Chess, drugs and sonic weapons: a video series on the Philippines for SCMP
A few years ago I convinced my boss at South China Morning Post that she should let me move to Manila for a few months and make some videos...
Days after arriving in Manila in December 2017, I interviewed Harry Roque, who was President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman for a while. Nice chap but distracted by preparations for the press Christmas party which he was on his way to and made clear I wasn’t invited. My friend Ted did go and filmed Duterte singing karaoke but wouldn’t share the clip with me.
Staff were making lots of noise wrapping boxes in the background and I had a really bad cold - they would probably call it covid now. So it wasn’t an ideal interview. Then I had to walk about half an hour out of the Malacanang Palace security zone to get a taxi.
“One thing they had in common was their dislike for Obama,” Roque told me, of his boss and Donald Trump's thoughts about the incoming US president’s awful predecessor.
Roque is now wrapped up in the POGO scandal and being threatened with all sorts by angry lawmakers.
This was followed in early January with a tour of a drug lab PDEA (Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency) was kind enough to give me in Isabela province.
I arrived in Cauayan before lunch, got a tour of the lab then driven to Tuguegarao, where I flew back to Manila early next morning.
The PDEA guys and police were all very friendly. Quite surprised to see this has had more than a million views.
More info here: Watch: inside the meth lab Chinese criminals set up before being gunned down by Philippine police
After that was a tour of the Megarehab at Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, where thousands of ‘addicts‘ were housed in a massive prefab facility.
It took me a month to arrange a visit. They were wary because there had been so much bad press from idiot foreign journalists pretending to do a balanced story and not a Duterte hit piece. Bus up to Cabanatuan then taxi to the base.
Excerpt from article:
If American director Brian De Palma’s Scarface taught viewers anything more than a few great lines of dialogue to spice up pub chatter, it was that the illegal drugs business is a violent one and even successful careers can unexpectedly end in gruesome death – often carried out by colleagues.
If much of the world’s media is to be believed, there’s a modern version of the flawed masterpiece being played out right now in the Philippines that rivals the excessive violence of the 1983 film. But as with many reboots, the roles have been flipped.
Al Pacino’s ferocious anti-hero Tony Montana, who stops at nothing to rise from Cuban immigrant to powerful drug lord, is now foul-mouthed Rodrigo Duterte, a president seemingly stopping at nothing – mowing down human-rights charters and racking up a body count in the thousands – to free his country from the scourge of “shabu”, the popular name for methamphetamine.
Read more here: ‘Say hello to my little friend’: is there a Hollywood ending to Duterte’s drug war?
Next was a trip up the coast to Zambales province. Not far from Iba, where they filmed the incredible Ride of the Valkyrie scene in Apocalypse Now. Fishermen were being harassed by Chinese coast guard vessels. Sonic weapons were used to keep the Filipinos away from Scarborough Shoal, a dispute reef in Philippine waters.
Although I did the animations, the map illustrations and ‘scenes‘ were by talented SCMP artist Brian Wong, whose boss was the late Darren Long, an exceptionally-talented bloke and great guy to work with.
Back on the mainland, Duterte’s declared “public enemy number one“, George San Mateo was leading a campaign against the killing of one of the country’s icons: the jeepney. George was head of the jeepney union Piston and his strikes brought the country to a standstill.
George quit not long after I made this as he was concerned for his safety. We keep in touch.
The next project was impossible to film as nobody wanted to be interviewed except the free speech guy. Big brother Huawei kitted out this Philippine city. Is China watching?
My friend Scott Murphy and I spent a week in Manila in January 2019. He made the mistake of challenging possibly one of the best chess players in the world in Rizal Park.
Scott wrote this article to accompany the video: Checkmate Manila: pawns, paws and a grand chess game in the Philippine capital
While filming the jeepney stuff, I interviewed Brian Ku from Grab and filmed him walking into the Uber offices the morning after his company’s controversial takeover. Will get around to releasing that eventually, as well as interviews with a couple of Filipino bands Scott and I talked to that don’t do covers.
And finally… there was this bit of silliness I caught on camera while walking round Quezon City.
I sent the video to the foreign desk editor and he liked it so much he forced me to write a story: Filipino traffic controller Ramon brings awesome dance moves to the streets of Manila. It wasn’t part of my original proposal and I didn’t get paid for it.