Dolphy's Last Hurrahs

Senin, 16 Juli 2012

Dolphy's Last Hurrahs

Dolphy's Last Hurrahs

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

In 2000, Dolphy played Walter Dempster, Jr., more popularly known as Walterina Markova, as an old man in Gil Portes’ Markova: Comfort Gay. His sons, Jeffrey and Eric, played Markova in his younger years. It is a lovely performance, one that I thought quenched the film’s chronic thirst for levity. What is most striking about Dolphy’s turn as the elder Markova, still fabulous despite or probably because of his being holed up in a retirement home designed for geriatric gays, is that it signalled the comedian’s twilight.

He was no longer Facifica Falayfay, the exuberant crossdresser who caused parades of laughter. He was no longer John, the hardworking husband of Marsha, who represented every Filipino’s humorous struggle to survive honourably. He was no longer Kevin Cosme, the proud father of Bill, Bob, Bing and Baldo, who kept his family intact despite the daily threats of the rampaging train, and the hourly problems every family man has to face. The impossible has happened. Dolphy has gotten old. He now has a lifetime of lessons to impart. He has turned into the Philippines’ favourite grandfather.

Sure, He did a couple more sitcoms and shows for ABS-CBN. There was Home Along the Airport, an attempt to revive the Kevin Cosme franchise. There’s also John and Shirley, an attempt to revive the John Paruntong franchise. However, it seems the market has changed. The barrage of fantaseryes, telenovelas, and reality-based television shows has nurtured an audience that did not respond to comedies and sitcoms that very well. Comedies were best served in tiny morsels, in the form of sketches and occasional jokes. Sadly, the shorter, the safer, the more profitable.

Because of that and his health, Dolphy worked less. He became more of a beacon than the celebrity in its traditional sense. He symbolized pure entertainment. Each and every ad of ABS-CBN would have Dolphy smiling relentlessly and invitingly, almost certifying the nobility of the network, no matter what the public may think. He just had so much goodwill, he was willing to share it, to networks, to friends who ventured into politics, to whoever may need it. The generosity he was known for throughout the prime of his career extended even further. He quietly fostered charitable foundations, providing more than smiles but sustenance to the masses who supported him the most.

Dolphy made five films after Markova: Comfort Gay. In 2002, he starred in Home Along the Riber, directed by his son, Eric. The title obviously mined the popularity of one of his most famous sitcoms. Home Along the Riber had Dolphy partnered with the last of his many loves, ZsaZsa Padilla. In the film, Dolphy played a variant of Kevin Cosme, only this time, he advocated environmental protection, telling his usual jokes while brandishing audience-friendly lessons on how to keep the surroundings clean for future generations.

In 2008, Dolphy played guru to Vic Sotto in Dobol Trobol: Let’s Get Redi 2 Rambol (2008), directed by Sotto’s favourite director, Tony Y. Reyes. While Sotto is a formidable comedian himself, the film makes apparent the ease Dolphy does his comedy. Dolphy makes replayed old jokes fresh. It’s a sloppy film but there’s something truly memorable in the way Dolphy shares his stage, never overextending his humor to overshadow the talents of his partner. One can only reminisce on the numerous duos Dolphy was part of.

Perhaps the most ambitious of Dolphy’s later works is Eric Quizon’s Nobody Nobody but Juan (2009). The title references to the Korean dance song that became so popular during the film’s release. The film, unlike many of Dolphy’s films, was not a series of jokes weaved together by a flimsy plot. It actually had a brilliant idea in its core. Dolphy played a patient in an American convalescent home whose only connection with the Philippines is Willie Revillame’s noontime gameshow. Through his clever machinations, he finds himself back in the Philippines, desirous to be part of his favorite show. However, he bumps into pals from a very distant past, played by Eddie Garcia and Pokwang, which forces him to resurrect a former romance. Unfortunately, the film’s execution was less ambitious, resulting in a film that again relied too heavily on the goodwill of Dolphy to succeed.

Father Jejemon (2010) is Dolphy’s final starrer. It also gave Dolphy his final controversy. In the film, the comedian plays a parish priest who finds himself at odds with a local land baron. Like most of Dolphy’s comedies, the plot only serves as a frame for the legendary funnyman’s antics, the best of which involving Fr. Jejemon’s clumsy hands, a host, and a pair of bountiful breasts had humorless Catholics rabidly denouncing the film as sacrilegious. However, one cannot deny that this is truly Dolphy, finding humor in the most unlikely of places and to resist it is simply to resist humanity.

Simply put, no matter what one thinks of these final films of Dolphy, no matter what one declares the films as ludicrous, ridiculous, and haphazardly done, one cannot simply deny that they were mounted to make people laugh, and they did.

In Albert Martinez’s Rosario (2010), Dolphy goes back to his being a beacon, a totem of respect and awe. He plays Hesus, the titular character’s son, who serves as narrator of the film. The comedian retires to tell history, to tell stories of the past, to connect the youngest generation to the ones we may opt to forget. Like children eager for adventures and love stories, we surround Dolphy, waiting to laugh, to cry, to imagine a world back then when all that mattered was happiness.

