For Your Height Only on German DVD - with my extras!

WENG WENG FANS REJOICE! The new German DVD of For Your Height Only (titled "Agent 003 1/2") just arrived in the post yesterday from its Film Art label, and the bonus features I supplied are all there! I'm extremely happy and proud to announce it's the most definitive DVD release of FYHO anywhere in the world thus far:

- Small hardbox with leather improvement - like a small leather-bound book! - limited and numbered to 1000 copies

- Picture format: 4:3 (fullscreen), with an alternative version of the main film (1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen)

- Sound: German & English language

- Featurette: "The Weng Weng Story" (with German subtitles) is actually three episodes of my Schlock Treatment program on Weng Weng, half an hour in total!

- On-Disc-Booklet by Andrew Leavold (also as an audio book, spoken by Charles Rettinghaus, the German dubbing actor of Jean-Claude van Damme), both in German

- Extensive picture Gallery with rare movie posters and stills

- Original English language trailers for "For Your Height Only" and "The Impossible Kid"

Discs may be purchased from www.diabolikdvd.com and Film Art's main distributor www.mediatarget.de

Di Ingon 'Nato article 2012

 

JUST PUBLISHED: My cover article "Di Ingon 'Nato: Zombies In Our Backyard" and interview with its Cebuano director Ivan Zaldarriaga in Sinekultura Film Journal (University of San Carlos, Cebu) Issue #4, OUT NOW! If you get a chance, please check out Ivan's incredible no-budget undead epic Di Ingon 'Nato, as it could be the start of something big in Cebu...

Cashiers du Cinemart article 2012

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to say I am a published author once again! My 15-page article on mad Filipino satires is in the latest bound issue of one of my favourite US magazines, Mike White's Cashiers Du Cinemart. To read the entire rant where I wax lyrical about Dolphy's James Batman, Chiquito, the Pinoy Bruce Lees and James Bonds, Tintoy, Niño Muhlach and (of course) Weng Weng, please click HERE:

"The Great Manila Cinema Heist!" A Brief History of Philippine Parody and Outright Thievery In The Country That Copyright Forgot, Part One by Andrew Leavold

[The entire article appears in Cashiers Du Cinemart #17 (October 2012)]

INTRODUCTION: I still remember watching my first exploitation classic from the Philippines, the midget James Bond spoof For Y’ur Height Only (1981), almost twenty years ago. Over the astounding course of the ratty VHS tape’s running time our 2 foot 9 inch hero Agent 00 played by Weng Weng, a curious little brown creature with a receding Ramones bowl cut and an all-white suit and trick straw boater hat, cracks an international drug ring, gets the girl, loses the girl (“Irmaaaaa!”) and infiltrates the secret lair of evil criminal mastermind Mr Giant (played, appropriately enough, by a dwarf named Goliath!), all with an armful of miniature gadgets and his signature move of punching someone in the balls, then running between their legs.

It’s not just the novelty of seeing a Filipino midget pretending to be a gun expert and ladies’ man, or the inexplicable thrill of watching bad (and I mean BAD) kung fu movies. Maybe it’s the mad vision of a Manila caught in a perpetual Seventies twilight of bad disco, Marlborough Man mustaches, flared collars and equally-flared nostrils. Absurd, tangential logic abounds, as does the knee-jerk colonial impulse to subvert AND embrace their dominant Western culture simultaneously. For me, For Y’ur Height Only rammed a point home with a vengeance, that the Philippines' relationship with Hollywood is a strange mixture of awe and loathing; beneath the Hello Joe's you're not sure if they're trying to steal your jeans or stick you in the ribs with their balisong blade. An outsider will never know precisely where the awe ends and the loathing begins. On the surface at least there's a playfulness, an anarchic and gleefully deranged rearranging of pop motifs for amusing and delirious effect. It should add up, but doesn’t. And it doesn’t matter, for whatever the reasons, the Philippines B-film can be as addictive as their local crack known as “shiboo”, and the hit lasts a lifetime.

Once I started travelling to the Philippines and began to wade through the morass of unexplored Tagalog language B films, I soon discovered that Weng Weng was just the top balancer's toupee on the enormous human pyramid of parodists, and there existed an culture unfamiliar and fundamentally unfathomable to the rest of the world: one of wholesale, guilt-free and consequence-free commandeering of global and local pop iconography via clever counterfeiting, relentless lampooning or direct theft. Unlike their Turkish counterparts, Filipino filmmakers were never so brazen as to steal entire sections of footage and edit it without shame into their own knockoffs of Star Trek or The Empire Strikes Back. In the Philippines, musical cues, theme songs, story ideas, characters and titles were nevertheless all up for grabs, either stolen without a thought paid to the copyright holders, or fed through the Pinoy Pop Culture mincing machine (“Pinoy” being the colloquial term for “Filipino”), to emerge as a mutant-looking amalgam or queer multi-hatted hybrid. Despite being signatories to the Berne Convention since 1950, the tyranny of distance and cost of mounting court proceedings in a foreign country gave free rein to these scoundrels and opportunists, or Dadaists and post-modern revolutionaries, depending upon your political persuasion, taste for adventure, and personal limits of patience and perseverance.

Humour never travels well. Sady, much of the Philippines' cinema prior to the mid-80s is lost forever, and those few Filipino comedies that have made it beyond the Philippines' borders, dubbed poorly and thus losing much of their raison d’etre in the transition, have done so for the most bizarre reasons and under the most freakish of circumstances. That leaves the bulk of their comedies unreleased to the outside world and not subtitled, making their puns, wordplay, cultural references and mangled English (beyond the conventional mix of English and Tagalog known as "Taglish") completely incomprehensible.

