Nicholas Stoodley – Living in the Twilight Zone
Chapter 5 – An Alien Culture
The early days were a bit of a blur. Here I was in a foreign and sometimes truly alien culture sweating it out in a climate more suited to alligators than Englishmen! Outside there were an amazing amount of people with guns! There were check points and Martial Law and I was opening a store selling RTW clothing with my name outside – I was even decidedly unsure about the whole venture! And then there was the publicity! I wasn’t really used to that. I’d had publicity before in Europe and had even appeared (drunk unfortunately and telling a dirty joke to the Premier of New South Wales) on TV in Australia, but the Philippines was so “personal”. Everyone seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time just gossiping about everyone else: who was bonking who and why and when and even HOW. It is hardly surprising that the Philippines ended up as the text capital of the world!
In the mid 70’s there wasn’t much choice when it came to press publicity because Marcos had closed down a lot of newspapers for not being too friendly to him so one was very much left with the Bulletin Today and it’s magazine, PANORAMA. Chelo Banal interviewed me one afternoon – a delightful young lady – and soon I was chatting away nineteen to the dozen with no thought at all. As far as I was concerned we were just gossiping. Wrong. “And what did I think of our local actors?” I had been asked. “Well,” I had stupidly said with no thought at all, “I think Christopher de Leon has about as much talent as a dead slug!” It had been a throw away line designed, I guess, to make me seem both clever and superior. Such is the naiveté of the young and inexperienced. Actually Christopher was the ONLY actor that I knew about at that time and he was, in fact, a good actor; but I was just having fun. Gossip. I was enjoying this. Christopher de Leon wasn’t. As far as he was concerned it was libel or slander or whatever, but it wasn’t Kosher and I was in for big legal trouble.
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