The Guy-and-Pip Syndrome

As far back as I can remember, there were Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran, Rogelio de la Rosa and Carmen Rosales, Rosa del Rosario and Leopoldo Salcedo. My memory tells me that the leading ladies were always sweet and demure, prone to tears and to self sacrifice, while the guys were invariably grim, passionate, and prone to speak in tremolo. "Paglalaban natin ang ating pag-iibigan (We will fight for our love)," was a staple in the script.

In my teens I was hooked, lined and sinkered on movie idols. I adored the regal, brown-skinned Lolita Rodriguez and her fair knight with shining eyes, Eddie Arenas -- they who crossed over from being a movie pair to off-screen couple. The greatest Pinoy actress of all time, Lolita shone all the more when paired with Eddie, who was a thespic lightweight. But I say that only in hindsight; I didn’t mind a bit then that he was such an inept and stiff performer. I only knew I was in kilig heaven seeing the two of them looking into each other’s eyes on screen.

Mine was not a popular choice, however. Most of my contemporaries preferred the other love teams: Nestor de Villa and Nida Blanca, Gloria Romero and Luis Gonzales, Amalia Fuentes and Romeo Vasquez, Susan Roces and FPJ. Nestor and Nida starred in feel-good musicals where their outstanding dancing prowess were showcased to advantage; they were also superb in comedy.

Those were the days movie stars courted by cavorting from one banana tree to another, showed passionate love by hugging or burying their face in their lover's neck. Rape was shown by pagulong-gulong in the grass or symbolically by glass breaking. The passage of time was depicted by a calendar shedding its pages.

Though my friends and I rooted for different love teams, we never scratched each other’s faces nor pulled each other’s hair, fighting over which was best. At least, not in the same way that Nora Aunor-Tirso Cruz (otherwise known as Guy and Pip) and Vilma Santos-Edgar Mortiz (otherwise known as Vi and Bobot) fan camps went at each other with hammer and tongs a generation later. But I guess this was when I stopped going gaga over movie idols and love teams.

Now I no longer know who is in tandem with who among the current crop of stars. I know Piolo, Bea, Richard, Marian, John Lloyd, Jericho, Angel, and KC, l but I have no idea who’s romantically linked with whom both offscreen and onscreen.

I may have matured as a filmgoer, and high time too. I guess most of my contemporaries have grown old with me.

It seems the infatuation with love teams afflicts the young who are imaginative, dreamy, love-struck, and prone to live part of their lives in the person – screen persona, actually -- of their idols, especially if they look at their own as ordinary and lackluster.

Fans usually show their loyalty by watching their idol team’s movies twice, thrice, or more times. The fanatics make it a point to queue at the tills on the first day. There are fan clubs galore. The Nora-Tirso Fans Club for example was a massive "cult" with branches in almost every part of the country. Come to think of it, they could have exerted at their prime a political force much like that of the El Shaddai.

It is hardly surprising that movie companies invest a lot of resources into creating and cultivating crowd-drawing film partnerships. The hope is always to stumble on another Guy and Pip – still the benchmark that all love teams aspire to.

Love teams were deliberately built by mother studios to create box office magic which translates to box office revenues. Nestor Torre thinks it is a cost-effective way of attracting a regular audience to their movies, so more than the usual number of screen partnerships were initiated.

The process begins with producers and talent managers putting together a love team from their bench of up-and-coming stars. It is often hit and miss. If it misses, it is not the end of the road for a pretty young and promising starlet. She is paired with another actor, just as young, good looking, and promising – and yet another and another, until a pairing makes a hit with the movie-going public.

According to Butch Macaro (A Question of Love Teams): “This shuffling of wannabes is intended to test the durability or viability of the love team in the eyes of their growing fans. Once the pair has established a strong following, more movies are assigned to them. A series of box office hits will establish them as a love team. This formula has been found effective and still exists to this day.”

Ultimately, it is the audience that chooses. It is the fans that create the love team.

Actors and actresses who end up married to each other may or may not click as a team. Tita and Pancho, Lolita and Eddie, Susan and FPJ did. Aga Muhlach and Janice de Belen did not; neither did Nora and Christopher de Leon. Although they had real life chemistry, the fans did not agree.

Being part of a love team is usually only a stepping stone to full or individual stardom. A pair may at first go tweetums and pakyut to pander to the kilig factor so important to young movie-goers. Over time, they try to go for more mature roles in more substantial movies. This is often an acid test which only the durable, versatile and truly talented pass. Love teams may be formed, break up, patch up, or die, but it need not mean the extinguishing of their stars.

Sharon Cuneta, Vilma Santos, Judy Ann Santos, Christopher de Leon all began as part of a love team but managed to shine on their own when their love teams broke up.

Photo screencap taken from noraAunor4ever2009.

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