Then there's the recognition factor that's lost on us foreigners, the delight in watching sometimes decades-old schtick, which often requires some comedians to be left on the shelf long past their use-by date. More so than parody, much of Philippine comedy is of the romantic or domestic variety, sticky and sickly sentimental, and centring on family misunderstandings, teen love affairs, hen-pecked husbands and screeching mothers-in-law, but countered by a streak of derision and decidedly un-PC cruelty, aimed at taking childish glee at the differences of the "other". This translates roughly to a carnival-like atmosphere, in which audiences gawp at the grotesquely fat, emaciated, freakishly tall, small, toothless, bald, screamingly effeminate, stooped, stuttering, cross-eyed, brown- or black-skinned and, by Filipino standards, plain ugly...

TO ORDER A HARD COPY OF THE ISSUE, PLEASE CLICK HERE

"Cashiers du Cinemart 17 authors: Jef Burnham, Jason Coffman, Chris Cummins, Skizz Cyzyk, Jim Donahue, Ralph Elawani, Mike Faloon, Paul Freitag, Joshua Gravel, Josh Hadley, Kristy Jett, Zachary Kelley, Andrew Leavold, Scott Lefebvre, David MacGregor, Mike Malloy, Bob Moricz, Rich Osmond, James Sanford, Calum Syers, Mike Sullivan, Dan Tabor, Don Takano, and Mike White with cover art by Tom Bagley. This issue boasts features about Filipino exploitation films, Chuck Vincent, Andy Sidaris, Gaspar Noé, Brad Dourif, and Pierre Maheu and more including interviews with Sid Haig, Keith Shapiro, Eli Craig, Louie Bonnano, Peter Filardi, and many more. And, don’t miss appreciations of films as diverse as After Last Season, The Touch of Her Flesh, Blood Sucking Freaks, Dream Home, and Eat My Dust."

The Tanduay Rum Diaries Part Two

THE TANDUAY RUM DIARIES #2: THE FIRST CHURCH OF FERNANDO POE JR

…in which your humble narrator, and Dani Palisa, his tattooed Sancho Panza, are on a Search For Weng Weng shoot in Manila, only to discover Christ in his Second Coming is to take the shape of their former King of Action Movies

[Previously published on the Video Zoo blog, September 2011]

Andrew: It’s January 2008, on the fourth trip to Manila for the yet-to-be-finished Search For Weng Weng documentary, and I take the text message summons from former SOS Daredevil, Sixties and Seventies action movie goon and Weng Weng’s co-star Steve Alcarado. I’d stumbled upon Steve quite by accident on my first shoot in November 2006 while he was drinking coffee with his fellow out-of-work goons at Quezon City’s Tropical Hut. I got to know Steve quite well; he’s a wily goon who’s constantly pitching me projects. One of my proudest souvenirs from The Trenches is a hand-painted poster for “Tomorrow Is Another Day” along with a two-page synopsis which features, among other action essentials, ninjas, samurais, exploding speedboats, and the Pinoy James Bond himself, Tony Ferrer, in the starring role of the debut from “Leavold Productions”. Ferrer is now well into his Seventies and has managed to elude my barrage of requests to interview him. And I’ve been persistent. After all, he did play Weng Weng’s boss in For Your Height Only, and his Agent Falcon’s trademark white suit had inspired Double O’s similar if somewhat shrunken attire.

Steve had cordially invited Dani and I to a company shindig, with the promise of meeting Tony Ferrer as bait. At the time Steve was one of several former goons working as sales representatives for an earthmoving company in Quezon City, its office inside a walled compound on the busiest stretch of EDSA an empty Tanduay bottle’s throw from the GMA-7 TV building. Several of the old SOS guys had netted sales this month and are being honoured with an all-you-can-drink cocktail party and roast pig barbecue at company HQ. Dani and I figure Agent Falcon is unlikely to make an appearance, but with the prospect of swimming through free booze with the old stunt guys, the SOS Daredevil has made an indecent proposal which was impossible to refuse.

At the appointed I leave Dani and Big Jim Gaines, a six-four, half-African American veteran of action movies, to park Jim’s SUV, and meet Steve Alcarado (“I’m the Lee Van Cleef of the Philippines!” he told me at our first meeting, his eyes appropriately narrowed to slits) outside GMA. As we approach the eight foot gates to the Waco-style compound, Steve says to me, with all the sincerity he can muster: “My boss wants to give you a book to take back to Australia. It’s religious…” He draws a breath “… but not very.”

I say nothing, ignoring all manner of warning bells and whistles. At this point, the “booze and goons” mantra has completely taken over.

In the belly of the Beast

Steve and I exit EDSA and walk through an eight foot gate into a carpark the size of a baseball field. HQ is on the left, an enormous man-made lake has taken over most of the right hand side, and a bamboo hut on stilts is perched over the grey-green water.

Outside the CEO’s office, I sit on a couch and begin to leaf through the company’s magazine placed strategically on the coffee table in front of me. On the cover is the smiling countenance of the Philippines’ greatest ever goon, Fernando Poe Jr (or FPJ), surrounded by a snapshot halo of the thirteen Filipino presidents including the current Gloria Arroyo. Underneath are the ominous words: “Divine Government of God.”

