AJ is Poster Boy for Eye Bank

Curtain-raiser:

• Here’s Dr. Vicki Belo’s comment on the revocation of her beloved Hayden Kho’s license by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), texted to Funfare from L.A. where she’s on important business:

I am filled with sadness that Hayden’s appeal has been turned down. Being a doctor myself, I know how difficult the journey was — the years of studying and endless sleepless nights on duty, not to mention the huge cost of a medical education that his parents sacrificed for.

Hayden is a wonderful doctor. He is intelligent, caring and thorough. When Joanne Zapanta asked him to extract blood for Red Cross, she told me that they had a record number of blood donors.

Dr. Vicki Belo and her beloved Hayden Kho

Hayden has also received a letter from Philippine Airlines in gratitude for helping to save a passenger’s life who had a heart attack. I would like to ask everyone to still call him Dr. Hayden Kho. He may have lost his license to practice but he still has a medical degree (MD).

A STAR story yesterday quoted Dr. Restituto Ocampo, a member of the PRC medical board, as saying, “Although the commission revoked Kho’s license, it is not permanent and he may regain it after submitting an appeal and proving to the commission that he has changed and now has good morals.”

The STAR story also mentioned said that the PRC medical board had previously revoked the medical license of Hayden after finding him guilty of immorality and dishonorable act for taking videos of his sexual encounters with Katrina Halili.

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Did you know that barely two hours before AJ Perez died in a car accident in Paniqui, Tarlac, in the early morning of April 17 on his way back to Manila from Dagupan after a show, his mother Marivic Perez was at home watching the radio/TV show of Fr. Jerry Orbos and Fatima Soriano (the vision-challenged singer)?

“Marivic was thinking about the possibility of Fatima regaining her eyesight from an eye donor when I called her and told her the sad news,” Gerry Perez, AJ’s father, told Funfare yesterday at the lunch presscon in which Dr. Minguita Padilla, head of the Eye Bank Foundation of the Philippines (EBFP) announced that AJ is the Eye Bank’s Poster Boy for its campaign to attract more eye donors.

“What a coincidence,” added Gerry, his eyes turning misty and his voice cracking a bit. He was with AJ in the ill-fated car. “Even if we were overcome with grief, Marivic had the presence of mind to donate AJ’s cornea to the Eye Bank.”

Two young people, John Daniel delos Santos and Lawrence Villanueva, can now see how beautiful the world is, thanks to AJ’s corneas. They were present at yesterday’s presscon.

Minguita told Funfare that Jay Ilagan was the very first showbiz guy who donated his eyes through his mom, Corazon Noble, after Jay died in a freak motorcycle accident near the corner of Timog Avenue and EDSA, Quezon City, almost 20 years ago. Corazon did it even before the Eye Bank was put up in 1994.

“I remember that during the harvesting of Jay’s cornea,” recalled Minguita, “Rudy Fernandez was there. Jay’s cornea went to a poor kakanin vendor, Dionisio Noriega.” Other showbiz eye donors include Mico Sotto (son of Ali Sotto) and Edward James Lim (son of Toni Rose Gayda) who both fell to their deaths, and Cesar Montano’s son Angelo who took his own life.

“Anybody can be a donor,” said Minguita. “We have a boy donor who was barely 10 and an old man who was 91. As long as the eyes are healthy, anybody can donate.”

So far, Minguita said that more than 10,000 have received donated corneas.

“We keep a wait list of recipients,” said Minguita. “If a cornea is available, the first on the list gets it. That’s what we did with AJ’s corneas. We do it on a first-come-first-served basis. We must harvest the cornea within 10 hours after the donor’s death. But we can’t store it for more than five days. If there’s no local recipient, we send the cornea abroad for other recipients. There are Eye Banks in other parts of Asia.”

Asked if, four months after his death, AJ doesn’t send him and Marivic “feelers,” Gerry said that, indeed, AJ did.

“Every time we have to make a decision,” Gerry said, “Marivic and I ask for his guidance. He helps us make the right decisions.”

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Charice being ‘eased out’ of Glee?

I just got the following report from Funfare’s Big Apple correspondent Edmund Silvestre who wrote on his note: “Just sharing with you Page Six of the New York Post’s Aug. 23, 2011, issue implying that Charice’s appearance in Glee was sabotaged. This article has been picked up by other major publications and blogs. We’v e been hearing about this brouhaha since the last season’s finale and it just won’t die down. Perhaps there’s some truth to the story since the Post won’t give it prominent space unless it’s from a credible source.”

