The Bourne Legacy director Tony Gilroy talks about Manila

During preproduction, of The Bourne Legacy director Tony Gilroy toured Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in Vietnam, Jakarta in Indonesia, and Manila in the Philippines. Ultimately, Manila’s history as a shooting location won over the team. Major Hollywood features, such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Brokedown Palace, were shot in the Philippines in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. “They had a 25-, 30-year run of making movies there,” says Gilroy, “and they have this huge infrastructure that was built up from all the films made about Vietnam.”


The filmmaker called upon LOPE V. JUBAN, JR., president of Philippine Film Studios, who has worked on most of the films that have come to the Philippines over the past few decades, to give them a tour of Manila. Not only could Juban—who came on as a line producer—offer locations that Gilroy was looking for, but his contacts with government entities would also be vital for a shoot that involved major stunts on city streets. “Juban said, ‘We can talk to the president about that,’ or ‘We can talk to the minister of transportation and the police department about that.’ They’re all people that he knew,” Crowley explains. “I couldn’t have gotten that in Jakarta or in Ho Chi Minh City.”


In fact, The Bourne Legacy would be the first Hollywood film in which Manila plays Manila. “The Philippines has played almost any country—Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Panama,” says Juban. “It is only now that we are filming Manila as Manila, which is great for us.”
It was important to the locals to show off the progress the country had made and their big new areas of development. The Philippines also offered the advantage of a mainly English-speaking local crew. English, the legacy of the American presence for 50 years before World War II, is widely spoken in the country.