To put FPJ in perspective: until his death in 2004 following a failed bid at the presidency, he represented to his generations of fans a bizarre, mythic amalgam of John Wayne and the Infant of Prague. Roles in over 250 action films from the mid 50s cast him as a stoic champion of the poor, the downtrodden, the forgotten Pinoy Everyman. Without exception he’s an honourable man pushed to the brink by cartoonish screen villains, usually played by Max Alvarado or Paquito Diaz and their armies of SOS Daredevil goons, until he snaps and dispenses righteous justice with both fists or his trademark .45s and Magnum .357s. More than a few of the Philippines’ millions of Catholics are no doubt still holding their collective breaths on the Vatican approving FPJ’s sainthood.

On Page Ten is a story on how the Pope is the Antichrist, how Arroyo is the Satanic Pope’s emissary in the Philippines, and how Poland is the centre of apostasy – why I couldn’t fathom, other than the previous pope was born there, the evil fucker. Central to this bizarre cosmography is the belief that Arroyo had stolen the president’s chair at Malacanang Palace from FPJ during the 2003 elections, a notion proving more believable with each passing year of Arroyo’s rotten, corrupt, stinking-of-traded-horsemeat presidency.

Dani: After dropping Andrew off, me and Jim cruise around the seedy backstreets surrounding EDSA before being given the all-clear to park within the compound itself. Greeted by a guard with a semi-automatic rifle and a grin full of jackal-like, albeit rotten teeth, we’re escorted in. This place immediately strikes me as strange. Looking at a man-made pontoon shack in the middle of a man-made lake at the centre, while within the shack, people ran around furiously preparing a pig on a spit.

Dai and Steve Alcarado

As we got out of the car, Steve Alcarado leans out of the glass monolith opposite the man-made lake/pontoon and beckons us over. “Andrew is inside.”

We are led up a giant staircase to a sweaty, wide-eyed Andrew, about four shades paler than usual. As Steve scuttles off and heads downstairs, myself and Big Jim corner the terrified looking Andrew and ask him what’s wrong.

In a hushed tone, he eyeballs us and whispers urgently, “We’re in a cult!”

Big Jim furrows his brow. “What in Hell are you talking about?”

…this was the last thing I was expecting…

Andrew: I spit out the next few words in a ludicrous stage whisper with all the gravity I could muster. “We’re in the First Church of FPJ!”

Jim looks a little concerned. “Oh wow,” he finally says. “Dude, do you want me to bust us out of here?”

“No!” I hiss. “Let’s see how weird this gets!”

Jim leads us past the earthmoving equipment parked in a Panzer formation and over the bamboo drawbridge into the party hut. “Ok man, but I got us covered, ok?”

He then spies FPJ’s half-brother Conrad Poe sitting on the deck with a table full of SOS Daredevils cronies. I remember Conrad from our interview the previous year – a thick silver-backed gorilla of a guy, he’d unsuccessfully made the transition from goon in FPJ’s films to leading man in his own right. Still, he has a powerful presence onscreen and off, an aura of power emanating from his position in FPJ’s filmic Royal Family.

“Hey, it’s cool! Conrad’s here!” Jim announces.  He then hisses to Conrad, “You’re not the High Priest of this goddamned cockamamie FPJ cult, are you?”

“Nah!” says Conrad, dismissing him with a wave over an enormous two litre flagon of brandy. “It’s just business. The CEO’s given me [an undisclosed amount of] pesos to use my name.” He takes a swig from a tall glass of neat brandy. “I’m using the money to finance my next film!”

Conrad then eyeballs me and recognizes me from the interview last visit. “I need a white face to play an American soldier during the American-Filipino war. You interested?”

“Sure!” I offer, hoping to see the colour of another plane fare.

“But first…” He takes another bolt of brandy. “…We go to my place on the coast. THREE DAYS DRINKING!”

Seriously, it would have been rude – nay, DANGEROUS – to refuse. At Conrad’s table the brandy flowed freely; inside the hut, the roast pig was in the process of having its face removed with a meat cleaver. It’s a not-subtle reminder of how difficult it is to remain vegetarian in the Philippines. I remember trying to explain my dietary limitations to a crestfallen host. “Sorry, I can’t eat beef. No chicken, no fish.” With doe eyes that looked ready to burst into tears at any moment, they asked, “Not even pork?”

Dani: The initial thought of being strung up in the middle of the First Church of FPJ starts to ease off as the brandy flagons are poured down my throat. I guess they dodn’t notice “Lamarcadeldiablo” plastered across my chest.. .the last thing you want people to notice at these kinds of shindigs.

Then the Speech starts, and all of a sudden I begin to get the same feeling of impending doom creep back up as the tiny moustached messiah speaks and Jim begins to translate his rantings, and the words on my t-shirt are the least of my worries…

Andrew: “The Speech” is a forty minute sermon mainly in Tagalog, but we do recognize the words “Antichrist” and “Poland”. Suddenly Dani feels marked by his t-shirt, his Polish lineage and his Catholicism. We turn towards the lake to stop smirking; every now and then Dani actually feels for his people: first the Germans had screwed them, then the Russians, and now the Filipino fundamentalists. The SOS guys are enthralled. Is the CEO a messiah figure to them, or merely the guy whose paychecks keep them dancing like poodles on a hotplate? I’ll probably never know. But their reverential silence only amplifies the sounds of grins cracking across our incredulous faces.

Eventually the sermon grinds to a halt. There’s rapturous applause, and the CEO beams beatifically at his payrolled flock. “And now…” he waves his arm past Dani and I, “karaoke!”

"And now...karaoke!"

