Dateline: Manila, 1990
Reproduced from the book PRIMED Selected Stories 1972-1992
Author: Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon
Mother Lily woke up one morning with a brilliant movie in her mind.
Never one to let a brilliant moment pass, she summoned scriptwriter Racquel Villavicencio straightaway to her Greenhills home. In her bedroom, and not quite out of her house slippers and duster, she was all agog: "Meron ako isip. Si Gloria Romero sa wheelchair, hulog sa hagdan! O, drama. Maganda, di ba? O, bahala ka na kuwento. Pero Snooky dapat lalabas convent. Suot sana siya singsing madre pero bigla she will pull veil—maganda ’yon—alis niya bigla belo! Tapos, she open chapel door and run out. Outside hintay ang boyfriend niya si Aga at they will run away together! Maganda, di ba?”
For the title, her scriptwriter must use Lord, Bakit Ako Pa? because, well, she’d already bought the comics rights to that one, and these things are a costly 40 to 60 thousand pesos, so her writer might as well.
Another sleepless night and another exciting movie leapt to Mother Lily’s mind.
This time she wanted the even bigger scriptwriter Ricky Lee. “Gawa tayo pelikula Janice! Basta ’yong, ano, pag-uwi Janice bahay nila, kita niya bugbog stepfather niya ang mother niya, kaya she get knife at saksak niya ang stepfather. O, bahala ka na kun ano kuwento. Pero lagay ka Aiko, sister ni Janice. Saka kawawa sila dalawa kapatid. Lagi sila dalawa trabaho."
Ricky was to work with the title Hatiin Mo ang Langit because, “Maganda, di ba?” That was it, she was done, her instructions complete. Then she paused, turned to her scriptwriter once more, and asked, “Teka, kuwento ko yata ito kay Racquel at Joey, ano?”
That would be the same Racquel who was instructed to have Snooky take off her nun's veil and that would be director-writer Jose Javier "Joey" Reyes. And, yes, she had told them both. All het up, she had retold this scene of Janice de Belen and the knife and the stepfather to three other writers before this, who all naturally assumed they were being commissioned to do the story and had all gone on to write the scene into their scripts.
Which is why, these writers warn wryly, “If you watch our films, you might spot one big scene that repeats itself in all of them. Even if our stories are all so different.”
The mess, which writers for Mother Lily's company, Regal Films, have stopped ruing and now embrace as a natural disaster, may have something to do with the way Mother Lily brainstorms.
This one begins with a summons to the scriptwriter by Hotline or Easy Call, cellular phone, driver, messenger, or whoever else it takes to find whoever she’s looking for—because find them she does. The object of her summons is told to appear at Casa Marcos for an 11 p.m. dinner. Or at Bistro Lorenzo for a 1 a.m. dinner. Or at her Valencia studio for a 3 a.m. dinner. The hour depends on the producer's mood and schedule, but all these venues are within a quick drive from her Greenhills home.
Getting there, the scriptwriter is aghast, even lost.
Mother—which is how everyone, from Eat Bulaga! discovery Aiza Seguerra to President Corazon Aquino to director Ishmael Bernal, addresses her—turns out to be orchestrating four meetings simultaneously, in high gear, within the same restaurant.
At the first table, she may be negotiating the new contract for Maricel Laxa with Atty. Espiridion Laxa, brother to Tony Ferrer, Maricel’s father, while at the second, she may be settling the dates for Lorna Tolentino’s next four-picture deal with Rudy Fernandez, even as she's deciding how to split the P1 million promotional fund between 10 lovely young stars and the lovely older star Gloria Romero, at the end of which the negotiations conclude famously for Maricel, as she would later say of Mother: “I have no complaints. She has paved the way for many great things to happen in my life.”
At a third table, director Joey Gosiengfiao and his promotions people may be cooking up the trailer for Hot Summer, not a minor undertaking now that Mother has decided to junk its original title, Bukas Kita Mamahalin, after the movie had long been shot in full. The title change, the promotions staff need not be told, is Mother Lily’s concession to her rivals’ current run of ST successes. (For the uninitiated, ST is “sex trip” or “sex tease” films, younger sister to the “bold” and poor cousin to the “bomba.”)
Agitation at this table may also include the deals Channel 13 bigwigs are working out with Mother’s Regal Films—which already airs eight shows over four stations every week—for a Rene Requiestas comedy starrer. “But isn’t he overexposed? He already has Palibhasa Lalake and those ads!” someone whispers. But Mother’s mind is set on Requiestas, who has proven himself at the box office, and no one dares burst her bubble.
At the fourth table, the scriptwriter finds the correct group at last: a director, a line producer, and Mother are all bubbly over a dance-musical-drama for the Ogie Alcasid-Manilyn Reynes love team. Now all that’s left for the scriptwriter to figure out is how to glue all of Mother’s highlights in that one movie under a title she'll likely change three more times before it hits the big screen.
Throughout the evening there is a showbusiness feel in the air: the gossipy bits and the non-stop eating, the laughing and the easy money, the reporters dropping by comfortably uninvited, and the lovely stars with glowing skin flopping in at those ungodly hours to kiss the country’s biggest movie producer of them all. It is electric.
