Vice Ganda is a cultural phenomenon in the Philippines. A TV host fronting daily variety show It’s Showtime, which has been pulling in top ratings for 15 years. A film star whose comedies have been topping the Christmas box office annually since 2010. A performer whose concerts pack out venues in the Philippines and North America. And an openly gay star in a Roman Catholic majority country that has not legalized same-sex marriage or heterosexual divorce.
And yet, with great fame comes great responsibility, not to mention high expectations, and like many artists during the pandemic, Vice decided to take a break and figure out what to do next. That pause led to a pairing with writer-director Jun Robles Lana to make And The Breadwinner Is…, a family drama produced by Star Cinema and Lana’s The IdeaFirst Company, which is also a comedy, but one with a lot more depth and substance than Vice’s usual slapstick burlesques.
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“I usually release one movie every year, but I stopped for a year, because we were trying to figure out what the market needs and wants to watch right now,” Vice tells Deadline after wrapping the day’s shoot for It’s Showtime at ABS-CBN’s studios.
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“I’ve been doing formula movies in the past, fun movies that work at the box office, but now I want to the give the audience something a bit more meaningful,” Vice continues. “I told my production team that if I’m coming back to the theatres, I want to come back with Jun Lana, because I’ve been watching his movies during the pandemic and they’re just brilliant – just very sensitive, on point and very real.”
Lana, who runs The IdeaFirst Company with producer-director Perci Intalan, has a varied set of credits ranging from mainstream hit comedies, including Becky And Badette, Big Night! and Die Beautiful, which use comedy to talk about LGBTQ issues, to arthouse titles such as Your Mother’s Son, which premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Vice’s credits include films such as The Super Parental Guardians, Fantastica and Beauty And The Bestie that are all-time top ten hits in the Philippines, grossing around $10m apiece.
Their first collaboration, co-written by Lana and Star Cinema writers Daisy Cayanan and Jumbo Alano, looks at the world of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) and their family dynamics. Vice plays Bambi, who like many LGBTQ siblings has taken on the role of designated family breadwinner – the one who is expected to work overseas to support the entire family.
But when Bambi returns to the Philippines after 15 years working in Taiwan, she discovers there’s very little to show for all the money that was sent home. She then gets dragged into an insurance scam to bail out her dysfunctional family.
Also starring Eugene Domingo, Joel Torres and an ensemble cast of Vice regulars, the film is one of ten titles selected for Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) and is scheduled for release across the Philippines on December 25. It will also play at the Manila International Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles in February 2025.
Lana says he’s wanted to work with Vice for years and after batting around a few ideas, they settled on a story about overseas workers, as the breadwinner culture is “very much ingrained in Philippine society. And many OFW are also queer people, which I think has to do with societal expectations, because when you’re queer you have to prove yourself useful,” Lana says.
Jumping in to explain further, Vice adds: “You’re not able to have a family of your own, so you’re told you should just concentrate on the family you have and provide for them. As a queer person, being a breadwinner becomes a ticket to being accepted and embraced by your family. It’s very hard to come out in Filipino families because of religion and other societal concerns.”
But Vice and Lana also explain how breadwinners sacrifice their own ambitions and bear a huge amount of responsibility for their families, sometimes working overseas for years and then questioning their identity and purpose in life when they finally return home. The film shows the funny and relatable side of OFW life – including a pair of breadwinners trying to outdo each other in a Balikbayan box stuffing competition (the cardboard boxes containing items sent home by overseas Filipinos) – but also touches on the downside of the role.
“We look at the light side of being a breadwinner, because comedy thrives on what resonates, what is familiar to audiences, but at the same time there’s humor in adversity,” Lana says. “Overseas workers often feel isolated, they feel alone, so it’s really a delicate balance between comedy and drama.”
Vice has always been vocal about LGBTQ rights and usually plays gay characters, although this is the first time he’s portrayed one with realistic problems who is not larger than life. He is open and proud about his sexuality (he identifies as queer, non-binary and has no preference between he/she pronouns) and in the process has become one of the Philippines’ biggest stars. But he says that doesn’t necessarily mean that Philippine society is accepting of queer people.
“I would say our society is tolerating rather than accepting – tolerating queer people for as long as they make you laugh, as long as they’re giving you a happy day,” Vice says. “But it’s not easy for them to appreciate that, apart from being fun, we are achievers, we are your neighbors, we are your brothers, sisters and other family members.”
Vice hopes this new film will make the audience laugh but also send a message about respecting and honoring the hard work of their relatives, whatever their sexual orientation, and on a more practical note, how to manage the overseas remittances they receive: “A lot of Filipinos are not that familiar with financial literacy. We’re very resourceful, we can find ways to make money, but we’re not always that smart or educated about how to make use of that money.”
Lana says that, although the film has some underlying messages, it will also have the usual laugh out loud moments that audiences expect from Vice: “Working together for the first time, I didn’t want to alienate the long-time audiences and fans of Vice. When you’re doing comedy, you have to allow your actors to play and be open to what they’re giving you. I kept the script open enough to accommodate the gifts that Vice was giving us every day.”
Vice adds: “The familiar Vice, the funny Vice is still going to be there, but we’re going to make the audience experience a lot more emotions. It’s a funny movie that will make you cry and give you a lot of life lessons. It’s a funny movie that will slap you in the face with the truth.”
It’s also a movie that could lead to some interesting conversations around the Christmas dinner table. Lana explains that the usual holiday tradition in the Philippines is for families to visit the cinema and then eat a meal together: “So it will be interesting to have the breadwinner and the entire family see this film and then sit down to eat together. How are they going to react?”
“Are they still going to enjoy their lunch together?” Vice laughs. “But at the end of the day, the characters in this movie are very relatable and hopefully every audience member should find somebody they identify with. That’s the power and the beauty of this film.”