In Fogtown, the mysterious Lumpia Man (Mark Muñoz ) has perfected the ultimate lumpia — and he's not afraid to use it. Patricio Ginelsa follows up on his Filipino American cult classic “LUMPIA” with “Lumpia With a Vengeance,” showing the iconic eggroll in the limelight once again. This time, the stakes are much higher – and more delicious – than ever before. On the occasion of the film's NYC premiere through the Asian American International Film Festival, we take the time to talk to Ginelsa about the power of lumpia.
Let's start with the obvious. Why lumpia?
For Filipinos, lumpia is the defining food. For [my brother and I], it all started when we were fans of this movie “El Mariachi” (1992) by Robert Rodriguez, done before “Desperado” (1995). It's this low-budget, Mexican action film that uses a guitar as a weapon. My brother said, “What would be the Filipino version of ‘El Mariachi'?” The best thing we could think of was a Filipino guy dressed in a Barong Tagalog (Filipino dress) who threw a lumpia. I've been trying to justify that crazy idea ever since.
How did you handle the lumpia on set?
We had a wrangler. We had to create a lumpia cooking department. To make really good lumpia, it has to be fresh and crispy. Our lumpia had to be edible and munched-on on-scene. However, it was never ready; either the lumpia had been sitting for so long that it was soggy, or we were waiting [for the lumpia to get ready.] Fortunately, those moments were rare once I bought these fake lumpias on Ebay. So! Everything that was thrown was a fake lumpia, and we had a CG lumpia for some other scenes. Anything that was edible was never wasted.
Did anyone get sick of lumpia?
Who would dare get sick of lumpia? Lumpia actually helped us secure our main talent, Mark Muñoz . He's a former UFC fighter. We did a test shoot to figure out if he was right to take over that role. My producer — AJ Calomay — he loves cooking — and he cooked this special lumpia that was pork sinigang. Muñoz loved that lumpia so much. He wanted me to keep retaking [the shot]; he almost ate the whole batch! That's what made him sign on to this movie, that pork sinigang. So lumpia has some power. (laughs)
While we're talking about home-cooking — I'm also interested to hear more about the home movie vibe.
The original movie (“LUMPIA”) was homemade, so that was done that way because that was the resource we had in 1996. [My friends and I] made movies when we were younger. The first “LUMPIA” was an attempt to reunite as a neighborhood [after college], with me thinking I'm a better filmmaker now and them thinking that they're better actors. It was all for fun. I don't think anyone in our cast thought it'd go beyond our neighborhood.
For “Lumpia with a Vengeance,” I wanted to capture the original style of a home-made feature, yet still be professional and cinematic. We still paid homage to the first one by continuing the comic book motif of frames — the first had black-and-white frames — and now we could jump to color. Our comic book artist, Gerald Pilaria – he did such an amazing job illustrating each of those films.
And the comic-book aesthetic…
“LUMPIA” was a comic book film before comic book movies became popular. By [the time “Lumpia with a Vengeance” went into production], there were already some films that had this sort of aesthetic, like “Scott Pilgrim versus the World” (2010). But I didn't want to copy Edgar Wright, and I didn't want [“Vengeance”] to look too anime. In the end, “Vengeance” is what I wanted “Lumpia” to look like. The whole point is to keep it fun. Even with professional actors like Dan Trejo, we tried to capture that old-school vibe of a home movie.
I've also noticed a lot of references to the Internet age. It felt almost Youtube-like, even.
Yeah, a lot has happened between now and 1996 when we originally shot the original movie. Much of the humor in Vengeance is taking a look back at the analog days through today's high definition filter. The wardrobe styles, the ways we communicated, the pager! It's very much a commentary from the generation I grew up with, still captivated by just how far we've come in-between the 2 films.
Tell me more about your crowdfunding campaign.
We were celebrating the 10th anniversary of the original film back in 2013. At that point, my producing partner A.J. Calomay and I did a lot of music videos and shorts. We realized we wanted to do our real first feature — you could argue that “Lumpia” was ours, but we wanted to do one that wasn't so homemade — so we crowdfunded using Kickstarter. It was also my way to figure out if there's an appetite out there for Filipino American movies. We were able to raise 50,000 USD, and 30,000 USD of that we raised on the last day. We were very blessed by our 720 backers. Any time we thought of giving up, we just thought about the backers that had supported us. We didn't want to deliver a half-assed movie. We wanted to make a movie worthy of all the support we got for it.
There were these checkpoints we'd always hit. The big one is when UFC Fighter Mark Muñoz came on board to take a lead action role. We hit another checkpoint when Danny Trejo agreed to join the film. Even during COVID, we were fortunate enough to crowdfund our own comic book based on this. It's been kind of crazy just the amount of love — our “lumpia lovers,” since they're not just Filipino — to be where we are now. So together we were able to will this movie and now this comic book into existence!
So beginning to end, how long did it take?
It took around the same amount of years as the first one. Seven years. The first one was 1996 to 2003; now this is 2013 to 2020 when we premiered it. The first Filipino American film “The Debut” (2001) I worked on with Dante Basco took seven years as well. I think there's something telling about Filipino American films that take that long.
Do you think you'll have a third lumpia movie?
I won't say no if there's a lumpia 3. But for my next project, I want to do something that's more of a drama. But it still will be Bay Area-based, still Filipino American.
And finally — your NYC premiere is this week. Is there anything you want to say to your audience?
Looking back too, it's incredible. We started as some Filipino kids in a Daly City neighborhood making movies, and now we've expanded to this huge playground where Hollywood icons and comic books are involved. Our neighborhood has gotten a little bigger. After all, everyone loves that lumpia: the food, the movie, and now the comic book.
“Lumpia with a Vengeance” will play in New York City on Wednesday this week at the Philippine Consulate. You can find tickets here.