All of which sends Mother on a roll. The livelier the crowd, it is said, the more she comes alive. Mind, she loves feeding all of them, too! Greeting her scriptwriter warmly, Mother spends the next 20 minutes in conversation she enjoys. “O, how are your children?” she prattles. “Ako, di na iyak ngayon artista ko. I’m at peace na. Iwan ko na attorney mga kaso ko... Ikaw, kumusta love life mo?”
No one really knows what triggers the shift of topic, but it comes, and eventually she gets around to paying attention to the once aghast-and-lost scriptwriter to tell him the new story in her mind. “Isip ko may madre, o basta babae naka-nun costume, iyak siya habang luhod sa Baclaran, may Santo Niño isa kamay, at wave-wave niya ito. Puwede si Ruffa! Maganda, di ba?”
Of course, before the writer can gulp, Mother is off to the next table where she gives her nod to a P1.5 million promotional campaign, after which she distributes herself to the next two tables, where she decides what the packaging must be for Manilyn Reynes, her touted star for the ’90s.
In between, the phone calls. Always, the phone calls. This time the caller may be her checkwoman Luz Veras consulting her about a P5-million disbursement. She takes the call. Another ring and it may be Luz again, now inquiring about a 250-peso gasoline allowance for a Regal driver. She takes the call as well.
When finally she gets back to her writer, Mother doesn’t miss a beat: “So ano na gawa mo madre sa Baclaran?” Stunned into replying, the writer blurts out: “A, siyempre, Mother, baliw ’yong character.” To which she says: “O, sige, baliw.” And that is fairly much how Sor Dolores, starring Ruffa Gutierrez and directed by Lino Brocka, would come to be. (Fair warning: Watch for it under another title.)
MOTHER LILY, VILMA SANTOS, MARICEL SORIANO & MORE
Regal Films, it must be said, has produced some of the worst films the Philippines has ever seen: Kabayo Kids, Starzan 2, Nasaan Ka Inay?. And, incredibly, some of the very best: City After Dark, Sister Stella L., Virgin Forest.
But, whether blah or beautiful, chances are Mother Lily has not read any of their scripts. Mother does not read scripts, period.
There is no way she can sit still long enough for that. Everyone knows that tons of scripts at Regal just lie in the filing cabinet, untouched. Joey Reyes, Regal’s most prolific writer, shares a rule of thumb: “Mother is not impressed by your long, logical story. She just wants your highlights. The number of highlights you can provide for her trailer will determine whether you get a film or not.”
A sample highlight? Well, a Vilma Santos slapping a Maricel Soriano and, to make the screen explode some more, a Maricel Soriano giving a Vilma Santos a return slap. Or, a chilling peek into the monster-child of Janice de Belen, where the voice-over for the trailer can spook: “Oh my God, ang anak ni Janice!”
Lily Monteverde produced 31 films in 1989 alone, or 26 percent of all films produced locally for that year. Since she doesn’t read scripts, where then did she pluck all the stories from? Were they all movies in her mind? Well, no. Who wrote the films then? Well, her scriptwriters. But she never reads their scripts? No, she does not.
All right. See, the woman may not read but the woman happens to be rich. And the rich, as Gatsby has long told us, are different from you and me. With the Regal matriarch, all you needed was for her to like your vibes.
Of course, for that kind of approval, you followed certain unspoken protocols. You kept from looking like you were trying too hard to belong. You didn't over-talk. You definitely didn't over-praise. You didn’t speak too much English. (Makes her uncomfortable.) You also avoided any action that could threaten those who got there ahead of you.
That was the way you got near enough to the matriarch, and being near enough was the way you could blurt out your script’s highlights. If she thought your highlights very visual, very commercial, very saleable, you got her immediate nod and never mind your script. You could bother with that later, mainly for use by the director and the stars.
There was another way to get to her at one time. Mother Lily had in her employ a “reader,” someone who combed through manuscripts and told her which were “commercial” and which were “not commercial,” the only two categories any bona fide producer in the Philippines recognizes. So, fill your scripts with highlights! With her interest piqued, she would have the reader read the entire thing to her out loud.
But, be prepared: she almost always fell asleep somewhere around the third page. Yet a reader trying to sneak out at 2:30 a.m. would get the shock of her life. For Mother would suddenly stir, open one eye, and ask, “O, ano na nanyari, nagkita sila Maynila?” And—mind you—she would be completely in sync.
So, was that how something like the classic Sister Stella L. was made? Well... no. You see, Regal hands explain patiently, Mother may be on top of all that take place in her domain, and her domsat, they laugh, may be second only to presidential daughter Kris Aquino’s, but there remains one thing she remains in the dark about: her own films.
Again, please?
Well, it seems that after she has met with her director over casting and title—her two personal concerns—she leaves well enough alone. And since she never really opens a script, and she watches film rushes only when someone whispers the bad words, “Mother, hindi kikita,” she is always mildly shocked by what her directors churn out.
Like Peque Gallaga’s Trese. She thought this was a bagets film; in fact, it was a suspense thriller. Or like Dyesebel. She thought this was fantasy; it turned out to be drama.
HOW MOTHER PRODUCED SISTER STELLA L
And then there was Sister Stella L, the film that ended up upsetting the Ferdinand E. Marcos government.