Charice with Lea Michelle in a scene from Glee, and Page Six of the New York Post which carries the story

Here’s the Post story Edmund is talking about, headlined Glee Keeping Its No. 1:

There might be room for only one big-voiced diva on Fox’s hit “Glee.” Singing sensation Charice Pempengco’s scenes in the last season were dramatically cut, with sources telling us it was to avoid upsetting the show’s star Lea Michele.

Charice was cast as Sunshine Corazon, an exchange student who competes against lead character Rachel Berry (Michele). But after they recorded their knockout version of the Lady Gaga and Beyoncé hit “Telephone” for the season opener, Charice’s scenes were cut.

A show source told us: “Charice was signed for a minimum of five episodes and did a press junket with [fellow new star] Chord Overstreet. She had a big debut, but things changed and they didn’t put her back in. The word is, Lea is the big star, and producers want to keep her happy.”

Creator Ryan Murphy introduced Charice with fanfare, saying, “When that girl opens her mouth, angels fly out.” He also said later, “She’s coming back for five episodes at the end of the year. Lots of big, big, big ballads for Charice.” But she only reappeared in the two final episodes of the season in a much reduced role, and “was made to look much less adorable,” said a source.

Despite a rumored rivalry, Michele praised Charice. She recently said, “She’s definitely the tiniest ball of talent I’ve ever seen in my life. Charice is beyond talented!”

A “Glee” spokesman said, “This is categorically untrue. We love Charice, and she was a wonderful addition to Glee last season. While it is true that she appeared in fewer episodes last year than we originally anticipated, this was due to her busy schedule and the natural creative process in which some story arcs ... did not materialize as planned. Lea is a consummate pro who couldn’t be more welcoming of other powerhouse singers on the show, from Kristin Chenoweth to Idina Menzel, who is set to reprise her role as Rachel’s birth mom this fall.”

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Cuchera invited to Toronto Filmfest

Joseph Israel Laban’s Cinemalaya film Cuchera will have its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival from Sept. 8 to 18.

According to Funfare correspondent Ferdy Lapuz, Cuchera will screen in the festival’s Discovery Section which spotlights the most exciting work from new and emerging directors from around the world. 

Laban is the third Filipino director to be included in this section. Lav Diaz’s Ang Kriminal ng Barrio Concepcion and Brillante Mendoza’s Masahista competed for the Discovery Award in 1998 and 2005, respectively.

Cuchera was in the New Breed Section of the last Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival. It stars Maria Isabel Lopez, Paolo Rivero, Simon Ibarra, CJ Ramos, Jonathan Neri, Kimmy Maclang, Isadora and Sue Prado.

Ferdy sent the following excerpt from the website:

One of the most shocking debuts in recent Filipino cinema, Joseph Israel Laban’s Cuchera deals with the grim fate of low-rent drug mules. (As the introductory titles tell us, hundreds of Filipinos are imprisoned offshore for smuggling.) Pitched somewhere between ultra-sinister comedy and grimy realism, the film opens as a shaggy-dog story, following two women as they contemplate visiting a faith healer. The narrative then settles on Isabel (Maria Isabel Lopez), a former mule who now hopes to start her own trafficking business.

A kind of Filipino Mean Streets, Cuchera piles outrage upon outrage. The characters are so desperate that they will engage in — and accept — anything in the hopes of making money. Scarred by her own experience as a mule, Isabel has no problem blackmailing or strong-arming others into working for her — and she’s willing to overlook a lot to make sure things run smoothly. When she returns home after a number of errands, she’s unfazed by the discovery that her husband has been having sex with an underage girl (whom he clumsily tries to hide in the bathroom). After some knowing chuckles, they promptly settle down to the evening’s business: cooking okra to make it easier for the mules to swallow the drugs they’re enlisted to transport.

There’s almost no one in the film who isn’t horrifically compromised. Even its few acts of charity are problematic or end in disaster. Cuchera may turn out to be a watershed in Filipino film history — directly linking the melodramatic ferocity of the politically charged works of veteran directors like Joel Lamangan and Carlos Siguion-Reyna with the more intimate style of what some have dubbed the Filipino New Wave. It’s also a devastating comic horror film, and one of the most precise dramatizations of Bertolt Brecht’s famous dictum — “Grub first, then ethics” — ever made.

Cuchera was written by Laban and was produced by Laban, Derick Cabrido and Ariel Bacol, co-produced and represented in the international festival circuit by Ferdy Lapuz.

There are three other Filipino films screening in Toronto this year: Lav Diaz’s Century of Birthing and Adolf Alix Jr.’s Isda in the Vision Program, and Raya Martin’s Ars Colonial in the Wavelength Program.

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