As if by magic, two young hostesses appeared from a changing room at the back of the hut, grabbed the microphones, fired up their infernal music machine, and started cranking out 100% Hits circa 1985, one after the other. The hired Bikini Goons of the Manila Karaoke Mafia really seem to have caught the CEO’s full attention, as he sits glued to a plastic lawn chair in front of them and slaps his thigh in appreciation at the end of each warble.

Dani and I looked at each other with dinner plate eyes. “We’re drunk and we’re locked in a compound with religious lunatics,” Dani points out with remarkable calm. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

I read Dani’s mind loud and clear. “Let’s do it.”

As our tuneless whistling introduces Scorpions’ “Wind Of Change”, I jump on top of a plastic lawn chair, and Dani takes lead melody, long hair flying at tattoos on display. “Taaaaa-ake me, to the magic of the moment….” Power fists follow one another. “”…on a gloooo-ory night…” I venture a few windmills with my free arm and start my pelvis gyrating in the direction of the CEO seated less than three feet away. “….where the children of tomorrow dream away..” “Dream away!” “…on the Wind of Change..” “The fuckin’ Wind of Change!”

Brandy is a terrible drug, I should mention at this point, and karaoke etiquette deemed appropriate at RGs in the Valley on a Wednesday crawl may not pass muster at the First Church of FPJ. Shit. This could go horribly one way or the other. The CEO starts slapping his thigh again, and we’re not sure if this is a good thing, or if he’s allowing his circulation to improve before leading our death march up Calvary. Then as the tuneless whistling outro fades, a miracle happens: he screams “YES! There WILL be a wind of change!” He’s evidently decided we’re the two Albino Apostles who have blown off EDSA to carry the Word of FPJ back to the Antipodes. As the Bikini Mafia resume their Gloria Estefan quota, the CEO plies us with copies of his self published hardcover, The Sound Of The Seventh Trumpet. Having a quick flip past hand drawn pictures of Angels and the usual Book of Revelation stuff with his terrifyingly Pinoy slant, I fix him with a brandy clouded, pie-eyed stare. “We’ll take them,” I offer, “…but only if you autograph them.” “YES! YES!” He grabs a presentation pen. “To Andrew,” he scrawls, “GOD BLESS 1.25.08”.

Andrew with poster artist Manny

Dani: I feel left out, so I sheepishly ask if he’d sign mine also. “Of course!” he bellows, practically snatching the book out of my sweaty palms. “To…Dani…God Bless!” This was the seventh circle of weirdness, and we manage to escape unconverted, but more importantly, my Eastern Block ass didn’t get shot and left at the bottom of their man-made lake. The night gets lost in a Brandy fog, I’m sure there’s dancing and creative ways to avoid eating the pig I saw get its face chopped in half with a hatchet…all I remember is laughing our asses off all the way back to the relative safety of Metro Manila, signed propaganda in hand.

Andrew: Amen to that, Brother.

POSTSCRIPT: I learned several months too late that Conrad Poe passed away from a heart attack in mid-2010. We never did have that three day drinking session – and considering his heart condition it’s probably just as well – and his American-Filipino war film, with yours truly as White Goon #3, remains unmade.

The Tanduay Rum Diaries Part One

THE TANDUAY RUM DIARIES #1: THE MOST FAMOUS CROSS-DRESSING MIDGET IN THE PHILIPPINES (AT THIS PRESENT MOMENT)

[Previously published on the Mondo Macabro blog, April 2012]

"Mura's up for an interview," I tell Big Jim Gaines.

Long story, but he's my muscle in Manila: six foot-something, half African-American, martial artist and kung fu actor from the Seventies onwards, and if you watch Apocalypse Now, he's the tall black guy next to Robert Duvall.

The Philippines' obsession with midgets hadn't ended with Weng Weng, I'm pleased to report. Only months before my trip, a tongue-in-cheek rehash of the Pinoy Bond series from the Sixties and Seventies had hit Manila screens starring boy-faced heartthrob Vhong Navarro. The original Agent X-44, forgotten action hero Tony Ferrer who's now into his Seventies and bloated from diabetes, returned as Tony Falcon role; Vhong is his reserve. And in a nod to For Y'ur Height Only, the 1981 midget spy spoof in which Ferrer plays Weng Weng's white-suited boss, reserve agent Vhong's own reserve agent is played a three foot-something midget superstar named.

"Where's the interview?" asks Jim. "His place. Tondo." Agent X-44's director Joyce Bernal had texted me Mura's cellphone number several days before. "Tondo?" His eyebrows nearly touch the tip of his bald dome. "Dude, I'm going with you."

Tondo, it turns out, is Manila's Compton. A sprawling mini-city of one and two-story buildings near Manila's oldest port, housing some of the poorest inhabitants of Manila, and shanties made from packing crates and shop signs filling up the spaces between buildings for the even poorer, it's a grim slumscape made less depressing by the teeming life everywhere. Kids splashing in flooded laneways or on sidewalks doing dodgy deals, corner stores doing roaring trade in cigarettes and Smart Chat mobile loads - the place is humming, positively vibrating. Some of these shanties, so-called temporary dwellings for the itinerant or the landless, I suspect, have been here longer than the bricks.

To the rest of the Manila, Tondo's a myth, the birthplace of gutter Cinderellas and hoods like Asiong Salonga. Fellow Tondo-born icon and future President Joseph Estrada sealed his reputation by blasting up cinema screens as Salonga in 1961, a full ten years after the real gunslinger was shot in the head outside a Tondo corner store, and his story of a sewer rat turning to a life of crime been retold at least three times since to audiences weaned on tabloid cinema, if only to counter its cheap and tawdry thrills with the old "crime doesn't pay" routine. Other Tondo barakos (tough guys) have also been given the star treatment. Poor, and dangerous: that's how the rest of Manila knows Tondo.

