Four Manila Films and Yamashita’s Wedding

Four Films and Yamashita’s Wedding

TITLE

Four Films and Yamashita’s Wedding (Free Download)

AUTHOR

Anonymous (godiswithusgo@gmail.com)

GENRE

Satire & Alternative History

PREMISE

The history of how Manila was almost saved by a professional filmmaker, conman, and accomplished liar, and Yamashita’s wedding was put on celluloid because eventually the truth always finds its way to film.

UNIVERSE

Japan occupied the Philippines for over three years, until the surrender of Japan. A highly effective guerilla campaign by Philippine resistance forces controlled sixty percent of the islands, mostly jungle and mountain areas.

The Manila massacre, also called the Rape of Manila, involved atrocities committed against Filipino civilians in the capital of the Philippines, by the Japanese Navy especially during the Battle of Manila (3 February 1945 – 3 March 1945). The total number of civilians who were killed during the battle of Manila was about 100,000.

CHARACTERS

Godis Withus Go (30) — Filipino filmmaker, conman and liar. After a seven year drought of filmwork, he jumps a one, two, three and four films, all to be filmed simultaneously and each with a different political entanglement. An artist through and through, 100 percent.

Ahrianna Dixson (32) — Filipina actress and diva. She is Go’s on and off again sexual partner. The ambitious type of diva. By “diva,” I mean hard to control, tenacious, vivacious and vicious.

The Youngster (15) – Young virginal Filipina, camera operator, actress, confidant of Go. Also a coup plotter with , finagler with the pinchant for expensive shoes and she’s always looking for advantage.

Enriquez, Quiocho and Hemenez (20-30) — Cagayan Apayao Forces (CAF) slackers; not real guerillas, but now that the war is nearing an end… they want credit for heroic fighting.

Takahashi, Nakamura and Ito (24-50) – Japanese studio executives who want to hire Go to make a Japanese propaganda film detailing the demise and death of Marcos.

David Q. Selznick – (43) – American filmmaker who hires Go to make a Hollywood bio pic on the Philippine’s greatest guerilla fighter, Marcos.

Emigdio Cruz (33) – Major in the Philippine Army and a legitimate combatant, he’s there to organize the guerilla resistance.

SHORT LOT SUMMARY

Act One – Godis Withus Go establishes himself as a liar, cheat and thief. However, he wants to make films, which is virtually impossible and highly dangerous during the Japanese occupation.

Act Two – There has been a seven-year drought in Go’s career, but in the last months of the war he’s approached to make four propaganda films – Japanese, Americans, Filipino Guerillas, and the Manila Mafia. It’s nearly fully funded and he can’t say no.

Act Three – When Ahrianna Dixson, his old flame, gets herself in too deep with the Japanese Army, to save her, Go must put all four of his films in jeopardy and agree to film Yamashita’s Wedding.

PLOT

Act One

1. Go is working a confidence game where Japanese enlisted men with dreams of Hollywood pay him $5,000 to package their script with Edward G. Robinson, Bob Hope and Myrna Loy.

   

2. Go receives an offer from David Selznick to write and direct a film based on the guerilla resistance against the Japanese.
3. We learn Go, even through the Japanese occupation, has persisted in pitching both American and Japanese film studios, all without result for seven-years. During the occupation he’s bribed an attaché in the Spanish Embassy to mail his “diplomatic” letters.
4. We learn a bit about Go’s mother and upbringing. The background story.
5. Go has essentially inherited three films made in the mid-1930s because the director and assistant directors have been executed by the Japanese. Go is about to play a dangerous game.
6. Marcos, a supposed guerilla leader, is inside a theater when it is destroyed by a bomb.
7. Go enters the bar where all the film industry hangs out.
8. Go learns three “Japanese suits” are looking for him.
9. Go is nearly trampled to death by a half-company of heavy infantry.
10. With the script to write for a big time Hollywood studio and the Japanese looking for him, he steals a typewriter and checks into a seedy hotel by the docks.
11. Go feel the entire “mountain fighter” story going to be overdone and wants to create an “urban guerilla,” a character who is local.
12. Go goes to the market and learns a “guerilla” named Marcos was killed in the theater bombing and reasons this might be his character.
13. Go immediately writers Act One and Act Three, no problem. Urban guerilla liberates the city.
14. Go struggles through boring Act Two. Compared to existing (Act One) and then victory (Act Three) and fighting the war (Act Two) is hard work.
15. Go, AFTER the work is done, then he tests the logic or the premise. He’s been over zealous?
16. Go, writes that Mary (the mother of Jesus) comes an escorts Marcos from the theater before the bomb falls.
17. Go finishes the script for Hollywood.
18. He’s afraid the “Japanese suits” looking for him might be secret police, decides to visit long-time friend Ahrianna, who is an actress who owns the Grand Theater.
19. Go asks Ahrianna to take the script to the Spanish Embassy and bring may the money to make the film.
20. Go negotiates very beneficial terms with Ahrianna.
21. There is a riot and massacre in retaliation. Ahrianna must close her theater and Go can’t find her, or the money Selznick has sent for the film.
22. Book people think film people are lazy scum, and Go is on the brink of collapse, failure and starvation.
23. We learn Go has always supplemented his film work with burglarizing houses at night.
24. Japanese businessmen refuse to invest in an idea Go has pitched them but goes back and liberated an antique stamp collection from the house. Go gets away but someone knocks him out with a shovel to the face.
25. Go’s father was a mafia enforcer, but Go has chosen a different path.
26. Go’s father is killed.
27. Mother survives but blames Go for not protecting his father.
28. Backstory of how Go becomes a filmmaker.
29. Go says he knows how to fight.

