Pilipino experience debuts on big screen

5 Card Productions Gene Cajayon hopes that his
film, "The Debut," which examines the life of a Pilipino American,
will appeal to a wide audience.

By Sophia Whang
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Ben Mercado, a Pilipino American, is ashamed to be Asian.

He’s ashamed of the way his house smells funny, he
despises his parents’ dream for him to become a doctor and he
used to put a clothespin on his nose in hopes to fight its
flatness.

He snubs his family by hanging out with a non-Asian crowd and
listening to rock music, but gradually realizes that he’s
just as brown as the rest of his relatives. He is able to recognize
his identity and value the beauty of his culture.

This is more than the story of Ben’s life ““
it’s the account of millions of Pilipino Americans and ethnic
minorities. This is the story of “The Debut” told
by director and co-writer Gene Cajayon.

With over a dozen rewrites, rejections for funding, and
investors that bailed at the last minute, “The Debut”
survived to become one of the first Pilipino American feature
films. It has already premiered to a sold-out crowd in Los
Angeles.

At first the film was dismissed by Hollywood, according to
Cajayon.

“Of course they were completely wrong,” he said in
an interview.

Even with 90 percent of “The Debut’s”
advertising dollars going toward the Pilipino American community,
Cajayon says a good quarter of the audiences are not Pilipino.

“It just shows that this movie is telling a universal
story,” Cajayon said. “It’s telling it from the
Pilipino American perspective, but just like “˜Joy Luck
Club’ or “˜Waiting to Exhale,’ or any of these
other films that deal with ethnic minorities, they tell a very
universal story and are enjoyable to everybody.”

Cajayon criticizes Hollywood for underestimating the power of
ethnic tales and themes in movies.

“Hollywood doesn’t understand that Americans love to
see that they have things in common with other ethnicities.
That’s a very powerful emotion, to know that you have a lot
that you can relate to with your Pilipino American friend, or your
Chinese American co-worker, or your African American
neighbor,” Cajayon said.

“That’s a very powerful draw and a very powerful
reason to go see a film. This film just happens to star a whole
bunch of Pilipino Americans for the first time,” he
added.

Cajayon had dreams of becoming a filmmaker ever since high
school, which led to his film degree at Loyola Marymount
University. He was influenced by, and still is inspired by
filmmakers such as Ang Lee and Spike Lee, but said he became
disheartened by the lack of coverage of Pilipinos and Asians in the
media and the negative portrayals of them. This is what inspired
him in 1992 to create a film short about Mercado’s story of a
Pilipino in America as his thesis project.

Cajayon said the lack of Pilipino American movies may be due to
the community being so new.

“Most Pilipino Americans came over after 1965, and the
parents who came here didn’t come to make movies. They came
looking for a life for themselves and their families,”
Cajayon said.

“None of them were interested in making movies until their
kids grew up and they started realizing that there was no
representation for our community in American media. So if things
are going to change, they have to do it themselves and that’s
essentially the mentality of myself and all the other filmmakers
involved with “˜The Debut.'”

Since the 1992 short and between the almost two dozen rewrites
of the screenplay, the topics tackled in the film have essentially
stayed the same. The issues are timeless: Where does a person fit
in? How does he identify himself as an American if he doesn’t
have any role models to look up to? How does someone deal with
parents who don’t understand where he’s coming from?
According to Cajayon and co-writer John Castro, the questions are
just as important and just as valid now in 2001 as they were in
1992.

The writers rewrote so often because of the numerous delays in
funding and because of all the issues they tried to cram into the
film, being one of the first Pilipino American films, and maybe one
of the last of its kind if it doesn’t do well, according to
Cajayon.

Even with a small budget and the riskiness of the film, the
theaters in which the movie is playing are packed, and Cajayon
takes pride in just finishing the project.

“It was a crazy idea to begin with 10 years ago, and
it’s still a crazy idea now, but we’re doing it and
people are celebrating and enjoying the film,” Cajayon
said.

“All the stuff we had to go through to get the movie made
is worth it because you’re finally giving a voice to a
community that’s been ignored. And for everyone that’s
not Pilipino in the audience, you’re sharing and helping
people understand who it is we are and how we fit into this great
thing called America.”