Philippine Injunction Upheld; Film Crew Packs Bags to Leave

An Australian film crew that has been here shooting a $12-million Home Box Office miniseries re-creating the 1986 Philippine “People Power” rebellion that overthrew Ferdinand E. Marcos began packing its bags to leave Manila on Friday after a regional trial court judge refused to lift an injunction blocking the production.

The judge said he will hear the case Monday, but the crew’s producer, Hal McElroy, facing losses of at least $200,000 a day in salaries and expenses, decided to finish filming “The Four Day Revolution,” the film’s working title, on studio sets in Sydney.

McElroy, whose production company also was forced to leave Manila in 1982 when it received death threats while filming “The Year of Living Dangerously,” said he hopes his Philippine lawyers will succeed in lifting the injunction in the coming weeks so that the crew can return to complete its on-location filming at a later date.

The court stopped the production when former defense secretary and now Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, who helped lead the rebellion that is the film’s subject, filed for and won the injunction Wednesday, one day before tens of thousands of Filipinos took to the streets to mark the second anniversary of that event.

McElroy and Chris Albre, senior vice president of Home Box Office, which is a partner in the project, were on hand for the celebrations, hoping to use the crowds as a backdrop for their principal actors--Gary Busey, who plays a television reporter covering the 1986 revolt, and Rebecca Gilling, an Australian who plays his estranged photographer wife.

Enrile, who has become a bitter opponent of President Corazon Aquino since leading the revolt that brought her to power, claimed in his court appeal that the film violates his personal privacy and is causing him mental anguish. The injunction bars the producers even from using a fictitious name for Enrile.

Aquino and her current defense secretary, Fidel V. Ramos, who also helped lead the 1986 revolt against Marcos, have approved of the film and pledged government assistance, but a spokesman in the presidential palace said they could do nothing to interfere with the court system.

Originally, producers of the miniseries scheduled a total of 66 filming days, 30 of them in the Philippines and the remainder on Australian Broadcasting Corp. sets in Sydney. When production was halted Wednesday, the crew had been shooting only 20 days here.

Home Box Office, which is financing half the production costs, said it still hopes to air the 6-hour docudrama on three consecutive nights in October.