Act Two

1. Go wakes up in a hospital and learns that he was knocked out because he looks like the dead guerilla leader, Marcos. And pretend CAF guerillas want him to make a propaganda film that represent them as having participated in the resistance.
2. Go receives a visit form the Japanese suits, who aren’t police, but studio executives who have come from Tokyo with cash to hire him to make a movie. They want a propaganda movie that trashes the popular image of Marcos.
3. Go negotiates the deal of a lifetime. The Japanese offer him great terms to show to the world that they are NOT losing the war. There is plenty of cash, but Japan is clearly losing the war, so what good are the long-term guarantees? He receives official Japanese certification as a filmmaker.
4. Go prepares to make a film to legitimize three slugs that have not fought in the war but sat in an apartment listening to it on the radio.
5. An ambitious actress, the Youngster, shows up at the hospital and she and Go get along swell.
6. Go realizes he might not be able to make all the films he’s contracted to make and that might be dangerous.
7. The Youngster helps Go recover in the hospital and together the plan a film so the frauds can appear to have fought in the resistance.
8. Go, the Youngster and the CAF slackers begin the short, a documentary.
9. Go, the Youngster and the film industry that frequents the Backlot Bar begin filming the Hollywood film, right under the noses of the Japanese occupiers. Go is accidently shot in the leg as a movie stunt goes wrong and ends up in the hospital again.
10. We learn Marcos wasn’t the hero, Go is portraying him and the CAF losers are jealous. Of course, they aren’t heroes either.
11. Go learns for certain the CAF boys are perpetrating a fraud.
12. They, do however, film a scene with a fake American Army General.
13. Go is questioned about his relationship with the Youngster.
14. The CAF morons become more and more demanding in filming their documentary.
15. And old woman accosts Go and forces him to examine his conscience.
16. Go examines his conscience. He finds no moral objection to his filmmaking. Clearly he’s been without success so long he’s desperate enough to try this during the most dangerous years of Philippine history.
17. Battle scenes and Go has trouble explaining things to the Japanese.
18. The CAF half-wits warn him about a rumor that Marcos is gay, which if believed would ruin his manufactured hero status.
19. The CAF locate and bring Ahrianna to the Tivoli Theater.
20. Ahrianna auditions for the role of a young virgin, but must settle on an older whore.
21. Go feels Ahrianna will hold a grudge and mess up his film.
22. Go lies to Ahrianna about a future film role, so she won’t ruin things for him.
23. Ahrianna gives Go the money from Selznick and its straight to the casting couch.
24. Emigdio Cruz wants the CAF frauds to begin to fight. He wants to meets with everyone.
25. Go might simply take over the hero status of Marcos. Only a few know that he’s not the real Marcos and Marcos’ death is only a rumor.
26. Go and the CAF meets with Cruz and it goes well.
27. Go meets privately with Cruz and Go offers the services of the mafia, who have set out the war thus far. Cruz can’t pay the mafia but offers to pay Go to make a film about the mafia fighting bravely. They believe, Go can simply film it and the mafia will love to redeem themselves if it’s captured on film and they will be recognized.
28. Go can persuade the mafia with false promises. And Ahrianna can controls their actress girlfriends, probably the same way, with lies.
29. Ahrianna tries to dissuade Go form making the mafia out to be heros. But the Americans want the mafia to hold as many troops in Manila to keep them from entering the war in the hills.
30. Go promises them hero status. The mafia agrees to mash in as many Japanese skulls as possible and for it to be filmed.
31. Go explains about light and filming at night.
32. The CAF frauds fear that Go’s control over the mafia will undermine their new hero status.
33. The CAF idiots receive a reprimand for NOT using the mafia earlier in the war.
34. The juvenile street gangs and even the Manila police begin to attack Japanese leaving bars.
35. Go talks about the nature of power and realizes that using film he can influence who will have it once the Japanese leave.
36. Go points out the strange/ironic situation, Japanese occupation and American bombing.
37. Go contemplates leaving but can’t.
38. Go shows a thread of moral character when Quiocho tries to take a valuable newspaper away from an elderly woman.
39. The CAF put pressure on Go to increase their level of participation.
40. More rumors of Marcos being a homosexual necessitate action.
41. To prove Marcos’ not gay, Go and the Youngster attend a cockfight.  The Youngster rescues Go from an attack by a fraternity of Samurai warriors.
42. Go is again in the hospital with ulcerative colitis, but the Youngster gives Marcos superhuman traits that make the superstition and gullible love him even more.
43. The Youngster is plotting something, and Go is worried he won’t finish the films, maybe the only opportunity to “break out” in the film business.
44. Ahrianna comes to the hospital room and doesn’t appear jealous about the Youngster being there caring for Go. Ahrianna is working an angle.
45. Go leaves the hospital and notices Ahrianna is talking like a future bride.
46. Someone tries to assassinate Go.
47. The assassins are exposed as Germans.

