If you look me up on Google, you will find an article preserved under my byline entitled My Date with Rico Yan. The story was published in a fan magazine years ago, and it was quite a hit. I got several reactions from readers, including a raised eyebrow from the late President Cory Aquino, who teased me about it, having read the article probably while having her hair done in a salon where such magazines thrive forever.
The article gained even more traction after Rico Yan died and fans began searching the internet for more info about him.
The thing is, I never had a date with Rico Yan. I never even met him. But my daughter Gloria, who was a fan, did, and she wrote about it for a fan magazine. She submitted a light and giddy piece about the attention she received during her lunch interview from the charmer that was Rico Yan.
But when it was published, her byline was nowhere in sight. Instead of her name, Gloria P. Sicam, the article carried her mother’s name—Paulynn P. Sicam! I assume it was a careless error that was unfair to her, and horrifying for me, a serious columnist who wrote mainly political and social commentary.
Oh well, I thought, it will pass. The article will be forgotten soon enough. Until it turned up on Google, where it remains forever and a day, under my byline.
A more pleasant memory that can be found online in YouTube is a cameo appearance with my women friends Rochit Tañedo, Arlene Babst, Ceres Doyo, the late Sylvia Mayuga, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, and the late Odette Alcantara, among others, in Mike de Leon’s Sister Stella L. It was an open invitation to come to the shoot wearing black because Mike needed mournful faces attending a rally at the funeral of a murdered labor leader. It was an easy shoot with very little acting expected of us—just grim and determined faces of women holding streamers protesting the evils of Martial Law. We dutifully did our part for which, Rochit remembers, we were rewarded with a bottle each of Royal Tru Orange!
The author (third from left) in another scene from the movie
I was engrossed in Vilma Santos’ activist oratory when I suddenly saw my face on screen and Don Jaime Zobel’s loud voice exclaiming, ‘That’s Paulynn Sicam!’
Months later, I was invited to a private showing of Sister Stella L. in the preview room at Greenbelt. I was engrossed in Vilma Santos’ activist oratory when I suddenly saw my face on screen and Don Jaime Zobel’s loud voice exclaiming, “That’s Paulynn Sicam!”
Totally embarrassed, I sank in my seat. I knew then and there that showbiz was not for me. I’d rather have the relative anonymity of a faceless byline!
Recently, I received on-line still shots of our scenes on Sister Stella L., taken from YouTube, which made me watch the movie again. It brought me back to the bad old days of the Martial Law years when it was the better part of valor to be invisible, unrecognizable. But we were a rather adventurous bunch of women writers, and after a while, we stopped being cautious and simply let our anger loose. Thank God Edsa happened!
Some 50 years ago, I appeared in a commercial, unplanned and against my will. I was just a bystander—a young married woman who tagged along to watch her husband direct a commercial for UFC Tamis Anghang Ketchup, starring the late debonair Rod Navarro. When the actress who was hired did not pan out, it looked like the shoot would be shut down until Navarro scanned the group of by-standers and pointed at me saying, “I like that one!”
I was horrified. My husband looked at me with pleading eyes, but I looked away. No way was I, a serious journalist, doing a ketchup commercial. But I realized that folding the shoot unceremoniously would reflect badly on him. I gave in and an apron was hastily tied around my street clothes, I was suddenly made-up, and there I was on camera, mouthing a pre-recorded audio in a palengkera voice: “Sa barbecue at is-paghetti…” while holding up a bottle of UFC Tamis Anghang Ketchup.
It took a while before I got over the trauma of seeing myself and being teased selling ketchup in a voice that wasn’t mine, several times a night for what seemed like many months. This ad hasn’t resurfaced yet, but with the current nostalgia for the past and old commercials and TV shows re-emerging on Facebook, I fear that one fine day, it will be back to haunt me.
Here in Sydney, I shared this story with my grandchildren at dinner as we dipped lumpiang shanghai and covered it in UFC Tamis Anghang Ketchup. They seemed unimpressed. Their question was, did you get paid? Come to think of it, I have no idea. But the ketchup was and is still good!