When Mike de Leon was filming this—from a script Mike co-wrote with Jose Almojuela and Jose F. Lacaba, the latter a journalist, poet, author, and ex-political prisoner—he just kept doing things his way, as he was wont to do. And because the only reports Mother had asked from her “spies” were: Was Mike behind budget? Was anyone quarreling on the set?—that was all she got.
Besides, with Vilma Santos there, Mother Lily was sure the film would be sexy. An insider actually swears Mother thought the “L” in Sister Stella L. promised sex. There is indeed a Tagalog word that starts with "L" and translates to "carnal desire." But in this case, "L" simply stood for the nun's family name, Legaspi. Come promotions time, was she ever flabbergasted to discover that she was now the touted owner of a highly political film!
Right away she panicked about the box office. In this business, her cardinal rule went, one major flop and your company is dead. Or, if you survived, your standing with the bookers suffered. Next time out, you weren’t certain to get their best theaters.
To recover, you would need more and bigger stars; but by then you may not have enough millions left to pay them with. To add to her panic, Viva Films booked a cutesy-wootsey Sharon Cuneta starrer alongside the Vilma Santos sobering political movie.
Mother scrambled to save her film—flushing in nearly P2 million (1984 peso value) for promotions—says Ng Meng Tam, a.k.a. Tama, chairman of the Metro Manila Theater Association and business-friend to the Monteverdes.
But, Mother lost. The film bombed. And although Sister Stella L won so many best-picture awards in 1984—from URIAN, Catholic Mass Media Awards, Film Academy of the Philippines, and Philippine Movie Press Club; and was nominated for best film in that year's Venice Film Festival—Mother was scarred for life.
Tama, a man Mother Lily always listens to for box-office pulse, likes to say: “If the audience wants to eat fish, producers will produce fish. If it wants meat, it will get meat.”
Mother Lily is a clear disciple. From her table, she will simply not serve politics or religion or retardation. But, she will dish out everything else. Sauté flying bilaos, flying dwarfs, flying giants, and flying twins. Chop up toilet humor into bite size. Boil song after mindless song caterwauled by her young stars. She will even lay out a lauriat, and the whole course will have the same predictably nice taste.
But, so what? Does she care if her films don't get to Cannes? Does she care for critics, a number of whom go to her to sell their scripts? And if those awards don't translate to tax rebates, how are they palatable? On her menu, Starzan 1 is the pièce de résistance: a film made on P3 million raking in a gross of P32 million!
As master chef, she simply serves people more of what they want.
A big movie fan—that’s what MOTHER LILY has always been
Even when she was young and single, Lily Yu always snuck out to a favorite Manila moviehouse, bag of food in hand, and inside the darkness swooned over her favorite movie stars. This drove her rich Chinese family crazy. Exasperated, her parents, who had made their fortune in coconut, bundled her off to convent dorms. But these dorms—at St. Scholastica’s and Maryknoll where, summed up, she spent no less than seven years surrounded by nuns—could do nothing to stop the movie fan.
Escape she did, and regularly too. In Maryknoll she discovered the tiny bridge at the back, right beside where the nuns resided, which led straight to the larger Ateneo campus. From there she fled to ogle Nida Blanca, her first truly favorite star. Then, finally tiring of all the stealth, she uprooted herself in her last year of college and enrolled at the University of the East. “To look for boys,” she guffaws today.
It was there where she could be free to wear whatever Nida Blanca wore last: “Meron puffed sleeves ganyan at apat petticoats. Suot ko ’yan sa UE.” And she guffaws again at the memory.
Nida Blanca herself chuckles to recall her first meeting with the Regal boss. She remembers the producer saying to her, “Noon, popcorn ako tinda. Ayaw mo ako pansin.” Nida, star of the biggest LVN studio hits in the ’60s, didn’t really believe this multimillionairess had seen her at all those premiere nights like she claimed. Nida knew those nights as grand affairs where stars took turns on stage performing numbers they’d rehearsed for nearly a month—and fans had to be prepared to get crushed by the throng. But after Mother Lily started describing every premiere-night dress Nida ever wore, the star was convinced. Dumbfounded, but convinced.
To this day, everyone around Mother Lily is constantly discovering that she is, indeed, the biggest movie fan on these islands. But as everyone is discovering as well, this has not stopped her from being as hard-nosed a businesswoman as they come.
So it is that she will shed copious tears over Maricel Soriano biting her hand. Maricel—once upon a time Regal’s biggest asset bar none—would embarrass Mother at the Big Dome on the star's very birthday celebration by saying to all that Mother knew how to love a star only when the star brought in the big bucks. And so it is that Mother will also shed abundant tears over Snooky Serna. Snooky, her contract star, upped and left to make a movie with Viva Films, Regal’s biggest rival.
Explaining Mother's tears, Regal's trusted senior Douglas Quijano says, “Mother admits to being a fan of Maricel.” But those same tears did not stop Mother from instructing ACCRA lawyer Antonio Gabriel Llorente to prepare documents against Maricel. (Status in 1990: on hold.) And even earlier, it did not stop her from taking Snooky to court, the first star she would ever sue. (Status in 1990: settled.)
Her anger stemmed from hurt: these were stars she had advanced millions of pesos to for films yet to grind—and here they were abandoning her for the rival camp.