The next day, Jim and I are in a cab driving along Tondo's main drag, looking in vain for Mura's turnoff. Steel gates on the west side block out the port facilities, while the eastern view from President Ferdinand E. Marcos Highway reveals just a hint of Tondo's endless warrens. It's hard to believe the most famous midget in the Philippines AT THIS MOMENT lives in the midst of such chaos.

Mura - real name Allan Padua - had become famous several years before as one half of a midget duo for ABS-CBN show Masayang Tanghali Bayan ["Good Afternoon Nation"] called Mura and Mahal (that's Tagalog for "cheap" and "expensive"). Noemi "Mahal" Tesorero was already established on TV from playing little girls and miniature Mae Wests; in real life she was a scandal magnet, confounding the press with tales of her disastrous relationships, and sexy home videos that had somehow slipped into the public domain.

During his stint with Mahal, Mura would dress up in little girls’ clothes to appear as Mahal’s twin. Which also makes Mura the most famous cross-dressing midget in the Philippines. Despite subsequent roles sans dresses as Mars Ravelo’s Tiny Tony, as Nine Volt in Volta, and opposite Vhong Navarro as a friendly kiddie spook in Joyce Bernal's horror-comedy D'Anothers, he's remembered by many as a she. "Is she still around?" asked another curious cab driver. "She's a he," I relayed. "No…………" The driver looked genuinely disturbed. I hope I didn't shatter any hetero-specific fantasies he may have secretly harboured.

The cab stops, and two cops walk up to the passenger window. It's ten in the morning and they're clearly on amphetamines with bugging, almost varnished yellow eyeballs and the drug-sweats pouring out of them profusely. Jim warily winds down his window.

JIM: Jacinto Street po?

COP: (Peers through the window and starts babbling excitedly) You need police escort? You pay me? (Laughs hysterically) How much you give me?

JIM: (Winds window up) Drive!

Fifteen minutes later, we miraculously arrive at our destination. As the cab pulls up outside a two story karaoke venue, we're surrounded by eager urchins all yelling the familiar "Hello Joe!", the companion phrase to "Victory Joe!" reserved for GIs and random Caucasians since the Japanese defeat in '45. Moments like these you need to throw them a fistful of Twinkies and Seven-Ups and beat your own hasty retreat.

At the top of the narrow flight of stairs we're ushered into a large area flanked with karaoke speakers and plastic chairs stacked prior to showtime. Celina Racho, an immaculately dressed lady who is Mura's manager and, we deduce, karaoke queen, introduces herself. "And this," she says, "is Mura."

I turn around expecting someone at eye level, then look downwards to around knee height. A miniature man, no taller or larger than a seven year old boy, stretches out his perfectly-proportioned hand. "Hello," he squeaks, "I am Mura."

Celina shows us to Mura's dayroom: empty expect for a couch and TV, painted in vivid slashes of red and yellow. Mura's originally from Bicol province, and is taken care of by his manager and her husband, a businessman and politician. Similar to Weng Weng's story, I mentally note. How right I was.

Mura sits on the red couch opposite me and my camera. Big Jim translates, as Mura has only recently learnt Tagalog and, in his words, "No speak Engliss!"

"How old were you when you were discovered?" I ask Mura.

"Twenty three." With his cheeky grin, cherub cheeks and boy's clothes, Mura looks no older than seven. "And how old are you now, may I ask?"

"Thirty one."

My mouth must have hit the concrete floor, and Mura giggles. He then tells the story of how he was paired with Mahal, and on the second fitting produced the fateful dress. How did you feel, I ask, becoming famous for dressing up as a girl?

"It's work. I couldn't do anything. At first it was a surprise, I did not expect it. But people said that it fit me, that I look like a girl." He giggles again. "People said that I looked a lot prettier than Mahal."

I ask Mura if the role as Vhong's diminutive sidekick in Agent X-44 was written for him. "They wanted a Weng Weng to be cast opposite Tony Ferrer," he replies.

This makes sense! "Have you seen Weng Weng as Agent OO?"

"Yes, when I was very young. When he jumped out of the helicopter" - he starts miming the actions - "and jumps with the umbrella, and with the balloons. I appreciate Weng Weng, he's very good."

More than any time before, Weng Weng's legacy in the Philippines has become so much clearer. I ask Mura if he would ever star in a remake of an Agent OO film?

"It is my wish," he beams, "to have solo film."

The mind starts clicking into hyperdrive. "I'll make it for you!" I declare. Mura seems pleased, and I'm in a near-state of ecstasy.

Back on the street, I point the camera at the Agent X-44 poster tacked lazily to the wall. Before I can mouth the words "establishing shot", Jim walks up and says in a low, authoritative voice: "Uh...put your camera away, dude."

"I just want to get a clean shot of..."

"Dude, put the fucking camera away. Now walk towards the main road…(We head towards the main road) Walk a little faster. (We're now practically in a sprint) Now let’s get across the road. Don’t worry about the traffic. (We weave recklessly through four lanes of cars and trucks) Jump in the first jeepney you see. Don’t hail a cab, just get in."

Facing each other across the back of the jeepney - those decorated covered former army jeeps converted into cheap public transport - Jim finally relaxes.

ME: "Are you going to tell me what all that was about?"

