When GomBurZa walked away with seven awards at last year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), it put an unlikely spotlight on its writer and director Pepe Diokno. Before this massive sweep, Diokno had taken an eight-year hiatus from directing features, focusing instead on producing and directing ads. Winning best director at the country’s biggest festival breathed new life into Diokno’s filmmaking career, especially as the moody historical biography found him a wide-ranging audience on Netflix post-release. Amidst all this success, a question loomed: What’s next?
When July rolled around and the MMFF announced its 50th anniversary lineup, it wasn’t surprising that Diokno was returning. Previous Best Director winners like Lino Brocka, Mario O’Hara, and Marilou Diaz-Abaya tend to be festival regulars. But what he was returning with was as exciting as it was terrifying: a film adaptation of Himala: Isang Musikal, a behemoth of a musical based on the 1982 MMFF Best Picture winner; a film as deeply intertwined with Philippine history as it is with the legacies of screenwriter Ricky Lee, director Ishmael Bernal, and transmedia icon Nora Aunor — all of whom have become National Artists since its legendary awards night sweep 42 years ago.
Adapted into a musical by Lee and composer Vincent A. de Jesus in 2003, Himala first graced the Cultural Center of the Philippines under the direction of Soxy Topacio. But it is the 2018 and 2019 iteration, done fifteen years later under the direction of Ed Lacson, that pushed Diokno to adapt the work for the screen. “It’s the most emotional experience I’ve had in a theater. I laughed. I cried. It gave me goosebumps. It stayed with me for years. I think Himala does that to people,” says Diokno. Produced by Sandbox Collective and 9 Works Theatrical, Himala: Isang Musikal was a titanic hit, hailed by theater critic Vincen Gregory Yu as “a Filipino vision of the apocalypse,” winning in eight of its twelve Gawad Buhay nominations and surpassing all apprehensions around a stage adaptation of an iconic Filipino film.
“Whenever people ask me what film I would want to do, it would always be at the back of my mind. But I would be too scared, too daunted, to touch it,” admits Diokno. Though he had contacted his collaborators from GomBurZa and had already contacted Lee, de Jesus, and the cast of Himala — all of whom were itching to reunite and perform — Diokno hadn’t anticipated that it would actually be made so soon, let alone as a participant in the 50th MMFF. “I didn’t even know how to get it off the ground. But after GomBurZa, a historical film, did well at the festival, it showed us — the producers and me — that it was possible to sort of do these films for a wider audience.”
[Sir Ricky Lee] did say that if we were just going to repeat the look and the minimalism of the staging of the 1982 film, then why do it at all?
Isang Himala is a fascinating visual hybrid that teeters between the real and the surreal, embodying in its form the duplicity and doubt at the heart of the original material’s questions of mystery and faith. Surprisingly colorful and lyrical while clearly acknowledging its theatrical roots, Diokno’s movie musical retains most of the same cast from 2019 and is closer to Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Come Here than the recent iteration of Mean Girls. Though the last movie musical in the MMFF lineup, Loy Arcenas’ Ang Larawan, won in best picture in 2017, Isang Himala only has around 30 theaters nationwide due to “the genre [and] lack of ‘box office stars’.”
The day before its premiere at SM North EDSA, I spoke to Diokno about beginning in theater, being mentored by Filipino screenwriting titans, learning from advertising sets, and adapting for the screen one of the most acclaimed Filipino musicals of all time.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
It’s been fifteen years since you won the Orizzonti Prize and the Lion of the Future for Engkwentro and ten years since Above the Clouds. How has your relationship with filmmaking changed?
My entrance into film was a bit weird. When I was in high school, I remember watching Lord of the Rings on the big screen. My dad took us to watch [it]. But it was really watching the behind-the-scenes that I fell in love with the process, and decided I wanted to become a filmmaker. I was really driven — maybe delusional — early on.
I started making short films in high school and college. I didn’t get into film school at first, and worked my way to it. For some reason, I had this desire to make a film in fourth year college, and that became Engkwentro. At the same time, I had done a documentary about going to different jails, and that’s where I met these two brothers who inspired the film. I was also taking the late Bing Lao’s workshop at the time. He was the father of the found stories and he encouraged me to make this film.
It got into Cinemalaya [in 2009]. It’s really all a blur. I was very surprised that it got into Venice because the film got bad reviews in Cinemalaya. When it got into Venice, it did feel like an, “Oh. Look at me now!” moment. But in hindsight, I really wasn’t prepared for what it gave me. I’m not gonna complain because what an honor? But I didn’t really grasp… I don’t think I understood it at the time.
