Fernando Poe Jr. has created a mythic, on-screen persona that has continuing appeal to millions of Filipinos.

by Uro Q. dela Cruz

	Fernando Poe Jr., the king of Philippine movies, has declared his intention to run for the presidency. [photo courtesy of U.P. Film Center]

(This essay explores the mass appeal of action-movie legend Fernando Poe Jr. from the point of view of a self-confessed fan, who also happens to be a director of films and of the popular Bubble Gang gag show on GMA-7. With the 2004 elections just more than a year away, Poe — more popularly known as FPJ — is looming large as a possible presidential candidate, even if he has yet to divulge whether or not he has any political plans at all. In the past, he has repeatedly said that he had no intentions of following the footsteps of his bosom buddy, Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, who parlayed a successful film career into various political positions, including the presidency — only to later fall in deep disgrace. But there is now a FPJ for President Movement and Erap himself has made it known that he wants his friend to run. Even Malacańang is said to be worried over the prospects of Ang Panday as a candidate in the next presidential polls. The Palace and the ruling coalition have reason to fret; as the companion piece to this story shows, Filipino voters have a history of seemingly being unable to distinguish the real from the reel.)

I GREW up in Lucban, Quezon in the late 1950s just as the old guards of Filipino movies — Efren Reyes Sr., Johnny Monteiro, Tony Marzan, Rogelio de la Rosa, Armando Goyena, Ric Rodrigo — were giving way to a new generation of swashbuckling leading men. Most of the newcomers were members of the Lo’ Waist Gang, among them Fernando Poe Jr. Joseph Estrada, Zaldy Zhornack, Bob Soler, and the Salvadors. Separately, these young actors appeared in movies that dealt with the fast life in urban Manila and its gamut of gang wars, neighborhood rumbles, crime syndicates, and smuggled contraband. Their love affairs were mostly patterned after a successful formula: the Manila version of the Capulets and the Montagues. But we probinsiyanos found their problems too distant, too alien. The women were mostly fallen angels — unwilling prostitutes. The men were literally bastards trying to gain respect through guts and their ability to handle a gun or to engage anybody in a fistfight. Living the bucolic provincial life, we simply did not understand their lumpen-proletariat situation.

Then, one of the new matinee idols got out of urban Manila and rode on a horse into a mythical Filipino landscape — the Filipino Western. All conflicts became classic conflicts, the fight between good and evil, freedom against bondage. Those problems we understood. We had also grown up with Francisco V. Coching’s timeless komiks world of the lone warrior and seeing one come to life on the silver screen was sheer magic.

The cinematic Pinoy cowboy was Fernando Poe Jr. as Daniel Barrion. Immediately we became his fans, even if he himself took his sweet time to establish, in a series of films, the distinctive persona that became a legend: soft-spoken, unassuming, clear-headed in the face of all kinds of adversity and always willing to sacrifice his own safety to save someone else’s life. It was this FPJ that at least two generations of Pinoys growing up from the 1960s to the 80s would admire: the hero who would never start a fight or be provoked into one, and who would even allow himself to be ground to the ground, to the point where the audience would already be begging, please fight back. And that would be the only time that he would.

MOVIE after movie, FPJ played the strong, silent hero who was given to occasionally spouting nuggets of folk wisdom. I would learn much later that he would usually come to a meeting for his latest movie, open his black notebook, and say something like, “I want these lines in the film.” And that would be it, the script would be done. After all, the plots of FPJ movies are nearly all the same, and the scripts would merely be written around a collection of memorable one-liners such as “Kapag puno na ang salop, kailangan kalusin (When the container is full, it needs to be leveled).” Said in a whispered but gravelly voice, the cryptic lines seemed soothing to those he was protecting, yet threatening to his enemies.