JIM: "Dude, I know you were all excited about meeting the midget and shit, but JESUS CHRIST, man, this is the worst fucking neighbourhood in Manila! This is where kids practice working for the Syndicate by shooting live targets! Did you see those two guys with handguns down the front of their pants walking towards us?"

ME: "Um....no...."

JIM: "And you’re waving around a four grand camera! Look at us - the Nigger and the White Trash? We stick out like fucking dog’s balls!"

Jim lights up a cigarette, and laughs at my mortified expression.

In early 2011, I hear from actor Jo Mari Avella that Mura was thrown from a tricycle in his home town of Albay in Bicol, and had broken both legs. Penniless and in desperate need of handouts from fellow TV personalities to pay for his rehabilitation, he resorted to begging on ABS-CBN. Thankfully one of his co-stars made decent press mileage out of handing over a cheque for Mura's rehab. To date, the little guy hasn't made it back into show business, and is in danger of sinking into the obfuscating muck of "who the fuck are you?"

The parallels between Mura's story and Weng Weng's are disturbing: celebrity midget, ubiquitous star of films and TV shows, living out of his manager's pocket and in their home, only to find himself ill, on the poorhouse's doorstep and relying on charity. At some point Mura's manager should be grabbed by her power-dressing lapels, and have the answer shaken out of her to the question, "Where did all the money from Star Cinema and ABS-CBN go?" And if there wasn't enough money to go around, why not? Sadly, the Philippines is full of stories of their celebrities outliving their usefulness and dying hungry and destitute, a symptom of a disposable pop culture which throws its forgotten waste on the smoking piles of refuse. Not surprisingly, Manila's most famous dump called Smoky Mountain, no less than a Breugel vision of Hell and home to thousands of squatters living off the dump's bountiful harvests before its redevelopment in 2007, is barely a kilometre up the road from Mura's playhouse.

Against odds such as this, and with Weng Weng's life story ringing alarm bells loudly, these fingers at least are crossed for Mura's speedy recovery and return to the limelight.

Sex Blood And Betamax interview 2012

 

Sex, Blood, And Betamax Tapes

Interview with Andrew Leavold by Don Jaucian, The Philippine Star 21/07/12

When the history books of Philippine cinema will finally be dusted off, rewritten and repurposed for future generations of filmgoers, the entire segment of Pinoy B-movies will probably be relegated to a mere footnote; a fleeting mention of a sprawling narrative about weird creatures, exploitation films, goons dressed up as nuns, and bionic boys shuffling around the world’s film circuit, brandishing the flag of the Filipino filmmaking industry like a leprous cousin.

What’s even more interesting is that these films actually made money and sustained the local film industry for 40 years. Filipino B-movies were in demand worldwide. Filmmakers like Eddie Romero, Gerry de Leon, and Cirio Santiago (two of whom were anointed as National Artists for Film for their more significant works) made a killing with films like Mad Doctor of Blood Island, The Big Dollhouse, and Cleopatra Wong. These films were co-productions with international producers and made with one-tenth of a budget of a regular Hollywood fare. These English-dubbed movies featured mutated humans, bionic boys, gay satanic bikers, armies of Aztec midgets, and nubile Caucasian and African-American women in bamboo cages in the middle of the jungle.

It’s this lowbrow circus freakshow of a film subculture that drew Australian film historian and filmmaker Andrew Leavold to Pinoy B movies.

What The Hell?

“I think initially the ‘What the hell?’ factor drew me to these films; the feeling that these films came out of a parallel universe where the rules of filmmaking have been turned on their heads. As I started watching more films I realized that there was definitely a style of filmmaking which was quite foreign to Western audiences but once you get used to the taste, it’s absolutely exhilarating. It would be like watching Swedish art cinema for the first time,” says Andrew.

Andrew has been going back to the Philippines (which he considers his second home) after meeting Cinemanila Film Festival director Tikoy Aguiluz in an Australian film festival he curated several years ago. This ignited his search for his personal holy grail: a two-foot-nine midget B-movie actor known as Weng Weng. He has since dedicated his life making his documentary The Search for Weng Weng, which until now remains in a thousand pieces after an Australian producer picked it up and mutated into Machete Maidens Unleashed.

Weng Weng

“For me, Weng Weng is so deeply affecting purely because it has become a personal journey,” he relates. “It acknowledges Weng Weng the human being rather than Weng Weng the karate-kicking novelty. I’m uncovering the story that no one in the Philippines seems to have done. I just found it astounding that even the guy who trained and directed him in five films didn’t even know his real name. I met the director of the first Weng Weng film, Dante Boy Pangilinan, two weeks ago. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I embraced him like a lost brother. It was a weird moment. Weird sh*t tends to happen around the Weng Weng saga because I suspect he’s sitting on my shoulder, directing from behind the scenes.”

Andrew is also deeply fond of another actor who made his name in B-movie parodies of Hollywood films, Dolphy. His perspective on the comedy king’s career brings to light an alternative track running amok with comic book heroes, secret agents, and a whole lot of kung fu films. Weng Weng and Dolphy even worked in several films together including Stariray, The Quick Brown Fox, and D’ Wild Weng Weng. Both Dolphy and Weng Weng symbolized the ordinary Filipino in movies, taking on Hollywood clichés and dipping them into a uniquely Filipino perspective. 