No, Rodolfo Vera Quizon was not only husband to his various loves, father to the many children he supported, and grandfather to the children of his children, he was the nation’s spouse, father, and grandfather. We can only mourn for him the way we mourn for the closest of our relatives. Through his art and his nature, he has become that much part of us.

(First published in Supreme, Philippine Star, 14 July 2012..)

Dolphy, National Comedian

Selasa, 01 Mei 2012

Dolphy, National Comedian

Dolphy, National Comedian

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

In 1928, Rodolfo Vera Quizon, Sr. was born in Tondo to a ship mechanic and a tailor. Because of the odd job of selling peanuts, butong pakwan, and other snacks to movie patrons that he ventured to take on during his formative years to augment his family’s humble income, he was predisposed to love cinema. While working as a stevedore, shoe-shiner, and driver, this love for cinema would eventually push him to try his luck in theater, cinema’s closest relative. He would eventually learn comedy from famous duo Pugo and Togo, and become known as Golay.

Quizon inevitably found his way back to cinema. Starting with bit roles for the very popular films of Fernando Poe, Sr., he would then be discovered by Doc Perez of the famed Sampaguita Pictures who would give the budding a comedian a broader canvass to refine his talents with. With a blossoming career in films, Quizon smartly used his nickname, Dolphy, as his screen name.

The rest, as corny as it may sound, is history. However, unlike the history that the country tends to conveniently forget, Dolphy’s history is something the nation fondly recalls. His trailblazing performance in Mar S. Torres’ Jack en Jill would introduce to Philippine cinema a brand of comedy that finds itself still potent to this day especially with the recent successes of Jade Castro’s Zombadings 1: Patayin sa Shokot si Remington and Wenn Deramas’ Praybeyt Benjamin. Arguably, Dolphy’s hilarious portrayals of the so-called parlorista gay in most of his more popular works may have resulted in an unfortunate public consciousness of limiting homosexuality to the type that Dolphy depicted in cinema. However, Dolphy’s mostly sensitive portrayals, coupled by his endearing public persona, would also elicit an understanding as to the humanity of the Filipino gay man in general.

This is most apparent in his brilliant portrayal of Coring in Lino Brocka’s Ang Tatay Kong Nanay. Coring, a parlor owner who unabashedly lives to the fullest a very carefree gay life involving nightly gimmicks with friends and seasonal sashays as pretend-Miss Universe queens, finds himself suddenly restricted from his pleasures when his former lover leaves his baby with him. Forced to bring up the child oblivious to what he thinks are hobbies of his which might confuse the child, he becomes a pained irony, a gay man whose very traditional view of the world is contrasting with his own sexuality. An unapologetic melodrama, Dolphy easefully injects the role with a sophistication that only a true artist can do so.

Dolphy, however, did not carve his career from merely mining one stereotype. He also developed another stereotype which he conveniently explored in his television shows, from the legendary John and Marsha with Nida Blanca to Home Along da Riles with Nova Villa. Dolphy is perhaps the quintessential Filipino family man: a hardworking breadwinner, usually unlucky in terms of material fortune but extremely lucky in terms of family. There are the usual quirks like the wealthy mother-in-law or next-door neighbor, who would constantly remind Dolphy of his station in life, the roster of oddball friends, who would support Dolphy both in the manufactured trials and his comedy, and the very familiar trials that are laced not with the actual unbearable burden of being poor but with levity and humor.

Dolphy also symbolized Filipino ingenuity. He paraded his comedic skills in films as localized and usually more interesting versions of Batman, James Bond, and Dracula. Usually lacking the extravagant budgets of their Hollywood counterparts, Dolphy makes do with butchered titles like Alyas Batman en Robin, Dolpinger, and Drakula Goes to R.P. and a whole arsenal of indefatigable slapstick and genuine wit.

It may seem that Dolphy’s artistry is unrefined and pandering to the convenience of the masses. However, Dolphy never really strayed from what is pop. He did not have any pretensions of doing art for the sake of art. It just so happened that his fluency in his craft, his tempered navigation of his lengthy career in both films and television, and his legacy of performances that are undoubtedly his, can be argued to be regarded as marks of an artistic vision that is not unlike the ones from the artists who can easily be classified as such.

The Philippines is country that has been known for its people’s ability to find humor in the direst of situations. Curiously, the country’s definition of art, dictated by the academe and the governmental institutions, shies away from the exquisite pleasures of laughter found in the unlikeliest of events, sadly belittling the contributions of artists like Dolphy, relegating them within the realm of the slight and momentary. Reality dictates however that it is these artists’ so-called art that really reflects, without need of a trained eye or taste, the most practical dictates and effects of art to the biggest demographic in the country that requires it.

It is about time Dolphy, not for the fact that he is old, or that he is a respected icon in the industry, be proclaimed as an artist whose dedication for his craft has given him the goodwill that is now being confused as the basis for his nomination as one of the country’s official bastions of art. To do so might just be the most honest things ever done since those awards were created.

(First published in Supreme, Philippine Star, 28 April 2012 as "Why Dolphy is our National Artist.")