Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. I have toss up and
Speaker 1: make myself more beautiful because the poor always looks for
Speaker 1: I started in the dark of the night. All right.
Speaker 1: That's a clip from a new documentary. It's all about
Speaker 1: the former first Lady of the Philippines. Know now too
Speaker 1: many ver addiction to excess. This documentary is called The Kingmaker,
Speaker 1: and it is a interesting I mean, Jason, I've been
Speaker 1: talking about it since we've watched um pieces of it.
Speaker 1: But I do want to point out to that Bloomberg
Speaker 1: has provided some support financial support for the film. Louren
Speaker 1: Greenfield is director of the film. She's based in Venice Beach, California.
Speaker 1: Made her way to our New York studio. Welcome to Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Thank you so tell us a little bit about this well.
Speaker 1: I began filming in two thousand fourteen and never expected
Speaker 1: the project to take five years. Um. It actually began
Speaker 1: with a Bloomberg article by a journalist named William Miller
Speaker 1: about this animal island that I had never heard of.
Speaker 1: People know Amalta Marcos from the shoes, but this was
Speaker 1: the kind of ultimate extravagance. She depopulated an island in
Speaker 1: the South China Sea of its indigenous population and brought
Speaker 1: in animals from Africa, and four generations later there they've
Speaker 1: been inbred basically because no new animals, they have no support,
Speaker 1: no vets, no um not. The parents were gone, Ferdinand
Speaker 1: and Amelda that brought them there. So the story began
Speaker 1: with that. But what happened was Bong Bong, Amelda's son,
Speaker 1: ran for the vice presidency and they were as a family,
Speaker 1: they were kind of in the political wilderness. When I began,
Speaker 1: no journalists thought they had a chance. But as he
Speaker 1: began to be to gain steam and became the front runner,
Speaker 1: the election story really took over the narrative of the film,
Speaker 1: and so what began as a kind of historical film
Speaker 1: about this kind of crazy extravagance turned into a present
Speaker 1: day political story about the connection between wealth and power
Speaker 1: and the possibility of rewriting history, which we've seen repeated.
Speaker 1: I feel like around the globe, how timely right and
Speaker 1: what's so amazing about this? And I've been very fortunate,
Speaker 1: you know, Lauren and I have gott know each other
Speaker 1: a little bit over the past years because of the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg connection. And this is, as you say, such a
Speaker 1: different film and incredibly timely in so many ways. And
Speaker 1: even when you just watched the trailer, you think, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is and I say this a little
Speaker 1: bit glibly but meaningfully, this is I mean, it's just remarkable.
Speaker 1: So when did you realize that the story had taken
Speaker 1: such a sharp term. Was it around the election or
Speaker 1: was there some reporting that you did that sort of
Speaker 1: turned that light on for you? It was really um, Well,
Speaker 1: the first stage was seeing how they were really trying
Speaker 1: to come back to power. How Emelda was a congresswoman,
Speaker 1: which I thought in the beginning was just kind of
Speaker 1: a respectful thing to do to the former first Lady,
Speaker 1: but gradually realized that it was part of a bigger plan.
Speaker 1: Many of her kids were in politics, and when she
Speaker 1: first when when he when Bong Moong first decided to
Speaker 1: run for vice presidency, Bill Mallore at The Bloomberg Reporter
Speaker 1: said he doesn't have a chance, and that's what people thought.
Speaker 1: So I think the first real change was when he
Speaker 1: became the front runner and it looked like he could
Speaker 1: really take it. As um they were gaining steam, though
Speaker 1: the past started dredging up into the present. People did
Speaker 1: not the young people did not remember martial law, they
Speaker 1: didn't remember the ills of the regime. And the Marcos
Speaker 1: were really going about rewriting history through UM their narrative,
Speaker 1: which was being kind of repeated in social media and UM.
Speaker 1: As this started to kind of take hold, it became
Speaker 1: clear that they could effectively come back. Lord. What did
Speaker 1: you find most revealing in the process and in and
Speaker 1: what about your access to the family, I mean the access.
