Caustic collaboration

CAPILLAS

As I read through the Inquirer online news site for the headlines last Wednesday, one article about the film entitled “Citizen Jake” piqued my interest since it mentioned TV journalist Atom Araullo’s response to director Mike de Leon’s very caustic comments about his time with him during production of the movie which to my knowledge has yet to hit Cebu’s movie theaters.

In the “Citizen Jake” Facebook page, a film that detailed a journalist-blogger’s investigation into government corruption that eventually led back to his family, de Leon admitted in his post to picking Araullo for the lead role after learning about his resignation from ABS-CBN.

“I have known and worked with outstanding journalists before when I was politically active during the latter years of the Marcos era. I only realized later that Atom’s journalism was not exactly the kind of journalism I had in mind. It’s not the gritty kind but more of the celebrity-centered schlock that sometimes verges on entertainment, even showbiz. Looking back, I can see why he wanted to become a movie actor. Perhaps the journalist was really a closet movie star,” de Leon said in his post on the film’s FB page.

In response, Araullo stated thus: “Mike made deliberately hurtful remarks about my journalism, which, ironically, has nothing to do with my participation in the film. I have never made any claims about the quality of my output or my stature in the media industry. I’ll leave it to the public to appraise the value of my work.”

Both men then commented on how difficult their collaboration was in making the film. I’ll leave it to the readers to either read about their exchanges or not since they may or may not share my interest on this incident.

But as someone who still works in the media industry albeit in the background and whose film appreciation is severely limited by my personal preferences, the Araullo-de Leon exchange grabbed my attention enough to make me realize a few things.

One, that de Leon may be the local equivalent of an Oliver Stone or a Michael Moore, two American filmmakers with known left-wing—or what militants prefer to label as “progressive–political views.

Hollywood for the most part is known and criticized by conservative sectors of American society for being the venue for liberal, left-wing political views even if they produce their usual share of “entertainment shlock” to reference de Leon’s disparaging remarks.

Two, that while they had their disagreements and will probably never work again, the fact that they finished the film which is earning substantial praise from those who managed to watch it showed that even under the most trying and difficult of circumstances, it is still possible for people of varying persuasions to work together. And owing to space constraints, I’ll end this piece on those two points.