In hindsight, when I started my career very early at 20 or 21, I didn’t have a handle on the craft. It was overwhelming. I struggled for a very long time with how to manage that, how to top it. Also, [I] struggling with who I was and what I wanted to do.
Two films after Engkwentro, I stopped making movies. I was just spent. I really didn’t know if I wanted to do it at all. That was eight years [ago], and it was only recently with GomBurZa that I’ve been enjoying the process. I’m also more at peace with myself. I know myself more. I have a better handle at the craft that I can say I want to do this, and [that] I’m in love with films and filmmaking.
You did theater back then, right? Like you acted?
Oh. Way, way back in high school.
It’s still on the bio on your website.
That was the first creative thing I did: Musical theater in high school. It was like Man of La Mancha and Don Quixote were my first two plays. I had a really great drama teacher, Ms. Ginny Natividad. She was a terror teacher, but she really loved her kids. She enrolled me in my first scriptwriting workshop. She read that the Cultural Center of the Philippines was holding free playwriting workshops at the time with writer Nestor Torre [Jr.]. So she called me up, picked me up in her Volkswagen Beetle, and took me to CCP. That really changed my life.
It’s the most emotional experience I’ve had in a theater. I laughed. I cried. It gave me goosebumps. It stayed with me for years. I think Himala does that to people.
What was your relationship with your screenwriting mentors Bing Lao and Ricky Lee?
The whole found story movement in the early 2000s is because of Bing Lao. He had thought about the art form and turned it into [a] science. His background was in accounting or a math course in college. He was a very technical writer. You’d take his class and it’s all diagrams and terms. He will inundate you on the first day with a glossary of terms, and it’s all about making sense of this world around you and putting it into this found story box by using these tools.
[Meanwhile,] I would say that Sir Ricky is all about feeling. Taking both of them, I got the best of both worlds. Sir Ricky is the most generous person I’ve ever met. He opens his home up to film students, to all filmmakers. He’d give free workshops every Sunday in his home. We built a community around his writing. His Trip To Quiapo is the first scriptwriting book I’d ever put my hands on. My mom had a copy; I borrowed it, and I’d use it as a reference for so many of my early scripts. He is such a father figure to me that I felt that I could ask him if he could allow me to touch Himala. Those are two greats of Philippine cinema and I’m very fortunate that I’ve gotten to learn from them.
This film is produced by Unitel Pictures, who you’ve worked with on ads since 2016. Many brilliant directors regularly work in advertising — Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer, Wes Anderson, etcetera. What did you take from your time directing ads that you now apply to your filmmaking?
I love making ads. Still do actually. With film, you shoot once a year. It’s a lot of pressure. But with ads, you shoot one or two projects a month and you get to really experiment and train yourself. With every project, I try to teach myself one thing. For example, with this project, I’m gonna learn about color. For another project, I’ll work on camera movement, or I’ll experiment with my shooting process. Over those eight years, I went back to “paid film school.” I got to work with different actors, crews, equipment, and just stretch and play around. I was very lucky because narrative commercials were [and are] a thing. We did the Kwentong Jollibee series, and those also found an audience. So, I didn’t really stray from being a filmmaker or a storyteller. That’s the same lens I apply to doing ads.
What’s the visual inspiration for Isang Himala?
When Carlo [Canlas Mendoza], my cinematographer, and I start a project, we have visual inspirations. For GomBurZa, he had suggested The Tragedy of MacBeth by Joen Coen. I didn’t feel it was right for GomBurZa but it was such a beautiful film. Even before I asked Sir Ricky, it was always in my mind to use it as a reference for Isang Himala. What I loved about it was it was somewhere in between theater and film. It’s theatrical and cinematic. They didn’t modernize Shakespeare’s words. That’s what lent it theatricality. But at the same time, they treated it with such a modern lens. That’s really what excited me about doing Himala — there’s something about the text that is innately theatrical, innately surreal. It’s what makes it different from the 1982 original. I wanted to preserve that when putting it to film and that’s the treatment that I pitched to Sir Ricky and that got him really excited. He did say that if we were just going to repeat the look and the minimalism of the staging of the 1982 film, then why do it at all? It needs to be something new, something different, in order for him to say yes.
What were the practical and artistic considerations when it comes to the music?
When we had initial discussions, he said he wanted to make Himala in a way he hasn’t ever done before — as a rock musical. It just so happened that Sir Ricky also wanted to do a rock musical. When he rearranged it, it became a totally different attack from [before]. It affected and inspired the visuals. It might surprise fans of the 2018 and 2019 staging. But for me, it kept the soul of the musical. I always felt that the songs expressed the depths of the souls of the characters. The rock music helped bring it out, which works for cinema.
