Last of 2 parts

ON the day the first part of this column came out last Dec. 27, 2022, Mon Confiado won the Best Supporting Actor award at the Metro Manila Film Festival for the film “Nanahimik Ang Gabi” where he played a house intruder. He mentioned this to May-i and myself during our conversation with him last Sept. 1, 2022 in Laoag City while he was filming another upcoming movie, one of the rare ones with him playing the title role after a career spanning three decades, Paul Soriano’s “The Fisher.”

Mon is a practitioner of what is called “method acting.” This is how the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, which institutionalized the training for the method, describes it: “... The use of one’s own life experiences in the creative imagination infuses each choice with genuine thought, desire, sensation, action and feeling resulting in psychologically in-depth behavior. It ... trains actors to use their physical, mental and emotional self in the creation of a character and stresses the way in which personal experience can fire the actor’s imagination. It eschews clichés and pursues individual authenticity and a reality deeply grounded in the given circumstances of the script.”

Mon says he doesn’t make the character adjust to himself, he creates his character based on the script. Since most fishermen are dark-skinned, he burned himself under the sun and shaved his head so it would be easier to dive as the hair would not get into his eyes. He also went to be with real fishermen all by himself, outside the budget.

Aside from his ability to dive and swim, he learned how to row a boat like a real boatman, and also how to put a net down, “’Yun ‘yung pinag-aralan ko. Lahat. Pagsagwan, pagtulak ng bangka, pag nandoon ka na, paano ‘yung tamang pagsakay doon.”

He also wanted to be the one to sail his own boat to deeper waters as there would be drone shots. He refused to have a body double in the dangerous scenes. So, if one doesn’t know how to be a fisherman, the awkwardness will show.

In playing Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, the president of the First Philippine Republic, Mon wanted to read more of his psyche. So, he thought of going to his house for a day, “Dahil ang bahay, may reflection ng personality ng isang tao. Kung ano ang bahay niya, makikita mo ang personality niya.” When no one was looking, he tried on Aguinaldo’s bed, and felt what it was like to be in a 19th century mansion and how it was to be president. There were not many tourists at the time, and he reflected, “Tahimik pero maraming sikreto. Maraming lagusan .... Pag tiningnan mo siya tahimik pero sa loob niya, maraming lagusan.”

His versatility already landed him roles in some international films like “Behind Enemy Lines,” “The Golden Holiday,” “Turncoat” and “Dito.”

But one really difficult role he did was playing a homeless Filipino in Los Angeles, California in “Stateside” (2017). When he went to America, he did not bring extra money or a credit card. He wanted to feel as he arrived there that he was a real penniless stranger as it was his real first time in the United States. He was so excited he arrived too early at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport but since he would only be relying on food served on the plane, he was already hungry.

When the plane arrived in Guangzhou, China, he had to be transferred to another plane and had an 18-hour layover. He looked at his backpack to see if he had even a hundred pesos but he only had three sets of clothes and no money, but he found a tea bag. The 7-Eleven person there refused to give him a cup, so he went to a coffee shop and waited for the customers to leave a cup. But people were bringing their cups out so he went to the trash can, found a used plastic cup and washed it. But when he poured hot water on it, the plastic cup just became soft and distorted. He used it anyway.

He checked in early and the Filipino crew in the flight to LA recognized him and gave him a good seat in the plane. He was still very hungry when he sat down. An old Chinese man asked him to change seats so he could be with someone, and he obliged. But in his new seat, his seatmates were a noisy family with playing children. He wasn’t able to rest.

Upon arrival, he suggested to the director that they shoot in Skid Row in LA, based on his research that it was where the homeless were. And he suggested that they do it ninja-style as they were doing in Tondo. Someone chased them with a baseball bat in their only attempt.

These are the lengths to which Mon Confiado would take his art, and for me that is nothing less than historic.

Erratum. Inlast week’s column, Abby Viduya and Priscilla Almeda were named as two different individuals, but they are one and the same. The latter is the screen name of the former.

02 January 2023, Fairlane Subdivision, Tarlac City.