JE M’APPELLE ALVIE BALICOCO

I finally stopped waiting for the Hollywood gatekeepers. I faithfully followed its rules for decades. Inspired by the ghosts of the Nouvelle Vague and directors like Chloé Zhao, Justine Triet, Sean Baker, and Joachim Trier, I set out to direct my own story, financed by me.

​

Embolded by more than twenty years of set production experience, I felt I could direct an ambitious road movie with a five-person crew shooting through Paris, Dublin, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, and New York—and play the lead role. Had I followed the conventional Hollywood development process of endlessly perfecting the perfect logline and script, I’d still be writing. Getting the film on its feet was my development process. Through movement work, shooting, editing, and iterative shooting windows, both the story and my performance found their soul.

​

Part political statement, part experiment, and part I don't have any more fucks to give, I’m telling a Filipino-American story about an older, average-looking Filipino-American at the center of his own story: a cinematic self-portrait experimenting with the art of found footage, autobiography, and fiction within the form of conventional cinema.

​

So I chose to play the lead for many layered reasons; not only do I enjoy performing and would never get this opportunity otherwise to play such a complex character, but because it allowed me, as a director of actors, to deeply investigate how truthful emotional performance can be achieved. By weaving my own history into Alvie’s odyssey, I could draw from a lifetime of photographs, found footage, and audio tapes, giving him a lived history no art department could manufacture. Besides, I’d be hard pressed to cast an average-looking, fifty-something Filipino-American actor who speaks French and can perform comedy, cry, and do his own stunts.