Meeting the Archie I’ve Never Met But Have Always Known

I was half an hour early for an interview I almost forgot about. Feeling a bit sluggish, I combed my hair with my fingers, and waited for the elevator ride to end.

The second I sat on the couch in his almost empty office, he walked up to me and asked if I was the person he was expecting.

Apologies for being too early, Sir, I said. I assume he was quite happy that we had enough time to talk.

It only took me two hours to realize how exciting it is to meet a stranger you’ve somehow always known.

“It’s Achilles, like from Troy,” Archie said. He stressed that apart from Archie, his parents gave him a longer name which seemed too formal. People who would call him Achilles are either from his hometown or his former teachers.

Archie said that running away from home wasn’t a very bad idea.

“But for the longest time, I’m just Archie, especially without the Sir,” he continued. Being called just Archie, to him, makes him feel like the one addressing him is an equal. It’s as if he doesn’t have to put up a front because he doesn’t feel the need to perform a certain role. “Even my son calls me Archie. He’s my best friend,” he said with a smile. Because of how comfortable he is being addressed without the English honorific, his grandchildren learned to call him Archie, too.

He is now in his early fifties, born and raised in Cebu, and I must add, is single.

He is Archie Modequillo.

Most Cebuanos know him as a filmmaker and a columnist when in fact, he’s so much more.

Before he became the Archie Modequillo of today, he was once a teenage boy who ran away from home at the age of 16. He lived in a small town, Borbon, north in Cebu. “It’s not a bad thing that I ran away because if I stayed there, oh my goodness! ” he said. “Many people who see me this way could never imagine if I told them about my background.”

Archie said that running away from home wasn’t a very bad idea.

According to Archie, the reason he left his town was to find a place that had access to quality education. “I always had a mind of my own. That’s why I ran away–not to rebel against my parents but because I knew I could be better. And I thought to myself, the air they breathe is not the air that could sustain me,” he explained.

With only thirty pesos in his pocket (which was a relatively large amount at that time), he went off to discover the big city of Cebu.

More than 20 years passed that his family didn’t hear from him because he was trying to find a life for himself. “I’d like to think that they trusted my capability so much that they didn’t worry. I thought of the situation in that way so that I won’t take it against them,” he said. Because he had nobody with him, he explained, “I got myself into nasty things because I was all alone, without guidance. But it never left my mind that I had to make something out of my life,” he said.

When he arrived in the city, he barely knew anything. He then realized that life in the city was very different from the probinsya. Life was easy in Borbon because he would just pick fruits or climb up a coconut tree and he would have something to eat already. The city, to him, was a strange place that had no farms to find comfort in, but he knew had try to find his way.

Without a lot of means to survive, he recalled that his parents knew a family who lived in the city. When he finally met them, he asked if he could stay with them for a while and promised to help out in the home. Since the head of the family worked in Southwestern University (SWU), he helped Archie enroll and study as a working student. It was during his stay in SWU that he found out about scholarship grants. He applied for Cinema Studies in the US. He got the scholarship at the age of 16 and came back to the Philippines in 1981.

Sangtuwaryo is a documentary film about the living conditions of the fisherfolk in the province, written and directed by Archie Modequillo. The film was awarded in international festivals.

Upon his return, Imelda Marcos founded the experimental cinema of the Philippines, alongside the construction of Manila Film Center. This was when Archie came in with his team and produced art films. “Our films were shown at the Manila Film Center and for a while, we were a big hit,” Archie recalled. His films include Virgin Forest and the original, Scorpion Knights. However, it was not always easy to attract the audience to patronize their work. “There were artistically-inclined people who would appreciate it but these are not the people who can make you a living,” he said. “As you mature, you learn to be a bit more practical but you still play with the little artist in you, and then you realize there’s a bigger world where you need to reply.”

And then Archie got himself into radio. A local radio station in Cebu was about to close at that time which eventually sought for his help. Instead of working on marketing strategies, he asked the station to close down because of how difficult it is to reform an image that wasn’t working. Instead of repairing the brand, he came up with something else. “We started the regard: FM radio is class,” he said. That was when Smash FM was born. The station played acid rock and hoped to, according to Archie, “tickle the minds and sensibilities of the audience” since he spoke about philosophies on air. “It was only my voice you would hear from sign in to sign off,” he said. In three months’ time, the station was ranked #1 in the charts.

To fast forward to today, Archie runs a column in a local daily. He explains that he joined mass media because it’s practical plus it has a comfortable room for art.

“I want to tell stories. That’s the highest form of communication: to communicate feelings,” he said. “It’s possible in words but all the more with pictures.”

“In one afternoon, you now know my whole life story,” he told me. I shook my head, in disbelief, wondering why I only found out about this guy now, and why I couldn’t find enough Google results on him.

A simple man with a big heart. Successful, but with his feet still on the ground. Even if it was an interview—a task I was asked to do—it was nice to have an easy conversation between two generations, exchanging views on the arts and life, and how it means to appreciate it.

Whatever words I come up will probably never be enough to capture Archie Modequillo, one whose persona is so beautiful and so genuine that only those who know him, understand.

“Call me if you need anything, not only about this interview. If you need help or have questions about whatever, even life, let me know,” he said.

Not to worry, Sir. I will most definitely call.