Danny Zialcita ready for another project
By Bibsy M. Carballo
Monday, May 12, 2008
Dear Heart was the first movie of Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion that made Philippine cinema history. Nagalit ang Buwan sa Haba ng Gabi, Bakit Manipis ang Ulap, Bakit Madalas ang Tibok ng Puso, Kapag Tumabang ang Asin, May Lamok sa Loob ng Kulambo, May Daga sa Labas ng Lungga, Hindi sa Iyo ang Mundo Baby Porcuna were memorable movie titles that stood the test of time.
These trivia will forever be indelibly associated with the name of director Danny Zialcita. And now that Gabby has returned to the country and show business, it is only inevitable that Zialcita be sucked into all the prevailing Gabby controversies.
Those old enough to remember the name recall him best for his inventive kilometric movie titles, crisp and memorable dialogue, reputation with women, and big, big hits. Those of us in the industry can add our memories of one who often wrote his own screenplays and always directed without a script.
Zialcita was a fun-loving gifted and colorful filmmaker who left his mark as one of the best in the stimulating era of the ’60s and ‘70s. Then without any warning he left the industry. Stories of drug addiction, withdrawal from the world, and worse, loss of sanity dogged his absence until even his colleagues lost touch with him and didn’t know what to believe.
It has been some decades since we last set foot on the Zialcita home in Mandaluyong City which was often location for his movies. We didn’t know what to expect; wondered even why he had agreed to the interview. But we were not prepared for the Bible-quoting quick-witted person we encountered whose ideas seemed to hurry in his mind faster than he was able to articulate them; and certainly faster than we could follow his train of thought. Was this the drug-dependent we were afraid to meet? He laughed at the stories, admitting to some and scoffing at most.
If Zialcita was the master of improvisation on the set, he also had the knack for casting the right actors, choosing the right material, and pleasing his producers. One of his favorite actors was Dindo Fernando whom he termed “the compleat actor” and cast him in such movies as Langis at Tubig, Karma, Gaano Kadalas ang Minsan, Mahinhin at Mahinhin, its sequel Malakas, si Maganda at si Mahinhin and Ikaw at ang Gabi which gave Dindo his first Urian Best Actor trophy. Other favorites were Vilma Santos cast in Karma, T-Bird at Ako, Langis at Tubig; Pinky de Leon; Laurice Guillen; Ronaldo Valdes; and Beth Bautista who won Best Actress award in Hindi sa Iyo ang Mundo Baby Porcuna.
Zialcita himself, however, was always the best man and never the bridegroom except for the little remembered Philippine Movie Writers Award that gave birth to the current Star Awards. Danny doesn’t remember if it was for Karma or Langis at Tubig that he won as Best Director. More than the awards which he says is fraught with corruption, it is more important that he touches the audience with his films. “Do you know,” he asks us, “that the distance between the brain and the heart is 16 inches?” We couldn’t quite follow the point of his information since he was already quickly off to another topic.
He spoke of his dictum that has not changed through the years. Movies and television, he explains, are audio-visual arts and one must never forget the audio component in it.
Zialcita’s mind was not only as sharp as it was in the past; his excitement at reappearing once again on the scene was infectious. It was at this point that he spoke of Divine guidance. Although claiming not to belong to any particular church (“I’m not Born Again, I’m bored again!”), he told us of how God had been guiding his every move in the past. He would often repeat his belief that “Man starts and God finishes.” He felt this during the peak of his career when he was churning out movie after movie for his own outfit Essex, Sining Silangan, Viva Films, among others.
“Nine hits in a row? All with a playdate and without a script? That couldn’t have been possible without Divine intervention,” he interjects.
Now, he says, he is ready for another project. “Not a comeback because I have never been away.” And he is right. The years out of the public eye have been spent in spinning stories in his head. He spoke of one movie that broke the stronghold of Hollywood on sex and violence so prevalent at the time at the tail end of the ‘60s. Love Story was a simple if insipid tearjerker of love defeated by death with the tagline “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” which became even more popular than the movie. It starred Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal, was released in 1970-71 after numerous rejections from the big producers and actors in Hollywood. The picture won Best Picture, Director, Musical Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Actress in the Oscars. And best of all, it reversed the trend on sex and violence.
Apparently, Zialcita is ripe for reversing trends in the Philippines. He admits we will never be able to compete in movies capitalizing on technology, but in the aspect of “heart” he still believes we are among the best. He is therefore ready for a project with “heart” if the producer has one ready for him. And if not, he has several stories already in his mind.
We ask him if he is willing to work in the digital format. He replies that if the project is right, technology can be easily learned. We probe farther, inquiring if he would be as brilliant as in the past. He laughs saying he would be better because this time there would be a script, his first written script in his entire career!
He told us one of his favorite stories of the World of the Demigods, a higher world nearer to Heaven and of how a girl there falls for a boy in the mortal world and asks for time on Earth. Like Love Story, it appeals to the romantic in us, but unlike Love Story, it has the innovativeness of a Zialcita love drama without its mawkishness. He even played us the theme song You are my Hidden Place from a Praise album, and is toying with the title To Love Again for the movie.
By sheer coincidence, Gabby’s father Rolly was on the phone talking with Danny and he hands us the phone. Apparently, Rolly has a story for Gabby he wants Danny to direct. Without divulging the concept, we can say that it is a good story for a general patronage audience that Zialcita can go to town with. We strive to remind him of Gabby’s problems with Star Cinema and GMA Films, plus the existence of Rose Flaminiano as manager. He waves these away as if to say, “All these can easily be resolved.” After all, didn’t he say that man starts and God finishes. If it was meant to be, it will happen.
We leave the Zialcita home imbibing the excitement he was feeling, certain that he would be on the phone soon. Sure enough, he was on the cellphone after a few minutes saying he had a tagline for To Love Again: “Love unattainable. Forbidden. Too heartfelt to forget. Too painful to remember” with the admonition to relay that to the Gozons at GMA 7. Danny Zialcita was indeed intent on reclaiming his rightful place in Philippine entertainment.
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