Pained, Mother nevertheless continued the practice of giving advance payments in the millions of pesos to her stars. This got so bad in the late ’80s, reveals theater magnate Tama in our interview, that Regal, unknown to the public, “at one time was hard up financially.”
In short, the huge and mighty Regal Films once had little money left. And, in the movies, having little was as good as having none.
But in Lily Yu Monteverde’s judgment, the huge deposits she made with the stars were a smart business move. Show business, to her thinking, was a star-driven industry. Her move thus deprived rival companies of the services of filmdom’s biggest draws, in effect depriving her competition of business altogether. These deposits also allowed her, so she believed, instant and first access to the stars when, in her own good time, she found the vehicle to match star to public pulse.
Yet, as her marches to court have shown, things don’t quite work out that way. Inevitably the stars get restless waiting for the good vehicle, or need more money, or feel they have to teach her a lesson for neglecting them, or, even possibly, the egos simply percolate faster in showbiz.
But Mother can’t be budged. She is still busy checking out the public pulse: the feedback from Tama’s theater circuit, from hangers-on, from the shrieks of fans. And she is still computing what she stands to lose if she bankrolls a P5-million film starring someone currently “cold” at the tills, and so leaves her P2-million advance money to sit idly with the star who, in turn, remains without a movie.
But the star, now quite impatient, bolts out and completes a film with a rival company. Mother Lily promptly cries, literally. (“But not so much anymore,” she says, partly because the Oasis of Love has calmed her nerves.) Then just as promptly, she calls in her ACCRA lawyers and gives the order to sue—and so goes the cycle.
It’s a cycle that's not likely to break, not while her peculiar management style dominates. People around her generously describe this style as highly personal and completely dependent on mood. Essentially, what it does is operate on the principle that whoever owns the money changes the rules. Or, put another way: there are really no rules.
A particular manifestation of this principle can be seen in the film company's books. Erratic amounts are moved around in an inexplicable exchange of emotion and goodwill between the producer and her people. What this succeeds in doing is: it completely turns every spot of Regal territory—from sofas where courtiers wait to restaurant tables where the brilliant and the pretender mix it up—into thick ground for “intrigue.”
Since everything is erratic and inexplicable around Mother, everyone just wants to get into her good graces. The system has caused mess after mess.
You can see it in the buzz on Kris Aquino. Many of Mother’s stars aren’t happy that the sitting President’s youngest, propelled by Mother’s machinery, has struck a deal with ABS-CBN for P130,000 per episode in talent fees. Multiplied four times a month, that’s a formidable sum in an industry where a top-class actress like Gina Alajar can barely wangle P10,000 for a guest appearance, and where P130,000 is the entire budget for an hour-and-a-half TV drama.
That girl Kris is pretty thick, insiders mumble, if she thinks she deserves being propped up in a movie by all these veteran talents. Why, snipes one writer-director, can hers be anything more than “talent by executive decree?”
But in the end, many feel it is Mother Lily—and ABS-CBN, which might've had an eye on the ads a presidential daughter could pull in, not to mention the political clout—who got the new girl sizing up her talent fee...and getting it wrong. What with a strongly rumored Regal Films offer for Kris of P1.5 million per film, that feeling hasn’t been easy to shake.
Some swear that Alice Dixson’s unexpected petulance over the “tiny” P1 million bonus for her Dyesebel hit—which has led to a war with Mother that may lead to the courts again, says Atty. Laurente—is an offshoot of the Kris treatment. Adds the same irate writer-director who, invoking survival, asks for anonymity: “Iniisip siguro ni Alice, aba, anong karapatan ni Kris, e ni wala pa siyang naipapakita sa box office!”
REGAL FILMS AND THE GRUMBLINGS BELOW
But while the war of the star fees rages, the grumblings below are also becoming louder. For, in contrast to the cool P1.5 million for Kris, Mother can spare only P250,000—tops—even for a brilliant director.
There’ve been occasions when, after a film made a killing and Mother happened to be in a good mood, a bonus of a couple of thousand pesos or a brand-new car was thrown the way of a director. But this was not standard practice; directors always knew that, with Mother, they could never hold a candle to the stars.
Drearier still, writers—even the very best in the business—manage a niggardly income of P35,000. Their checks are also inevitably staggered and postdated, with the final balance trickling in months after script completion. A bonus of P2,000 might be clipped on to that if the film did a multimillion take at the tills and if Mother happened to be in a generous mood.
But by far the biggest issue hanging between Mother and her writers is her penchant for not paying a centavo for scripts, however good and completed and commissioned, until these are actually filmed. A disastrous arrangement, complain the writers, because, with Mother changing her mind all the time, no one ever knows for sure when, and if, filming will actually start.
But Mother’s favored circle always finds a defense for her.
They say that, for all the ruffled feelings at the Regal camp, what saves Mother is that she is a woman with heart. That the way even to her purse strings is not reason and fairness; it is heart. Give her a tearjerker, “Wala ng gatas ang anak ko, Mother,” and right away she tells Luz to prepare the check (that was due you months back). Tell her a horror story, “Naholdap ako, Mother,” and that very day she orders the secretary to work out your car plan (which you pay back in so many scripts).
Some stories sound warm enough.
