NV = Noel Vera

MO= Mario O'Hara

FR= Frank Rivera

NV How about "Condemned?" How did that begin?

MO Peter Gan produced it. He hired me to direct a script by Jose Javier Reyes. I hired Frank Rivera as production designer.

NV That's when you became friends?

FR No, we became friends earlier. Mario was directing a movie for Amalia Fuentes, "Ibulong Mo Sa Puso," and I was called in to write dialogue for the sequences to be shot that day. The first thing I did was go up to him and asked him the question that you asked him.

NV What question was that?

FR (To Mario) Are you Lino's lover?

MO No!

NV You were friends after that?

FR Yes. So he hired me for "Condemned" as production manager. Except that Mario didn't like Joey's script. When he showed it to me, I didn't like it too. We told Joey what we wanted, and he nodded, said he understood, and rewrote it. Except that we didn't like the rewrites either.

So what we did was rewrite the film. Joey would give us a few pages of story and we would rewrite it before we started shooting.

NV What did you change?

FR We wanted to do something about a brother and his sister. You never see films that show brothers and sisters. Also, Joey's script was a drama, and we had about enough of dramas. Why not do a thriller?

NV What was Joey's reaction when he saw the final product?

FR He disowned the film.

NV Were you forced to hire Dan Alvaro?

MO We didn't have the budget to hire a star opposite Nora Aunor, so we said "Why not go with someone new? After all, he would only be Nora's brother, not her lover." I knew Dan from before, and I liked the way he projected himself. I just didn't know how good he was.

NV As it turns out, he was good enough?

MO He was more than good enough.

NV "Condemned" has been called, by someone whose opinion I trust, "one of the most flawless Filipino thrillers ever made." Did it make money?

FR Oh yes! It was a huge hit. No small thanks to my maid, who was responsible for the ending.

NV What do you mean?

FR We had hired a docked ship on which to shoot. On the second to the last day of shooting, I asked my maid to wash all of the day's costumes that night, because next day was her day off and she was going home to Bicol.

What I didn't know was that when she went home, she took Nora's costume with her! She didn't know that the costume was needed the next day and she wanted to show it off to her family and friends and say: "This is the costume Nora Aunor wore."

I almost went insane when I found out. I looked for a substitute, and all I could find was a dress with the wrong color.

I told Mario the problem. It was the last day of shooting on the ship; the next day, the ship would leave the dock. This was when Mario showed his genius for improvisation--instead of throwing away three days' worth of footage, Mario changed the ending and had Nora jump off the ship, into the water. When the dress was wet, it matched the original dress exactly. Thanks to my maid, the ending was more exciting.

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NV You're not ashamed of radio?

MO It taught me my values. It taught me to be creative. It taught me never to forget my audience. When I make a movie, I always keep them in mind. I never make movies just to please myself.

NV But films like "Bagong Hari," or "Condemned?" What audience did you have in mind for them?

MO You also try introduce something new; you don't keep doing the same thing. The audience gets tired. And you must remember, "Condemned" was a hit, so in that case, it worked. I learned that in radio too; you have to introduce something different, in a different format once in a while. And the audience loved it; they could follow what we were trying to do. We didn't lose them; they were behind us all the time.