CASE DIGEST : Ayer Vs Capulong

G.R. No. 82380 April 29, 1988 AYER PRODUCTIONS PTY. LTD. and McELROY & McELROY FILM PRODUCTIONS, petitioners,  vs. HON.IGNACIO M. CAPULONG and JUAN PONCE ENRILE, respondents. G.R. No. 82398 April 29, 1988 HAL MCELROY petitioner,  vs. HON. IGNACIO M. CAPULONG, in his capacity as Presiding Judge of the Regional Trial Court of Makati, Branch 134 and JUAN PONCE ENRILE, respondents.


Petitioner McElroy an Australian film maker, and his movie production company, Ayer Productions, envisioned, sometime in 1987, for commercial viewing and for Philippine and international release, the historic peaceful struggle of the Filipinos at EDSA. The proposed motion picture entitled "The Four Day Revolution" was endorsed by the MTRCB as and other government agencies consulted. Ramos also signified his approval of the intended film production. It is designed to be viewed in a six-hour mini-series television play, presented in a "docu-drama" style, creating four fictional characters interwoven with real events, and utilizing actual documentary footage as background. David Williamson is Australia's leading playwright and Professor McCoy (University of New South Wales) is an American historian have developed a script. Enrile declared that he will not approve the use, appropriation, reproduction and/or exhibition of his name, or picture, or that of any member of his family in any cinema or television production, film or other medium for advertising or commercial exploitation. petitioners acceded to this demand and the name of Enrile was deleted from the movie script, and petitioners proceeded to film the projected motion picture. However, a complaint was filed by Enrile invoking his right to privacy. RTC ordered for the desistance of the movie production and making of any reference to plaintiff or his family and from creating any fictitious character in lieu of plaintiff which nevertheless is based on, or bears substantial or marked resemblance to Enrile. Hence the appeal.

 Issue: Whether or Not freedom of expression was violated

HELD : The Court would once more stress that this freedom includes the freedom to film and produce motion pictures and to exhibit such motion pictures in theaters or to diffuse them through television The respondent Judge should have stayed his hand, instead of issuing an ex-parte Temporary Restraining Order one day after filing of a complaint by the private respondent and issuing a Preliminary Injunction twenty (20) days later; for the projected motion picture was as yet uncompleted and hence not exhibited to any audience. Neither private respondent nor the respondent trial Judge knew what the completed film would precisely look like. There was, in other words, no "clear and present danger" of any violation of any right to privacy that private respondent could lawfully assert. The subject matter, as set out in the synopsis provided by the petitioners and quoted above, does not relate to the individual life and certainly not to the private life of private respondent Ponce Enrile The extent of that intrusion, as this Court understands the synopsis of the proposed film, may be generally described as such intrusion as is reasonably necessary to keep that film a truthful historical account. Private respondent does not claim that petitioners threatened to depict in "The Four Day Revolution" any part of the private life of private respondent or that of any member of his family. His participation therein was major in character, a film reenactment of the peaceful revolution that fails to make reference to the role played by private respondent would be grossly unhistorical. The right of privacy of a "public figure" is necessarily narrower than that of an ordinary citizen. Private respondent has not retired into the seclusion of simple private citizenship. he continues to be a "public figure." After a successful political campaign during which his participation in the EDSA Revolution was directly or indirectly referred to in the press, radio and television, he sits in a very public place, the Senate of the Philippines. The line of equilibrium in the specific context of the instant case between the constitutional freedom of speech and of expression and the right of privacy, may be marked out in terms of a requirement that the proposed motion picture must be fairly truthful and historical in its presentation of events