Time was when, so the buzz goes, a young mestiza, big enough to have had her solo starrers, was waiting it out by the stairs of the Valencia studio. Very late into the night she was still there, although she looked like she badly needed sleep. Mother asked her what the problem was, and the star finally got around to saying, “Kasi, sabi ng Mommy, ‘wag daw akong uuwi kung wala akong dalang P50,000.” Her mommy was an even bigger star but was having one of her irregular tiffs with Mother. Of course, Mother gave the daughter the money.
And lately, the buzz goes, a contract star she is at loggerheads with has become so impoverished there isn’t even Coke in her home to serve visitors dropping by—a home, by the way, still legally under Lily Yu Monteverde’s name. And so Mother, it is said, dutifully sends the star, whom she has sued by the way, an allowance of P15,000 a week to maintain the star’s lifestyle.
But you wonder: If Mother Lily did not have the power, would these stories be told the same way? Would the unpretty tale always be upended by the pretty punchline? You don’t know. You just keep hearing that, yes, Mother Lily in a fit hurls whole branches of grapes and whole telephones at her staff, but that, hey, she spends P4,000 a day just to feed them.
“Lukaret ka talaga, Mother,” people excuse her all the time.
Lukaret. Crazy. She loves the word. It sends her ringing with laughter. But if you’re the kind who thinks that the word has also begun describing today’s local movies, you may have a hard time explaining that to Mother. Because the biggest local movie producer in the land today is just happy being the biggest movie fan of all.
It hardly crosses her mind that, in a movie-mad country like the Philippines, she holds in her hands the culture—nay, the taste—of a whole generation. If you dare suggest it, she would roar, and think you're crazy.
mother lily AND THE box office
Nothing in this world, people swear, gets Mother Lily more excited than a box-office smash. Truly nothing. And there is probably little, they wager, that she would not do to make one happen.
Why, if the box office demanded it, she would cry as easily as scream or curse, and pray as easily as bribe or sue. And she'd be a natural all the way. Because, as industry insiders swear: “There’s no doubt about it. Mother is the best actress of Regal.”
And act she does, whenever her business is threatened.
Witnesses remain dazed, for instance, by an on-the-spot Mother Lily-Daisy Romualdez scene.
It seems that Mother was furious with Daisy for slugging it out in media over Regal’s unroyal treatment of Daisy's ward/talent/niece Tina Paner. (Uh, this was of course before Tina left Daisy’s household.) Well, one day an unannounced Daisy dropped in at the Valencia studio and, not finding Mother, decided to wait it out inside Mother’s office. Quickly, Mother’s people warned her that the adversary lurked inside. Mother stepped up to her office, paused before the door, tried out loud, “Hello, Daisy?,” and another, “Hello! Daisy!,” turned the doorknob, and as perfectly as if a clapper had cued it, pitched, “Hello, Daisy…,” as she opened herself for a kiss. And, witnesses say, the Daisy scene was not half Mother’s best moment.
Mother Lily’s normal way is really more transparent. She either likes you or she doesn’t, and she’s rich enough not to care if you know. Or, when truly irked, rich people make sure you know.
But, remember, she is a movie fan before all else. A true believer in the megapower of a movie star. A producer for whom it’s never the story, never the production merits, not even the direction, but the star. And remember, too, that she is one foxy businesswoman. So, whether it’s for Tina Paner who one day may bring in the dough, or Alice Dixson who currently is; and whether her relations are excellent, like they are with Vilma Santos, or unnerving, like they are with Nora Aunor—Mother will mount a smashing performance for them all.
This is show business!
Alfie Lorenzo, a movie reporter read in 16 publications and currently unenamored of Mother, reads her with more bite. “Mabait siya sa pakikisamahan,” he says. “Kung sino ang mainit sa takilya, ‘yon ang paborito niya. Tingnan mo ‘yong kay Ruffa Gutierrez. Nag-birthday ‘yong bata mga three years in a row, wala si Mother. This year sabi ko, I’m sure sisipot si Mother. She did. Nakatsinelas, me lagnat, pero pumunta siya. Sabi ko nga, pag hit na talaga si Ruffa, Mother will go to the parlor, wear a gown, and be in the thick of the celebration.”
Whether true or false, what is clear is that Mother Lily’s megabucks have indeed gone largely to crowning her stars.
She has unloaded millions for star buildup, advanced P2 million for Hilda, P3 million-plus for Maricel, and a house-and-lot plus cars for Snooky. When Last Two Minutes made money, she flew with Carmina, Aiko, Ruffa, Alvin, Jerry, and Paul to Hong Kong for a holiday, her standard treat. Fifty thousand pesos she disbursed, or so it’s said, for Manilyn’s birthday celebration. More than this, she has shouldered Manilyn’s schooling and house rent since the girl was brought to her as an eight-year-old with lung power. Just recently, Mother signed Joey de Leon to a new contract to the tune, the grapevine whispers, of a healthy P1.5 million per film for 12 films.
“Mother Lily buys her stars’ loyalty,” her critics say. When she fails to get that, they add, it is again money she uses “to bring them back from their tantrums.”
