" Friendship Showbiz Style " 
                   by Boy Abunda 
                       ( Direct Line ) 10/30/00 

 

The concept of friendship in showbiz is vilified, ridiculed and maligned by
people inside and outside of show town. They say you can’t find a friend
here and if you do, they’re not permanent – you only have people with
permanent interests – and you have ogres parading as friends – especially
during heyday. 

But this is not an exclusive showbiz brand. This happens everywhere. This
is human frailty. True friends and ceramic friends are everywhere – they’re
in the streets, offices, restaurants, churches, monasteries, gaybars,
street rallies in Mendiola and Makati and they also abound in the upper,
lower, lowest house of congress. 

Showbiz is the business of show. It is a world of actors – bad and good
ones. Actors who are bad and good people just like people who work in a
bank or a brokerage office. But show business is an exciting world where
people are bigger than life. They are in the big screen, on the boobtube
and they are painted in big street billboards. They smile, cry and live for
a public. And they get paid for this. Most of them are also talented and
beautiful, others are painfully dumb but who are either lucky or overly
persistent. Showbusiness is a wonderful world where night can be day, good
can be bad, bad can be best, beauty can be ugliness, sunset can be sunrise.
Even a man can be a woman. This is the magic and power of showbiz. This is
why politicians want to invade showbusiness. They thrive in this climate.
Most of them love fantasy. In showtown, they can be Rapunzel, or Darna or
Dyesebel, and they love pork barrel. 

Showtown is simply the cinematic version of everyone’s life. Bigger in both
joy and malady. 

But it is a myth that you can’t have friends in showbusiness. I have
friends who respect my space, which is an expensive commodity in showtown.
I have friends but admittedly there are not too many of them in the
business, who are intellectually decadent. Some are true blue oligarchs in
wit and style. These are people who demthologize the hackneyed notion that
everyone in showtown is downright stupid. Nincompoops are everywhere. 

As a matter of truth, there’s a moron lurking inside all of us. I have also
friends in the business who are generous and people who are there when the
sailing is tough and rough. 

I have friends whose faces and names I don’t know, but who are with me in
every Buzz I do. Faces who eavesdrop on my Private Conversations. Faces who
listen and talk back on The Boy Abunda Radio Show. I have friends who buy
spots that allow these shows to go on air. I will not probably see their
faces and know their names in this lifetime, but where is it written that
they can’t be my friends. 

As you read this, you have become one. Indeed my cup overflows and I’m
truly blessed. I count my blessings as I celebrate my birthday. And I’m
grateful especially to my friends who ask not how old I have become!

 by Boy Abunda 

Boy Abunda
is one of the best talent managers
in the Philippines.
( or use to be when his wards where the top music artists at one time. )

 

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