Jay Taruc hits the road for Motorcycle Diaries

Manila, Philippines - It’s going to be a hard day’s ride for Jay Taruc as he goes to largely inaccessible points in the country to find stories for his first own program dubbed Motorcycle Diaries on GMA News TV.

But the good thing about it, the weekly program, which debuts tonight at 8, “marries the two things I am most passionate about — riding and documentaries,” according to Jay.

Jay, who won several awards for his documentaries including the Peabody award in 1999 for his work Batang Alipin and the UN Child Rights award in 2009 for Batang Kalabaw, is a hardcore biker. He belongs to a riders club called Hombres, has a tattoo to prove the membership, owns a Harley Davidson and a scooter, and has rode with the group to Visayas and Mindanao.

This fascination started when he acquired his first big bike in 1999 — a Japanese cruiser, a Yamaha 650 cc Dragstar — following the example of the heroes of his childhood, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix and Voltes V’s Steve Armstrong who all rode bikes.

Thus, the show was conceptualized with no one else but Jay in mind to be its host. Motorcycle Diaries also takes inspiration from the movie of the same name that traces the early travels of the Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara, wherein his exploration of South America on a bike opened his eyes to social injustices.

The format might also remind of Ewan McGregor’s Long Road Down documentary produced by BBC, not to mention the bike used by Ewan is the same motorcyle brand (a BMW R1300) that Jay will be mainly using in the program. But the 38-year-old journalist said the similarities end there.

If anything, the show is a long time coming. “Basically, I’ll be telling stories of people and places and reaching them by motorcycle. In the remotest areas of the Philippines, you will find a motorcycle. We’re careful not to make the motorcycle as simply a prop, but a dynamic element of storytelling. I want the motorcycle to be a symbol of how extreme and far the organization will go in foraging for untold stories of people and places,” he said.

The first episode will bring them to a far-flung town in Agusan del Sur, wherein the road leading there is so narrow that only a motorcycle can pass through it. He will be featuring a PMA-er who belongs to a very small army unit there. “It’s so remote that there’s no cellphone signal or Internet. Kailangan mo pang bumiyahe ng one hour papunta sa isang bayan na worth P1,000.”

Other future episodes will feature a teacher working in the mountains of San Miguel, Bulacan and farmers in San Antonio, Nueva Ecija.

Jay said that the episodes will tackle heavy if not oft-ignored issues in the country. But this writer also hopes the program will get to showcase the lighter side of things and stories discovered while on the road. Perhaps, a feature on traversing the country via the RORO or the nautical highway, or the ingenious variations of the habal-habal — the omnipresent means of transport in the mountainous areas of Visayas and Mindanao — just so to seat as much as six to seven passengers?

Jay joined GMA in 1994, starting out as a production assistant and researcher for Brigada Siete. In 2000, Jay became part of iWitness (airing Mondays) wherein he has put his filmmaking skills into use, as he produced his own docus that would bear his signature. Among the memorable stories he made was immersing with a team of landmine diffusers from the Army’s Explosive Ordinance Unit, as they scoured hectares of cornfields in Maguindanao looking for improvised landmines. Another stand-out was Basurero, wherein he actually experienced what it was like to rely on fast food leftovers to survive extreme poverty.

A graduate of Centro Escolar University, he is the son of veteran radio broadcaster Joe Taruc, and the eldest and only one among his siblings who followed his father’s footsteps, albeit a little different because he ventured into TV. Jay said that at first, he felt the pressure of being his father’s son and prove his own worth, but now he’s “totally embracing it.”