But pay attention, say the oldtimers: The stars who overdrew on their account were the same stars she began treating with less refinement. For Mother Lily has you, they mumble, the moment you have her money. “Nanunumbat ‘yan,” says a publicist from her entourage. “Lalo na kung may deposit siya sa iyo, ‘tapos hihingi ka ng permiso na lumabas sa iba. You’ll really get it. She’ll tell you how she owns you.”
Comes now the '90s.
Mother is no longer as easy on her stars. They have to pay in services every peso she hands out to them, for which her memory is phenomenal, to the centavo. But even with this new coolness, it is still her way to treat the stars as a class apart. Outside this class, there is a handful she may treat right, but more than half the time, rues a Regal veteran, “She treats everyone like a maid.”
As for the stars, they will always be treated better. When Mother sets into motion the full power of her promotions machinery, it is still the stars she sells. As one director puts it: “She can’t sell a Kurosawa or an Almendras. To her it’s Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman.”
promotions, promotions, promotions
Promotions, to Mother Lily, are what make or break a movie. So this, she will never scrimp on.
Her standard protocol: two press conferences for every Regal movie.
One with the English dailies and magazines; the other with the Tagalog movie magazines. (Food: P20,000 per presscon of 15 people. Reporters: P300 to P2000 per, for simple attendance, amount depending on the bigness of reporters' names and the bigness of their publication’s circulation.) Official publicity pictorials are scheduled, for which Mother Lily pays for the stars’ clothes, makeup, Roper’s photo studio, and the pictorial supervisor. Billboards and print ads are commissioned.
Four weeks before playdate, the following are released: Movie trailers (director’s fee: P60,000). Prime-time exposure on TV (P17,000 per 30 seconds). But, note, Lily Monteverde needs to pay very little, if at all. She can run her trailers free three times within every one-hour show she packages. And with her eight shows going every week, spread over four channels, her movies get excellent airing.
It doesn’t matter, therefore, that she nets only P10,000 on her packaged TV show. The object of her TV deals with various networks is singularly the exposure of her all-important trailers. And—make no mistake—it’s an exposure she takes very seriously. She pays people to do nothing but monitor these three runs. Any miscount by the station, and Mother is all over the phone.
Two weeks before playdate comes the “live promo.”
This is when the stars channel hop. Mother pays handsomely for her stars to do these rounds. (“Actually, pelikula rin naman no’ng artista ‘yon, kaya ewan ko kung bakit may bayad pa para mag-promote,” says a quizzical Richard Gomez.) Mother also foots the bill for costumes and dance rehearsals; for dancers (P500-P1000 per dancer per show); for choreographer (P5,000-P8,000 per dance); for the writing and production of theme songs (P30,000-P50,000); and for appearances in GMA Supershow and others (varies: the bigger the stars, the more welcome they are to the show, the less Mother has to pay).
The “live promo” extravaganza alone can cost P200,000, as it did for Hot Summer, confirms June Rufino, Mother’s current 24-hour assistant. Through all this, the star is the focus. The millions must be thrilled by damsel Manilyn Reynes making sweet music with swains Janno Gibbs and Ogie Alcasid, all of whom can sing, by the way. The millions must desire the beautiful Alice Dixon and go gaga over the firebrand Maricel Soriano.
Mother Lily has decreed that on such audience responses rest the results of the box office. Which showbiz denizen dares to contradict her? As entertainment columnist Alfie Lorenzo concedes: “Mother Lily is the local movie industry.”
People close to Lily Monteverde insist that the producer knows when a Regal film is horrid. As Douglas Quijano puts it, “Mother can tell an Armani from a Crispa.” But even her Crispa films she will sell hard. Mother just cannot abide a bomb. With films now produced at a low P3 million, that makes a P7-million Metro Manila gross weak, and only a P10-P15 million take can be called a blockbuster.
In the past, when a bomb dropped on her, she shut herself in her room, and the maids, the only ones allowed to see her, would have a terrible day. Nowadays, director Mel Chionglo hears Mother saying, “Di bale. Tayo naman next time.” An onlooker guesses: “Maybe she got tired working on Regal being on top all the time. Her emotions were always seesawing then.”
imploring deities, fortune tellers, and luck
Even in her now mellower state, Mother is not one to give in to failure so fast. Not even with a bad film in her hands. When all seems lost, when all her earthly powers don’t suffice, she goes one step further: she implores the deities.
Wednesdays she kneels before Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Thursdays it’s St. Jude, Fridays daytime she is inside the Quiapo Church and nighttime she’s with the Oasis of Love. Somewhere in between that rigorous religious schedule, she drives off to Our Lady of Manaoag who, it is said, was introduced to her by Kris Aquino.
That she is a believer, no one doubts. Family friend Mommy Seiko—Aurora Lim-Tan, mother of Robbie Tan of Seiko Films—says, “Mother was an honor student in a convent school. She was very religious, and very Catholic ang upbringing niya.” But hardly anyone doubts either that her prayers must bring just a bit of a smile to the lips of deities.
Also, being an obsessive businesswoman, she has to end all this with a visit to the fortune teller.
For a very long time—before her Oasis of Love sojourn at least—no movie of hers showed without her first consulting a manghuhula. After Baclaran, she, with her entourage, would drive off to Dr. So or to Aling Bening in Cavite or to some newfound seer to have her fortune read. For Mother was not beyond cheating, chuckles a member of the entourage. “If she didn’t like what one manghuhula said, she’d go to another, and another, until she heard what she liked.”
