CAME across this book, “Inside Philippine Movies 1970-1990” by writer-actor J. Eddie Infante, which is the source of Highspeed for the next three issues. Here they are, the seven kinds of the Filipino moviegoer, abridged.
- The teenager. Male and female. This includes high school and college students, dropouts, spoiled kids, the “atsay.” This is a formidable audience. Don’t underestimate it.
- The middle-aged. Female. This includes housewives and their “comadres,” salesgirls, market stallholders, wives of cops and armymen, female government employees who hold drudgery jobs, beauticians, nurses, schoolteachers, wives of bureaucrats, old maids who go for heavy drama on pure (and impure) love and family relations.
- The action film aficionado.
- The comedy crowd.
- The fans of Nora Aunor.
- The fans of Vilma Santos. It is worthwhile to note that Nora and Vilma have their own film following. They are a class in themselves. It hardly matters if their films are below par. “Basta nandiyan ‘yan.”
- The intellectual aristocrat who abhors local films, has not seen two Pinoy films in his lifetime but denigrate them at every turn, if only to flaunt his ballooning colonial mind. This is the guy who has no use for theaters. He watches “bomba” films at home, on his VCR. I included him merely to complete my list. “Walang pakinabang dito ang local film industry. Hindi na nga pinakikinabangan, nakakasira pa.”