Whether playing a farmer or a rebel, the FPJ movie hero was always the perfect gentleman whom my friends and I tried to copy. We dealt with our girlfriends as though we were FPJ. In most situations, we would first ask ourselves, what would FPJ do? At least I did. You wait on the side, having announced that you liked the girl. This announcement is never verbal. There is an FPJ attitude that you could emulate to telegraph this message. You never looked the girl in the eye. You drank a bottle of beer with friends but you stared in the distance, head low, thinking of her. You became embarrassed when she acknowledged your existence. You never raised your voice when speaking to her. You kept yourself in the sidelines all the time. During confrontations, you always took steps backward when your overpowering opponent moved against you. In front of your loved one, you’d take a beating, even to the point that you are already crawling on the ground, losing the respect of a young boy who idolized you. But you exploded with seething rage should somebody lay as much as a finger on your girl’s hair.

	FPJ was always the gallant hero saving damsels from distress, and a perfect, if mostly silent, gentleman in his movie roles. [photo courtesy of U.P. Film Center]

When alone with the girl, you never said I love you. You just used your instinct. When the time was right, you grabbed her, lifted her off the ground and kissed her hard — but for just a few seconds, never prolonging it, never moving your lips. But intense. Then you released her and then turned away slowly, feigning embarrassment, ready to kill yourself at the slightest hint that the girl was offended. That was the FPJ way.

Those used by the other movie actors just didn’t cut it. Erap Estrada would kiss the girl then wink at the audience, as if saying “Nakaisa ako (I scored).” Or Tony Ferrer would linger, suck the face of the girl, feeling pogi afterwards even as you saw the girl’s face turning red. And there was Jess Lapid Sr., the other Pinoy cowboy whose idea of kissing was tonguing. So unlike FPJ, who came off so humble, yet so cool.

My friends even started to dress up like him — the low-waisted jeans with a leather belt, a collared plain shirt (never a T-shirt), leather boots (never rubber shoes, that’s Erap). When FPJ discovered the young Jay Ilagan and began making movies with him, that new image of him stuck in our minds. In fact, it somehow confused us; we wanted to be FPJ, but we also wanted to be Jay Ilagan, because, actually, we were Jay’s age. One of us, the son of the owner of the only movie house in our town, hired a young boy to always accompany him to complete the FPJ look.

Significantly, in the late 1960s and early 70s FPJ moved away from his Daniel Barrion image and tried becoming a Muslim warrior, (in Perlas ng Silangan — Pearl of the Orient — co-starring Susan Roces as his Muslim princess, whom he would later marry in real life, starting a trend in the industry of popular action stars marrying popular actresses), a guilt-ridden guerilla fighter (in a Lino Brocka drama), and then into political history as Southern Tagalog rebel Asedillo, directed by Celso Ad. Castillo.

Asedillo proved memorable for me, because this was during martial law, and FPJ was playing a dissenter. There is a scene in the movie in which he enters a town and everyone closes their windows. FPJ then says, “Huwag ninyo akong talikuran, ako ay isda, kayo ang aking dagat. (Don’t turn your backs on me, I am a fish, and you are my ocean).” In one fell swoop, my hero had managed to merge Chairman Mao and Merlin the Magician. Mao Tse Tung once said, “The guerrilla is like a fish in the sea.” In Camelot, Merlin turned King Arthur into a fish, so that he could look at life from a nonhuman point of view.

Yet by that time, my friends and I had moved on. Time for college. It seemed that suddenly, FPJ had become insignificant. By looking at the ads, we learned that he started doing police roles and they did not interest us, until Celso Ad. Castillo did the quintessential FPJ movie, Ang Alamat (The Legend). Being a probinsiyano himself, Castillo understood what we were looking for. Set in a timeless, region-free, and mythical Filipino rural community, Ang Alamat brought back the lone warrior, spiritually wounded by a previous war, seeking solace then suddenly pushed into the familiar situation of injustice, violence and abuse of power. After watching him save the town and then say goodbye to practically each of its residents, we realized that this was going to be the last great FPJ movie.

I was already writing scripts by then. When I was growing up, I had always dreamt of doing one for FPJ. But after watching Ang Alamat, I decided that my FPJ movie had already been done. There was nothing more to contribute to the saga. He would later make the highly popular Ang Panday (The Blacksmith) series, but to me, Ang Alamat was it.