These days Regal hands rather miss all the paraphernalia for divination. At least one regular says it doesn’t feel the same now that Mother’s 1,000 candles are no longer around to be lit to coax good fortune Regal’s way.
Mother’s love for the box office is a burning one. Literally too, sometimes. Not too far back, the story did the movie rounds that, as was Mother’s habit, she took a bath with her two buckets of water before her. One was scalding hot, another freezing cold. First the tabo was half-filled with hot, then leveled out to cold. This was ostensibly because, says a television director, “Mother is superstitious. She believes na ang nagtatabo ay nagtatabo ng grasya.” But just then the big news flitted to her: Aiza Seguerra’s film had made buckets at the tills. Well! The agitated Mother took a tabo of scalding hot water, forgot to dip it into the other bucket, and verily burned her chest.
And yes, this is a true story. Mother herself kept showing well-wishers at the hospital her burnt chest.
the prim mrs. lily yu monteverde
Mother Lily first appeared on the scene in 1976 as a rather prim Mrs. Lily Yu Monteverde. Her hair was teased high and set in place with spray net so heavy, Douglas Quijano recalls, she looked like she had cotton candy on her head. Moreover, back then no one knew how much she was worth.
Truth was, publicist Lolit Solis had her doubts. After all, she had had two brushes too many with the producer borrowing money from her.
The first time was when Lolit and Mother emerged from a Niño Muhlach movie feeling hungry, and had a snack. When paying time came, the producer couldn’t! Solis, an eyebrow raised, lent her P100. The following day, the producer paid her back P200, so the eyebrow came down. But up it went again when, that same day, the producer’s car went dead in the floods, its batteries kaput and its gasoline tank empty, and now the alleged producer was borrowing P400 from Solis and rushing her driver to pawn his watch to the gasoline boys! (To everyone’s chagrin, no one in the gas station wanted his old watch.) It took a bit of time before the trademark Solis eyebrow came down again. “Fake yata ang producer mo, Douglas,” she snorted.
Indeed, when Lily started Regal Films with husband Remy, she did not have her family’s millions to back her up. For although she was the favorite of her father, Domingo Yuchu, a man who owned vast properties in Taipei and was known as the “coco king of Bicol,” she insists that when she left home to marry, she began from scratch.
But she and her husband were as industrious as they came: they sold garments to stalls in Zurbaran and manned a popcorn stand in a movie house, then went into film distribution, starting with All Mine to Give, a tearjerker about brothers and sisters being given away one by one. The couple made good money on that one. To this day, Mother believes the Pinoy will pay to see that kind of drama. “Ngayon kung gagawa siya ng pelikula, kailangan ‘yong may mga bata na iyak-iyak,” says Racquel Villavicencio. “At siya rin, naiiyak talaga.”
When in late 1976 Lily produced her first film, it was a sex comedy starring Elizabeth Oropesa, Kayod sa Araw, Kayod sa Gabi. Completed at a cost of roughly P1 million, promotions included, the film made good. Ever the gambler, Lily poured its earnings into a second film, Niño Muhlach’s Peter Pandesal, and then a third, Alma Moreno’s Walang Karanasan, and so on nonstop.
Even back then, Mother was intuitive. “Meron siyang mga kutob” is how her circle of line producers puts it.
But beyond "kutob," she had tenacity. It was she who controlled production: title, story, cast, promotions and set design, up to the littlest detail of where to rent the electric fan that the director needed for his storm effect.
Husband Remy, a tall slim man not given to talking much, chose to keep a low profile and worked on the books: checkers, theater booking, and accounting.
Fourteen years later, the “fake” producer is busy dispatching, for her productions alone, one million pesos, minimum, daily, admits her checks-girl Luz Veras. By June of 1990, Lily Monteverde had 10 movies filming all at the same time, with seven more just awaiting their playdates. Add to that about 16 films she'd already released within the first half of 1990, plus the deals she intends to seal within the remaining six months of the same year—and that comes up to the most impressive output by any producer in the entire country. (Note: Average cost per film is in the P5-million bracket.)
All told, it hardly counts that, as of December 31, 1989, Regal Films Inc. was officially recorded at the Securities and Exchange Commission as having a total liability and net worth of only P10,481,027.00. Or that its net profit for that same year was officially a miserable P91,291.79.
However way the legal numbers crumble, the whole country knows that Lily Yu Monteverde is the biggest movie producer in the Philippines. And, by now, the entire Philippines knows her as Mother Lily.
The irreverent Lolit Solis gave her that name. Seeing how her new producer liked showering people with gifts—Cartier lighters, Bang Bang jeans, Lizanne’s jewelry—and how she was shocking the industry by paying her stars P200,000 fees when what they’d asked for was P100,000—why, a very impressed Solis told the world: Lily was a pretty generous Mother!
And the name stuck.
the monteverde mansion in greenhills
The mansion in Greenhills is home to Mother Lily. She has other houses in Valle Verde, Cinco Hermanos, New Manila, and elsewhere in and out of the country. But it is this house, its renovation completed after an interminable wait of two years, that she and her family of five call home.