Everyone still wanted to sing live. I felt like a lot of the performance was in the vocal delivery — the way they sing, the sound of their breaths, the words they emphasize. You don’t really get that when you lip sync. Lip syncing feels fake. We wanted to keep the authenticity. But in order to do that, there were a lot of considerations. The actors need to hear the music to get the right key. How do we get them to hear the music? We need in-ear monitors. How do we erase the in-ear monitors through VFX? How do we patch those in while recording clean sound? It was very technical and I was lucky we had a sound team that took everything into consideration. Of course, we made the decision to shoot in a studio. But that was a creative decision first. We did have to do a little bit of work in post-production. What you’ll hear in the film are, more or less, those authentic performances.
Most of the ensemble are acting for the screen for the first time. How did you draw out the performances from them without getting in the way of what they’d already built in the original musical?
A key difference with the musical was that it was just as much about Elsa as it is about everyone around her. You walk away from the musical with the cast of characters of Cupang. That was the magic of it. That’s why it was important for us to have the ensemble from the 2018 and 2019 staging. Of course, many of them haven’t done films before. One of the first things we discussed was the common saying: “Kapag theater, malaki. Kapag film, maliit.” I don’t necessarily agree with that. For theater, you’re performing for the last person in the room, and maybe that shifts your performance. But for film, who you’re talking to in this situation dictates everything. Before we started shooting, we also made a point to talk to everybody — from Aicelle [Santos] and Bituin [Escalante] to the ensemble — to respect the work they’d done by asking them about the backstories of their characters, and using those [to inform the] look of their individual characters, [as well as] the way we would block the scenes.
Whenever the pressure would get to me, I’d always remind myself to listen and feel the passion of the story rather than the fear of it.
You said that a film is written thrice: First in pre-production, second during the shoot, and third in the editing room. Out of the three, what is the most challenging, and the most rewarding?
They’re different experiences. The first time you write it, it’s like going out into the open sea and not really knowing where you’re headed til you get there. The second time it’s written, while you’re shooting, is really balancing expectations versus reality and protecting the core of the story while adjusting to what’s on set, what the actors are giving, what the weather is, etcetera. It’s more of a logistical challenge. The third time it’s written in post is the most amusing and the most rewarding because you take what you have in the can. It’s after you’ve shot everything that you’re able to see what you actually have and what you actually can have. New possibilities take shape that you never saw previously.
Was there any pressure that came from GomBurZa? Or from the fact that it’s Himala, and it’s returning to the screen?
Earlier this year, I was driven by the excitement of doing this and of Sir Ricky’s challenge to own it. To be both faithful and unfaithful. That eased a lot of pressure. When I started shooting, there was a moment it dawned on me that… “Oh. This is Himala.” I really struggled with the weight of it. Whenever that would happen, I would talk to Sir Ricky. He’d be so encouraging. Coming to work and seeing everybody in the cast and crew giving their all for the love and seeing these performances on the monitor, watching Aicelle, Bituin, David [Ezra], Neomi [Gonzales], Kakki [Teodoro], Vic [Robinson, and the ensemble], I would be so engrossed. It doesn’t really happen on film shoots because you’re so familiar with the text and you’re caught up with the stress of the shoot. But with this film, despite that, I was driven to tears in a lot of moments. With Sir Ricky, when he would visit, I would sit beside him and I’d see him crying watching the monitor as well. These performers and songs give a different immediacy and emotion. That was a really good experience. Whenever the pressure would get to me, I’d always remind myself to listen and feel the passion of the story rather than the fear of it.
When I think of Himala, I think of the death of Elsa. It’s a defining scene in Nora Aunor’s oeuvre. Sir Ricky has been explicit that the gun is with the audience. But the musical crucially obscures that. You don’t know where the gunshot came from. Why did you decide to retain the shot from the original?
That’s one of the shots we intentionally wanted to pay homage to from the original film. The way Sir Ricky explains [it] is that in the 1982 film, you don’t really know who shoots Elsa. But the way it’s framed, where the gun comes up from underneath the frame, it’s as if we all had a hand in it. I think it’s part of the soul of Himala. It’s one of the things we didn’t want to change. My hope is that it carries that same meaning.
You’re also named after your grandfather, who is the Father of Human Rights in the Philippines, and Sir Ricky has also stated before that filmmaking is centered on taking away and restoring human rights through cinema. Do you ever feel the pressure to engage with these overtly political stories, or is it something that you have simply naturally gravitated towards?
I think I just naturally gravitated towards it. But if you think about it, everything is about human rights. All human stories are about human rights, or the lack of it. Or the restriction of it. Or how humans take away each other’s rights. It’s about how we relate to each other as human beings. It’s not something that’s a lens that I choose to apply or that I’m very specific about.