 

Andrew Leavold with Dolphy, 2007

Dolphy As James Batman

“In the parody films, Dolphy’s vaudeville shtick translated perfectly once he started being featured in a starring role in the 1960s. The parody speaks so much about a playful anarchy and guerilla-style tactics taking potshots at Hollywood with a distorted mirror image of what it stole. There’s James Batman, where Dolphy played James Bond and Batman at the same time. That stuff is just genius. There were other films like Adolpong Hitler, Dolfinger. Where in the world would you find films like that?” Andrew explains.

For Y’ur Height Only: In the 1981 Manila International Film Festival, Eddie Nicart’s For Y’ur Height Only, a mockery of the Western spy films, was the only film that was sold to international distributors, beating out films by Fernando Poe Jr. and Lino Brocka.

Five years ago, he had the opportunity of meeting Dolphy for The Search for Weng Weng. The King of Comedy talked about working with the diminutive hero, and his own struggle to become one of the country’s top comedians.

“These were the golden moments in The Search for Weng Weng, sitting at a dinner table with Dolphy, eating pandesal and talking about 50-60 years of being a part of Pinoy experience which I could only experience second-hand. He does comedy well and he gets what the audience wants from these kinds of films. I’ve watched about 50 films of his. I don’t understand everything, but I get it. It’s going to be tough living in a world without Dolphy,” he says.

Andrew Leavold next to export specialists Cine Suerte's van, 2008

A F*Ck You To Hollywood

Despite the ridiculousness of B movies and parodies like Dancing Master, Terror is a Man, and TNT Jackson, these are all cudgels of cinematic heritage that academics and film historians shouldn’t overlook. They might be low-grade spectacles of blood, sex, violence and slapstick catering to a lower class of audience, but these are great examples of the Filipino ingenuity in filmmaking, producing highly marketable films made with very low budgets and were distributed in drive-ins, theaters, and homes around the world. These co-productions became the training ground of Filipino filmmakers, however shoddy the resulting films were, guided by international standards that trickled into local cinema.

“Let’s talk about pulp and commercial cinema [in a way] that isn’t condescending; in ways that actually do recognize achievement,” Andrew relates. “More than anything, Weng Weng represents a ‘f*ck you’ to Hollywood; that they were able to take on Empire Strikes Back, in the West Indies in Christmas of ’82 and beat them. It is the little Pinoy guy saying we can do it on our terms even if we have to steal the James Bond idea and have a midget James Bond with a small budget and still come out a winner. I think that’s incredibly cool. These were the Filipino guys who are able to do some amazing things on their own terms and resources. They showed such ingenuity and pioneering spirit, forging distribution channels rather than piggybacking on the Hollywood dream machine.”

You Me And Imelda article 01/09/12

 

You, Me and Imelda: Brisbane Filmmakers' Unexpected Philippines Adventure

Dan Nancarrow’s interview with Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in Brisbane Times, 01/09/12
 

The crowd of celebrity well-wishers, foreign dignitaries and family members had gathered for Imelda Marcos's elaborate 83rd birthday party in the Philippines in July this year.
 

Trudging through the mass were two wild-haired Brisbane filmmakers, looking less than glamourous in damp black t-shirts.
 

Jim Gaines Jr and I on the sand dunes of Fort Ilocandia waiting on a phone call from Mrs Marcos

Andrew Leavold and Danny Palisa had arrived in the Philippines a few days earlier with the hope of interviewing the country's former First Lady on camera.
 

And now here they were, dripping wet after a sightseeing expedition in stifling heat, being welcomed into her inner sanctum. Mrs Marcos had called them over and introduced them to her closest friends and family.
 

"We're sitting in the VIP section expecting to be asked to leave," Palisa said.
 

"Everyone is looking at us like they were saying, 'Who are these guys?' ''
 

It's a story as outlandish as the storylines of the B-films Leavold and Palisa adore. But it's the sort of occurrence the pair have gotten more and more used to as they delved deeper into the Filipino movie industry.
 

Daniel Palisa (right) and I in the front seat of a Laoag jeepney, Ilocos Norte

The two filmmakers have been embraced by the Philippines' splendidly bizarre film community over the past six years. They've found a niche in the Southeast Asian country by chronicling its film history - all the while making friends in high places.
 

Their journey through the country began six years ago, when Leavold, the ex-owner of the now-closed West End cult film emporium Trash Video, went searching for traces of film star Weng Weng.

 

Weng Weng, a dwarf born Ernesto de la Cruz, is the Filipino James Bond whose face Leavold has tattooed on his upper left arm in mock-religious tribute.

 

Leavold's documentary on the star of For Y'ur Height Only and The Impossible Kid has been screened before in earlier cuts at film festivals. It sees him interviewing Weng Weng's co-stars and film crew trying to track down the whereabouts of the star, who died in 1992.

While Leavold eventually found the resting place of Weng Weng, he felt he needed a more fitting ending and tribute to the martial artist/actor. And went about remedying that situation earlier this year.
 

"I could still finish it but I needed something to tie the whole thing together and that was this bizarre quest to track down Imelda," he said.
 

In 1990, Weng Weng was recognised for services to the Filipino film industry by Mrs Marcos. After she presented him with the award, he reportedly joined her on stage and they sang a duet of My Way. [Incorrect, Mr Nancarrow - you’ve fallen victim to recycling urban myths!]
 

After an exchange of emails with Mrs Marcos's press secretary the pair were told to go to Manila "and wait further instructions''.
 

They then successfully negotiated plans to see the First Lady there and somehow found themselves invited to Batac, where Mrs Marcos would be celebrating her 83rd birthday.
 