Its main door is a massive etched glass that opens to a floor show of beautifully cut colored marble. And so wide is its living area that someone once remarked that to be in it felt like being in a moviehouse lobby on premiere night. Except that this lobby has a sprawling Persian rug and a European-inspired sofa seating ten. Nearby, a black grand piano stands proud, and it is here where a Mother Lily in the mood plays, yes, Bach and Rachmaninoff.
The stretch to the left leads to her office, done in maroon and beige, and to a gym room where a Jane Fonda tape guides her—Mother is the same age as Fernando Poe Jr.—in two-hour morning workouts. “This is my only time for myself,” she volunteers. “Ganitong oras, pati phone calls ayoko.”
The right wing shows up more rooms, the most dramatic of which is the dining room. This one is dominated by a chandelier and a designer’s table so huge it's hard to hand over a glass to the person across from you without tipping over.
Upstairs are the living quarters where the grand affair is the master bedroom. This, with its bathroom with the black bathtub raised on a dais, is easily the stuff of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. (When I went to tour the house, it was just newly renovated. This may be the reason I did not see a tabo and two buckets.)
The house is built on approximately 845 square meters; with its two levels, the floor area totals in excess of 1,000 square meters. Meme, Mother Lily’s eldest daughter and producer of Palibhasa Lalake, complains: “Ano ba itong bahay na ito, ang laki-laki! Kailangan ng pager para sa maids.” At the time Meme had been promising her guests coffee for the last 15 minutes; none of the seven-plus maids could be sighted.
Two years under renovation, the house casualty count includes three professional architects, because Mother, already notorious for changing her mind about her films, displayed the same changes of mood with her house until, finally, she just took over the design herself.
Well, take the dining room, she points out. The original wall to one side was fully concrete and completely claustrophobic. So, she tore that down and put up glass panels, and now she can have her meals and gaze at her orchids in bloom at the same time. The orchids, she enthuses, are her newfound joy. She doesn’t water them herself, no, but she has told her maids to speak to them, and for these orchids she might even cut down on her cursing, having just heard that orchids are sensitive souls.
The mansion is guarded a full 24 hours by three security men in three shifts at the cost of P30,000 a month. Her neighbors have fences just as high, but not too many have security guards round the clock. But not too many of them get, uh, dastardly surprises.
Mother does, the last one happening a few months back at the Valencia studio while she was having lunch with a bunch of Regal hands. (“There’s always a bunch because Mother can’t stand silence,” says Douglas Quijano.) A gift, properly wrapped in a box, was dropped at her gate. One of Mother’s people brought it to her table. Mother interrupted her meal, opened it, and—ugh—inside was a dead rat!
But as all stories about Mother go, this one ended with everyone doubling up in laughter—including her. Because Regal hands launched a brilliant investigative strategy that turned out not to be so brilliant after all. See, they figured the sender must have been an insider, someone actively pissed off with Mother. Must be one of the guards, they concluded. So, all right, they lined up the guards and demanded to know: “Sino sa inyo ang namura ni Mother nitong mga huling araw?” But, one by one, all the guards began raising a hand! The investigators were stumped, and Mother never did find out who sent the gift.
In any case, she has probably forgotten. She is a busy woman, after all.
For as everyone keeps saying, there is nothing in her domain she does not control herself, from Gabby Concepcion’s contract to the kitchen plumbing. At any one time visitors can catch her personally lecturing her company drivers on how to save gasoline and drive safely. (“She has actually sat behind the wheel to demonstrate what she means,” a director swears.) During which time she may also be conducting a meeting with her electricians and, not to forget, her line producers. (“It happened to me,” laughs manager/line producer Boy C. de Guia.)
The last time anyone looked, she was again on three telephones at the same time. Yes, at the same time. It’s her patented act.
Line 1: Mother is laughing uncontrollably, truly happy with her star. “Ang lakas-lakas pelikula mo! Ganda-ganda mo sa TV!” Line 2: Mother’s tears are genuine and coming down in buckets as she entreats a censor. “Maawa kayo akin. Laki kapital ko sa pelikula. ’Wag kayo masyado pumutol...” Line 3: Her raging mouth knows no bounds, stupefying the fellow at the other end: “P———i! Ayaw niya bigay sa akin buntot ni Dyesebel? Bigay na ako sa kanya down payment, hingi pa siya balance! Sino takot niya! Baka sunugin ko bahay niya!”
And she would switch from Line 3 to 1 to 2 in an uninterrupted, natural flow only she understood.
Nobody dared interrupt. The best actress of Regal Films Incorporated was on a roll.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece is found in Jo-Ann Maglipon's book, PRIMED, pages 186-195. The 252-page book, published in 1993 by Anvil Publishing, is an anthology of Maglipon's reportage from 1972-1992.
The book won a Gintong Aklat award from the Book Development Association of the Philippines, the biggest association of publishers in the country, which named it one of the "10 Best Books of the Decade" (1988- 1998).
This particular entry, titled "Mega MOTHER LILY Superstar for All Seasons," was first published in Inquirer Sunday Magazine, as a series in July and August, 1990. It is reproduced for PEP.ph in its entirety, with minute changes made by the author herself. Jo-Ann is the founding editor of PEP.ph, where she remains editor-in-chief.