Ricky Lee | Esquire Man At His Best Icon of the Year - video Dailymotion

Esquire Philippines

The National Artist for Film and Broadcast Arts takes you to the days he left the sleepy town of Daet, Camarines Norte, and gained a profound understanding of disparity, deprivation, and the unfairness of life. Never jaded, he continues to foster an unshakeable empathy toward the marginalized and underprivileged, giving light to their stories, believing in the goodness of strangers, and why he’ll continue to pay the kindness forward for the rest of his life.   Read the story here: https://bit.ly/3MIwn4j  #EsquireMAHB2023 #EsquireManAtHisBest

Transcript

00:00 Music is my passion. I keep telling people.

00:03 I worship musicians, not writers or directors.

00:07 Wherever I am now, everything started with diet.

00:23 Even if I had a love-hate relationship with diet,

00:27 especially when I stopped eating diet,

00:29 but in the end, it's all diet.

00:31 My first paycheck was when I was in 4th year high school.

00:34 I read in the Filipino Free Press that they will pay.

00:38 Even though they are new writers,

00:40 they are looking for short stories that they can publish.

00:43 I adapted the legend of Mayan Volcano into a short story.

00:47 I didn't know how to type.

00:48 I was typing in Typewriter Repair Shop in Canto.

00:51 I also typed a letter to the editor of the Filipino Free Press, Ben Medina,

00:57 saying that I was just an orphan,

00:59 and that I really wanted to write,

01:01 that I really wanted to go to Manila.

01:03 I think she felt sorry for me because of the beauty of my writing,

01:07 more than the beauty of my short story.

01:09 I'm sure there are a lot of corrections in short stories.

01:12 She accepted my short story,

01:14 until eventually I saw the magazine.

01:18 When I opened it, I saw my byline.

01:21 It was the first time I saw my name printed on a page.

01:26 I looked at all the copies,

01:28 I grabbed all my names on all the copies.

01:31 And I think that's what changed my life forever.

01:34 When I saw my name on the page,

01:37 I knew who I would be.

01:39 I knew who I would be.

01:41 I knew where I would go in my life.

01:43 I paid 50 pesos that time.

01:53 I used the 50 pesos to go to Manila.

01:56 To get a chance.

01:58 We didn't know where we would go,

02:00 what job we would get, or what would wait for us.

02:02 But what we knew was that we wanted to do something in a bigger world,

02:07 something we wouldn't do in our daily lives.

02:09 I read and read and read,

02:20 but I remember when I read in the public library,

02:24 the first one was Dostoyevsky's work,

02:27 Russian author,

02:29 Brothers Karamasov,

02:31 and then Crime and Punishment.

02:33 And then later, the works of Nikwakin,

02:36 and then William Faulkner.

02:38 I saw that I could tell a story this way.

02:41 Like, Nikwakin would go to different periods,

02:44 past, present.

02:46 He would enter the soul,

02:47 he would go out to the face of the character,

02:50 then he would go to the other side,

02:51 then he would come back here.

02:53 He would play with time, space, and words.

02:57 So I thought, "I can tell a story this way."

02:59 And then Faulkner, when I read it,

03:01 it was hard for him to read,

03:03 but the moment I understood,

03:05 I felt like I entered a world of different kinds.

03:10 I write every day, in the morning,

03:18 actually four in the morning, or five.

03:22 I write continuously.

03:24 So I'm a morning person.

03:26 I don't drink coffee in my entire life,

03:28 I don't drink alcohol,

03:30 I don't smoke cigarettes.

03:32 So I don't have any vices that I need to put in the mood.

03:36 But music, I play music.

03:38 The beat of the music pushes me,

03:42 especially if it's rock.

03:44 It pushes you,

03:48 it triggers you to be inspired to write.

03:50 It makes you go, "Go ahead, write."

03:52 I make it a point to write every day.

03:54 I always tell my workshoppers that it's my job,

03:57 I'm a writer.

03:58 It's not dependent on mood or mental block.

04:01 If I don't have a deadline, I just keep writing.

04:03 If I'm not in the mood, I'll just keep writing,

04:06 even if the result is ugly, but I love to write.

04:08 I'm all over the place.

04:14 I'm not an organized person.

04:16 When I write scripts, I write two, three scripts at the same time.

04:19 When I wrote Para Kay Bi,

04:21 I was writing Amapola and a political novel

04:24 that I haven't revised yet.

04:26 They're all at the same time, just moving around.

04:29 I can't focus on one job up to now.

04:33 As a person, I'm all over the place.

04:36 I go all over the place.

04:38 So my writing is like that.

04:40 My formula is to write from who I am.

04:44 Which means there's no formula.

04:46 To write from my personality and to embrace who I really am.

04:52 If I keep resisting, if I keep saying I have to focus on just one script,

04:56 that's not me.

04:58 So it won't come out.

04:59 So the formula is not really a formula.

05:02 It's just to be honest with yourself.

05:04 Accept who you are and write from whoever, whatever you are.

05:14 I have an entire cabinet of unproduced scripts

05:17 that Adele, my assistant, and I are going through.

05:20 I said, "I want to do this. I want to go back to this."

05:23 It's like there are a lot of stories that haven't been born yet.

05:28 Through time.

05:29 And then there are a lot of ideas that I haven't had a director yet.

05:33 And then I have so many books I want to write.

05:35 So now, I'm writing them all at the same time.

05:37 I can't finish them all.

05:38 Crypto Capital 2, Part 2 of Amapola.

05:40 I want to do a gay novel.

05:41 Stage plays. I want to do a stage play.

05:43 I want to write songs.

05:45 Music is my passion.

05:47 I worship musicians, not writers or directors.

05:52 And yet, I don't have a talent in music.

05:55 But lyrics, I've written a few.

05:58 So I want to write a song.

06:00 Just lyrics.

06:01 So, if you look around, there are so many things you can write.

06:05 Amapola.org.

Ricky Lee | Esquire Man At His Best Icon of the Year

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