Speaker 1: I got the original introduction to Mrs Marcos through William Miller,
Speaker 1: and she was very open, very candid. That was one
Speaker 1: of the things that was so appealing about her as
Speaker 1: a character. She UM, she was so charismatic, and I
Speaker 1: think she really liked being on camera and having a
Speaker 1: chance to tell her story as she saw it. UM.
Speaker 1: What I realized, though, and the other turning point for me,
Speaker 1: was she was an unreliable narrator to say the least.
Speaker 1: That's kind of an understatement, and her view of history
Speaker 1: and the marcus Is contributions did not align with any
Speaker 1: historical or journalistic accounts or first person accounts. So I
Speaker 1: started bringing in other people into the story. Truth tellers,
Speaker 1: whether they were so survivors of martial law or like
Speaker 1: Andy Bautista, who was head of the commission that was
Speaker 1: going after the ill gotten wealth and then became head
Speaker 1: of the elections, and these and even the president noy
Speaker 1: Noya Kino and these people kind of gave relief or
Speaker 1: or a check to the stories that the Marcus were telling.
Speaker 1: And I think in the movie you gradually see what
Speaker 1: the truth that contrast right between what their perception or
Speaker 1: her perception was and then what was going on in reality.
Speaker 1: I thought was just told so well in the film.
Speaker 1: And I think the surprising thing is in the past
Speaker 1: people have just kind of mocked Mrs Marcos, like she's delusional,
Speaker 1: or she's in her own world, or you know, laughed
Speaker 1: at her laughable. But what you see in this film
Speaker 1: is that she was able to really persuade a big
Speaker 1: part of the electorate of her point of view, and
Speaker 1: that she I mean, she's the only one laughing now
Speaker 1: as they're back to power, which is a little bit
Speaker 1: like how people didn't take Trump seriously in the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some echoes. For sure. We'd be remiss if
Speaker 1: we didn't help folks understand where this fits into sort
Speaker 1: of your filmography because people know you from Generation Wealth,
Speaker 1: especially Queen of Versailles. I mean you have undertaken now
Speaker 1: for quite some time, an examination of wealth and power.
Speaker 1: How does this fit into sort of the rest of
Speaker 1: your catalog, as I mean, in some ways it's grown
Speaker 1: out of my past work, out of Generation Wealth, but
Speaker 1: in other ways it's really a departure for me. I
Speaker 1: think she was always a Melta Marcos was always an
Speaker 1: iconic reference in my work on wealth, the shoes and
Speaker 1: this kind of materialism, and and when I first started
Speaker 1: the Animal Island was like, uh, kind of the ultimate extraog.
Speaker 1: And I was interested in inequality. I was interested in
Speaker 1: the consequences of wealth intended and unintended. But I had
Speaker 1: ever done a political story before, and that was really
Speaker 1: a departure for me. Um I really kind of got
Speaker 1: interested in the connection between power and wealth. And there
Speaker 1: was a kind of a follow the money story in
Speaker 1: this where we see how the money allowed that that
Speaker 1: was not repatriated to the Philippines allowed them to come
Speaker 1: back in a place where there is corruption, you can
Speaker 1: buy votes, and you can buy influence, and you can
Speaker 1: use it to to to kind of disseminate your social
Speaker 1: media message. Jason and I were talking when we kicked
Speaker 1: off that there's a generation that doesn't even remember her.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking here, certainly in the United States, it
Speaker 1: is definitely a Mussie. Thank you so much for coming by,
Speaker 1: Thanks for talking with us about it. Yeah, the movie
Speaker 1: is The Kingmaker. It's out in theaters on November eight,
Speaker 1: and we'll air on Showtime in Greenfield. Is the Filmmaker again?
Speaker 1: The movie is called The Kingmaker. I'm going to pull
Speaker 1: it back to the magazine too. It's all about the
Speaker 1: year ahead of Bloomberg Business Week, but it also talks
Speaker 1: about power, whether in Washington, whether it's among the big
Speaker 1: tech companies. Right now. I mean, all of this is
Speaker 1: on everybody's radar, certainly among politicians, among individuals, as part
Speaker 1: of our conversation, big conversation, and rightfully so.