Meeting with Mrs Marcos in her Batac mansion the day of the celebrations, Leavold and Palisa found it hard to extract anything insightful from her on camera, with preparations for the party going on in the background.
 

"The sound was terrible, the picture was dodgy and all she wanted to do was talk about anything but cinema," he said.
 

"At the end of it I thought I had nothing, at the most a couple of pub stories. Even if we go home now it's sort of been worth it.
 

"Then she taps me on the arm and says 'Let's do this again tomorrow. But meanwhile would you like to accompany me to my 83rd birthday party?' "
 

With their minder and Jeepney driver, they were escorted to the neighbouring sports stadium were the festivities were being held.
 

"We walked in and we thought we were going to be sitting up at one of the very back tables, but we're marched past the mayors and the provincial aides and the governors and such, past the band who are looking at us like 'Who the hell are these guys?'," Palisa said.
 

"Then we're walked into the VIP section behind the band and seated one table away from Imelda among the Marcos clan, the Chinese ambassador to Laoag and heads of banks."
 

Thinking they'd be asked to leave at any point they were pleasantly surprised when Mrs Marcos called them over and introduced them to her family.
 

They stayed for four hours, watching Mrs Marcos's introduction the to crowd as "the most beautiful woman in the world, Mama Imelda" and soaking up the entertainment which included a 1970s crooner doing a duet with Mrs Marcos. Lastly they took part in a ritual where the former First Lady sat on a throne surrounded in flowers while each guest lined up to hand her a single rose.
 

"I handed the rose over and gave her a kiss on the cheek and thanked her for letting us come to her party," Leavold said.
 

"She said it was her pleasure. She had charmed the pants off us. She completely disarmed every expectation we had about her."
 

Leavold and Palisa had clearly endeared themselves to Imelda too.
 

Roy Arabejo and I watch the unfolding festivities

The next day the pair interviewed Mrs Marcos again, but not before they were taken to the mausoleum where Ferdinand Marcos's frozen body is kept, where the former First Lady planted a kiss on the glass box that encases him.
 

But as surreal as their trip had been, the filmmakers did manage to get some work done.
 

Over the course of two interviews (after a much more open exchange with Mrs Marcos the next day) the pair got the ''money shot" their Weng Weng documentary needed for completion.
 

"On the first day I asked her, 'Do you remember Weng Weng?' and you could see that it shook her out of her pre-prepared loop," he said.
 

Confirming that Weng Weng had been a visitor to the Marcos palace, she said he had been invited because he made the couple laugh.
 

"She then started delivering this beautiful soliloquy about how Weng Weng was the 'little Filipino' who overcome his disability to become something extraordinary," he said.
 

But the artistry of Weng Weng wasn't the only issue the pair wanted to put to Mrs Marcos.

The pair are working on another documentary - The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth - centred on the Marcos family's relationship with cinema.
 

The documentary looks at the political and cultural importance of cinema to the Marcos's grip on the Philippines throughout their 20 years in power, beginning with the successful campaign film that help skyrocket Ferdinand Marcos to high office in the 1960s.
 

In particular Mrs Marcos, the driving force behind the creation of the Manila Film Centre, was asked about the films produced through the centre in the 1980s.
 

"In the early eighties, after the [Marcos critic and Filipino Senator] Benigno Aquino, Jr. assassination, Marcos's opponents - in particular the Catholic Church - started to gain ammunition against Marcos, who had a tenuous grip on power at the time," he said.
 

"All of a sudden pornography reappears - but state-sanctioned and state-funded pornography courtesy of the Manila Film Centre.
 

"If you imagine films would have been the panacea to soothe a troubled population then you can say that escapist films and films that make it look like the government supported arts and culture would be a good distraction from what was really going on in the Philippines - assassinations, endemic poverty and a real Communist uprising.
 

"It's pretty well agreed within critical circles in the Philippines that porn, along with horror, was the great distraction."
 

Combining extreme sex and violence, the films of the eighties were lapped up by the general population and the era is critically regarded as the last golden age of Filipino cinema.
 

"I asked her how she reconciled the pornographic films that the [government-owned] Experimental Cinema of the Philippines was funding?" he said.
 

She told Leavold that a pornographic film could be made as long as it ''corresponded to the true, the good and the beautiful''.
 

"So you could have a pornographic film as long as it was 'beautiful', or if it told 'the truth' about something," he said. "If it was artistic than it told a truth. If it was something that was anti-Marcos than it clearly wasn't about the truth.
 

"Her mantra was easily adaptable."
 

Leavold and Palisa are among those filmmakers who hold many of those experimental Filipino films of the '80s in the highest regard.
 

Which makes their third project possibly the most attractive to the pair.
 

Through their contacts they have made in the local industry they have scripted a film, Blood Red Sea, which has been taken on by the Film Academy of the Philippines, that reunites some of the country's action stars of the 1980s.
 

In the coming months Palisa is moving to the Philippines to work on the project, a prospect which he admits is quite daunting. But the pair shouldn't have anything to fear.
 

As Mrs Marcos might remind them, they have friends in high places.
 

"The thing about the Philippines is it is a weird and magical place," Leavold said.
 

"If you allow things to happen they will.''
 

The final cut of The Search for Weng Weng is expected to be released next year.
 

Production of The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth is ongoing.

 

Daniel Palisa under an enormous tiled portrait of Ferdinand

 

Mrs Marcos says hi to Daniel's camera

Jim Gaines Jr (left) and Dani with Mrs Marcos and her assistants, on board the bulletproof Marcos bus

Roy, me and Jim on the verandah of the Malacanang Of The North