Rakista on Ricky Lo's Funfare

Ricky Lo mentioned Rakista in today's installation of his Funfare column in the Philippine Star. Here's an exerpt:

Rakista is about the misadventures of a newly-formed rock band called The Love Team composed of college students (played by Carlo Aquino, Charles Christianson, Alchris Galura, Rhea Nakpil and Wincy Ong) and formed during an Eraserheads tribute night.

Yes, you guessed it: Quark and Madz are E-Heads fans.

“We included shots that we took during the E-Heads reunion concert at The Fort,” said Quark. “E-Heads drummer Raimund Marasigan even did an acting role in Rakista.”

Now on leave from movie-making (his last was Regal Films’ Super Noypi released two years ago), Quark said that Rakista was actually inspired by his movie-in-the-making, Reality Films’ Rake ‘n’ Roll ((which stars Jason Abalos, Diether Ocampo, Glaiza de Castro, Alwyn Uytingco and Ketsup Eusebio).

“While I was shooting the movie, Chris (Sy, now head of TV5) approached me and broached the idea of doing a TV show of the same genre,”
said Quark “And that was how it came to be. I still have two shooting days for Rake ‘n’ Roll and I will resume work on it once Rakista’s one-season run is over.”

Besides Rakista and his Blow-Up Babies studio, Quark is busy with his once-a-week teaching job (topic is short films) at Ateneo.

“Three of the writer-directors of Rakista are my students,” said Quark. They are King Palisoc, Zig Marasigan and Wincy Ong. The others are Mihk Vergara, Edsel Abesames and RA Rivera. The writers include Palanca-winner Yvette Tan and STAR columnist Erwin Romulo. Mikey Amistoso of Ciudad and Diego Mapa of Cambio are in-charge of the original music. Poet Lourd de Veyra (vocalist of Radioactive Sago Project) does a narration in every Rakista episode.

Read the whole thing here.

I realize that I haven't been writing about my TV work lately, which is a shame since they're pretty interesting. I especially love my work in Rakista. The people are great, the storyline is awesome (you won't find any of what we come out with on local TV, I can tell you that) and Iweve managed to put stuff in our scripts that we wouldn't be able to get away with in other shows -- to extremely comedic effect.

Tomorrow is our Eraserheads episode, where the Rakista gang try their luck at getting into the Eheads concert. Yes, the actual concert. It's a fun episode, so I hope you all tune in.

Rakista airs every Thursday at 7 pm with replays every Sunday at 1 pm on TV 5.