" We have to know everything "

After 40 years in the entertainment industry and almost three decades running Regal Films, Lily Yu-Monteverde has finally come up with her self-described "dream project"–Mano Po, one of two Regal films in this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival, which is based loosely on her own life story.

"My father came here from China looking for a job, like many Chinese from the mainland at the time" shortly after the first world war, Monteverde, more popularly known as Mother Lily, says over coffee one morning at the Starbucks Cafe near the Northeast Greenhills gate, in which subdivision she resides and where the Regal offices have recently relocated from their old digs on Valencia Street.

"It’s a rags to riches story," she says, which could well be the story of many struggling Chinese newly transplanted to the Philippines.

The movie had been brewing in her mind for four years, and it took several brainstorming sessions with scriptwriter Roy Iglesias before the project began taking shape, with the veteran Eddie Garcia landing the role of the family patriarch.

Mother Lily’s father, the Yu patriarch, had taken the boat from China to Manila, because air transport was scarce at the time.

Her father, who was 18 when he first set foot in the Philippines, worked in a shoe store. Her mom, who was from Bicol, was a laundrywoman. She doesn’t know when or how her parents met, whether her mom was buying a pair of shoes when fate intervened, as well perhaps stars in the eyes of the lovestruck shoe salesman, because "my father never talked about these things...and I never asked him or my mom."

Reticent is one word to describe Mr. Yu, as the same is true for many mysterious Chinese men to the point of it being a stereotypical trait.

"But sometimes we have to know everything," Mother Lily says.

Mano Po is also her way of paying tribute to her folks, of looking back to her roots, Chinoy style.

"And it’s true, even today, we still say ‘mano po’ when we greet our elders, or when my grandkids greet me," Monteverde, the youngest of 12 children and who has five children and seven grandkids of her own, says.

"Oh, my father was a traditionalist, very strict; (he) wanted us to study in a Chinese school, while our mom wanted us enrolled in an exclusive school."

This was already after her father tried to relocate to China with his new bride. But after she was ostracized and opted to return to the homeland, Mr. Yu decided to follow his wife back to lupang hinirang, pearl of the orient, the last horizon for this Filipino-Chinese couple who, little did they know that almost 80 years later their youngest child would be coming out with a movie as a tribute to them–thank you, mama, papa, mano po.

The young couple found their fortune in copra, and they lived with their growing family for many years off San Nicolas and Elcano Streets in Binondo. They grew up in the cross-current between two cultures, and Mother Lily herself is as fluent in Tagalog as she is in Chinese (that is, Fookienese), even English, shifting from one language to the other with nary the need for subtitles.

When asked what was the scene in Mano Po, directed by the ever reliable Joel Lamangan, that most touched her Chinoy soul, she replies, "The funeral scene."

It was a traditional Chinese funeral, with the mourners all in white. She then remembers her own father’s death, how she had not cried during his funeral, preferring to keep the hurt under wraps–she had learned a thing or two about reticence from Mr. Yu’s mysterious ways.

"He was very strict," she reiterates, "a disciplinarian; we quarreled a lot." The youngest child was also the rebel–in a way her counterpart in the movie is the third and youngest daughter played by Ara Mina–and soon she dropped out of college. In her early 20s the former cheer leader married a former San Beda juniors basketball player, Remy Dee (later to adopt the name Monteverde). Together they set up a film distribution shop in the early 60s, later founding Regal Films about a decade later with their first movie, Kayod sa Araw, Kayod sa Gabi starring Gina Pareño et al, which in many ways they are still doing until now, about 800 to 900 films later.

A friend of Mother Lily remembers how the Regal matriarch, during a visit to Hong Kong, would in the wee hours be calling Manila long-distance (in the days before the cellphone and international roaming) to inquire about the day’s take at the box-office. She’s that much of a workaholic, regularly going through 16-hour work days.

This year Regal is producing about 12 movies, rather a low output compared to their peak of 36 movies a year in the early 80s, but par for the course considering the financially hard-up times. Not to mention the need to churn out the sure blockbusters to subsidize the more ambitious projects. "It’s sad, really," she says, but a producer’s got to do what a producer’s got to do.

Of all the Regal movies, she is most proud of Sister Stella L. and Manila by Night (City After Dark), megged by Mike de Leon and Ishmael Bernal, respectively, during the dark days of the dictatorship.

Conversation that morning also touched on Peque Gallaga ("now teaching in Bacolod"), director of another Regal blockbuster, Scorpio Nights, and its unforgettable star Anna Marie Gutierrez ("in the US, tumaba na raw").

Also given passing mention was the budget needed to make a respectable, or even not so respectable, film ("45 to 50 million pesos"), and the possibility of branching out to the international market ("not yet viable").

As well words on the new directors, like Jeffrey Jeturian (whose Pila Balde launched Ana Capri to stardom), Lav Diaz and his epic, six-hour Batang West Side, and Yam Laranas with his offbeat Radyo (and perhaps the most talented Quizon after Dolphy, Jeffrey).

We also remember Wansapanataym, which starred the late writer Freddie Salanga in a Lola Basyang-type role, a departure from his toro manager character in another movie.

But it is Mano Po, understandably, that is most on Mother Lily’s mind these days. She hopes the movie will enlighten if not entertain not only the Chinoys, but the hardcore Indios too, even if there are the expected stereotypical concessions in the script like the drug lord (played by cultural worker Nanding Josef) and the kidnapping of the two younger daughters played by Kris Aquino and Mina, both of whom the Regal matriarch says have "greatly improved" in their thespic abilities, not to mention Mina’s giving us a tantalizing peek at her backside in one scene.

She was also excited about an upcoming trip to China where the cast and crew are to shoot footage at the Great Wall, and where recent dispatches has Aquino saying how it wasn’t so hard climbing up, but going down one felt as if being drawn into a vortex.

Even as it’s a renewed battle at the tills from sunrise to sundown, retirement is the last thing on Mother Lily’s mind. Kayod sa araw, kayod sa gabi is almost like a mantra to her, who only dreamed of one day earning just a little respect through the wonders of cinema, where everything begins and ends with that big empty screen.