Actor John Lloyd Cruz wanted to be at the media conference on 22 October at Max’s restaurant in Quezon City for the launching of 2024 QCinema, the Quezon City International Film Festival.

The actor’s film, Moneyslapper, is an entry in the ASEAN Wave section of the festival which will be held on 8-17 November in some select theaters mostly in Quezon City.

Cruz developed a walking problem on the day of the media huddle. The film’s director, Bor Ocampo, showed me at the huddle’s sidelines the photo of the swollen foot that the actor sent him (Ocampo) on the mobile phone. 

Although it was just the two us (the director and me) talking on the street (Scout Tuazon) right outside the restaurant, I didn’t have the nerve to ask Ocampo to send me the pic of the swollen foot due to gout, which is treatable through some prescribed medicine.

We actually had a longer interview after the Q&A in one of the long tables of the restaurant while the film’s lead actress — Jasmine Curtis-Smith — was standing a few meters away indulging some vloggers for a selfie with her. 

Ocampo must have been impressed with us when we told him that we knew filmmaker Lav Diaz was in the film’s support cast. We do know, too, that Diaz has become Cruz’s favored director since the actor gave up years ago mostly commercial loveteam movies that almost always had happy endings. 

Ocampo suddenly revealed that it was through Diaz’s close friendship with Cruz that the latter not only got cast in the film as lead actor but also became one of its main producers. Ocampo did not reveal Cruz being the main producer when he was asked earlier to address the crowd at that media event and share things about his film which will be the Philippine entry in the ASEAN Wave of QCinema. Ocampo simply said he is very thankful that he met someone he has never met before who agreed to produce Moneyslapper. 

That “someone” was Cruz, Ocampo revealed to us in a sidelines interview. We were with just one female website contributor.

That day of the 2024 QCinema media launch was also the day Ocampo learned that their movie has been rated R-18 by the Movie and Television Classification and Review Board (MTRCB). He confided to us during our street talk that it was a shocker for him to learn that entries in QCinema — which he knew to be an international event — have to go through censorship. Ocampo, an indie actor in his younger and goodlooking years, thought international film festival held in the country are censorship-free.

Ocampo had a feeling that Cruz is also not aware that QCinema entries have to go through censorship and classification. 

If having to go through MTRCB cannot be avoided, Ocampo plans to appeal to MTRCB to give Moneyslapper a rating of R-16, meaning those aged 16 can freely watch it. 

At the time we were talking on the street, Ocampo has schduled a meeting with QCinema festival director Ed Lejano, along with Cruz as the film’s producer, to thresh out MTRCB classification issues.

In Moneyslapper, Cruz portrays a townsfolk who wins in the lotto, decides to live in another town far away where he develops the reputation of a man so rich he literally slaps people with cash to keep them under his capricious ways. 

But then he would one day find himself impoverished again and goes back to his old town where he has to contend with the harsh changes that transpired while he was away.