Vice Ganda did a big scene in ‘Call Me Mother,’ but this was not included in the final cut
Director Jun Lana explained why he chose to delete the “parkour scene” of Unkabogable Star Vice Ganda in the movie Call Me Mother.
The said movie was Vice’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) 2025 official entry. Because of his performance in the movie, the jury had chosen him to be the Best Actor for last year’s film festival.
Through this film, Vice was able to prove that he is more than just a comedian, as tears were shed by moviegoers while watching his movie.
In a recent social media post, Direk Jun Lana shared some behind-the-scenes photos of a scene he chose not to include. It was a parkour scene. Based on the article in Inquirer, this kind of scene involves characters moving through an urban setup, and it often happens during a chase scene, where characters have to overcome obstacles along the way.
There was a scene in Call Me Mother in which Vice Ganda’s character, Twinkle, was in a desperate situation as he needed to bring his child to the hospital. He runs out of the showing, just wearing a towel.
“Trapped in a narrow alley packed with cars caught in traffic, she realizes that her only way forward is to bypass the pavement entirely, launching into incredible parkour stunts and mid-air flips over the traffic below,” Direk Jun shared in his post.
It was a big scene, but in the end, he chose not to include it, even though he wanted to honor all the efforts of the people in front and behind the camera, as well as their producers’ investment.
His reason boiled down to one important thing that became the result of the high-grossing movie. “While the scene worked on paper and was technically impressive, it felt tonally out of place once edited into the sequence. The absurdity was just too high, it risked derailing the grounded comedy we needed to make the eventual shift into heavy drama feel seamless,” the filmmaker explained.
Direk Jun aimed for a seamless transition from comedy to drama, and he was able to present that by deleting the scene. Aside from that sacrifice he did for that scene of Vice Ganda, the director also excluded Nadine Lustre’s scene in which she had a ‘Squid Game’ style pageant training.