Act Three

1. A dozen Japanese enter Go’s bedroom and bring him downstairs to his office. They don’t believe he’s Marcos (lucky for him), but they believe he is Go. They want him to film some propaganda, Yamashita’s sham wedding.
2. Go tells us about the haunted screenplay, the reason filmmakers don’t read unsolicited scripts.
3. Yamashita and his officers are Kōdōha, a radial military society. They are the grout that forced, or tricked, the Emperor into beginning the war in the first place.
4. They claim to Go they are reformers and they want Go to film Yamashita’s wedding to a Filipina.
5. Go is brought to the Japanese military headquarters and we learn that Ahrianna has agreed to marry Yamashita and participate in the ruse to make Yamashita look more compassionate later if there is a war-crimes trial.
6. The deal is that Yamashita will withdraw from Manila and that the city will be spared (no more executions and no more rapes) if the film is made.
7. Ahrianna states that she’s already married so it actually means nothing. It’s just a movie? She wants Go to be jealous, but Go is afraid to even ask who she is married to.
8. We learn how Ahrianna negotiated such an important deal.
9. After she’s made the deal she realizes that if she goes through with it, her film career and maybe even her life is over.
10. At the wedding rehearsal, Yamashita doesn’t even show up, but Go uses a body double with a uniform to set the exposures.
11. Go and the mafia stage an attack and while the Japanese are occupied, Go films a “Nosferatu” sequence. Basically Yamashita, at the Shinto alter, bites Ahrianna and the blood soaks her gown. He the double for the Japanese General shows his fangs. A priest jumps out of the crowd and drives a fake stake through the double’s heart.
12. The next day, for the “actual” wedding, Yamashita shows up. There are mafia rivalries that almost ruin the plan but the wedding and the filming are completed.
13. At the Grand theater, Yamashita is shown his lilly-white and noble wedding reel. However, he’s handed a doctored, wedding reel.
14. Go finishes all four films. And hands to two important (Tokyo and Hollywood) films to the attaché in the Spanish Embassy for shipping.
15. The U.S. Army seizes almost all the films in Go’s office.
16. Go receives a polite letter from the Japanese studio that they received an American propaganda film.
17. Go receives a letter from a pissed off David Selznick that his studio received a Japanese propaganda film.
18. Someone, in the Spanish Embassy purposefully switched the two films?
19. Was it Ahrianna or the attaché in the Spanish Embassy?
20. Who has Ahrianna been married to all this while?
21. Why?
22. Six months later, the wedding film is introduced as evidence of Yamashita’s moderation and kind treatment of the Filipino people. The military tribunal sees the vampires wedding. They are shocked and then chuckle and then are visibly angry.
23. Go, receives international acclaim as a filmmaker and trickster. Yamashita is convicted of war-crimes and executed.

Originally posted 2020-10-23 09:47:53.