viability makes the contest lopsided because you pit a general patronage film with that of an R-18 rated movie. A child needs an adult to get inside a movie house, while an adult cannot bring in a child to watch for adults only film like Ligalig. Where is the fairness in all that?

Days after the awards presentation, the MMFF came out with a full-page ad in a tabloid congratulating the winners of the festival. Bannered in the layout and getting a lot more prominence was Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo, recipient of the Gatpuno Antonio J. Villegas Cultural Award, which really is just a citation for espousing anything Filipino. Below that – printed in smaller letters – was the list of the three Best Picture winners – led by, gulp, Enteng Kabisote. What happened there? Was the MMFF committee too embarrassed to acknowledge its winners?

Whoever thought of including commercial viability in the selection of Best Picture should have been hanged along with Saddam Hussein. This new ruling is not only killing the local movie industry, but is also stripping it of its dignity.

At this point, I challenge the MMFF people to make public the results of the judges’ decision before they added into the final tally that 40 percent commercial viability factor that must have changed everything in the voting.

This is the only way we’d be able to find out which films won First, Second and Third Best Pictures in the 32nd Metro Manila Film Festival. Then we can all move on and wait for December again for another round of controversy sparked by this annual filmfest.