Monday, May 12, 2008 The drama tha is Pubs By Michelle P. So
I KNEW him before he became a screen actor. In the years that we’ve worked together as editors, I’ve seen his penchant for exaggeration and egocentrism.
Publio J. Briones III, a contender for the 2008 Philipppine Movie Press Club (PMPC) Star Awards Movie Supporting Actor of the Year, charms and exasperates people all at the same time.
Pubs, as he is called, is anything but bland. He elicits a reaction from those around him. Some find him fun and witty, others think he’s sour and sarcastic. He is all this and more. He is an actor and a director.
Film has always interested Pubs. He had majored in film studies at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and in 2006 enrolled in a one-year filmmaking immersion at the Cebu-based International Academy of Film and TV.
Despite the friendships and countless Westpoint moments, Pubs has not cast any of us in his films. He knows it is easier for him to edit stories than direct journalists with deadpan looks and wooden acting.
Journalists have more credible use in documentaries than in anything that needed acting and dialogues. He has directed two journalistic documentaries—“Killing of Journalists: The Cebu Experience” and “How media covers the priesthood”—in collaboration with Sun.Star Cebu editor-in-chief Pachico A. Seares.
But Pubs is meant for the real stuff, the kind that requires character internalization.
His breakthrough role as a corrupt town mayor in Confessional has put him in the league of highly acclaimed Manila actors Sid Lucero (Tambolista) and Emilio Garcia (Selda).
The three of them, along with Jiro Manio (Foster Child), Luis Manzano (Ang Cute ng Ina Mo) and Allan Paule (Selda), are vying for the movie supporting actor award. The PMPC will announce the Star Awards for Movies next month.
Pubs is unperturbed by the competition, or he acts like it. This is so Pubs, being less dramatic when expected to and being melodramatic when he’s not supposed to. That’s why I find him fun to be with, most of the time.
He has appeared in the Popular Feeds TV commercial, playing a scientist who explains the nutritional value of a hogs feed and in the short film Pagtuo (Faith) where he played a Muslim insurgent who orders a priest kidnapped so he could consult him on his stigmata.
Pubs is not just an actor, he is also a director.
His short film Ang Pagbalik (The Homecoming) was adjudged second overall winner as well as best regional entry at the Gawad Cultural Center of the Philippines Para Sa Alternatibong Pelikula at Video in February 2007.
The film, shot in Argao, Cebu, tells of a middle-aged woman returning to her hometown to verify the death of her mother that she had estranged for 25 years only to find herself re-examining the reasons she left mom and the town. I saw this film and never thought that two young Cebuanos, Pubs as director and Ruel Antipuesto as cinematographer, could have made it.
Pubs has directed another short film, Babaylan (The Priestess), which is still in post-production. It’s not all film for Pubs. For the first three months, he was the director of the morning magazine show Buena Mano aired over GMA 7 that had made him change his sleeping habits.
His eye for the nuances of facial expression and body language come from being exposed to various cultures and subgroups at an early age. He received part of his secondary education at the Ecole Internationale de Geneva in Switzerland, part at Brent-Baguio where he joined the theater club, and part at the Universal American School in Kuwait.
His bourgeois upbringing is veiled by the way he dresses on a regular day—t-shirt that has seen too many washes, loose shorts and leather slippers. He rarely wears a wristwatch. When the occasion calls for him to be dressed, his discriminating taste for quality and expensive brands is revealed.
Pubs, for all his eccentricities like keeping his stuff in a plastic bag than in a satchel, is fun to be with if you just ignore his drama.
