Chris loved cinema. He passed doing what he loved, (though that which he loved was immensely stressful), a quiet consolation. I hadn’t talked to him in quite a while, making this a bitter sting. He came from cinema royalty, his father being Celso Ad Castillo, the “enfant terrible” of Philippine cinema. Chris grew up as an actor, famous in his native country before making his way West and deciding that writing/directing was his calling.
Of course, I’d been meaning to call him for months now, to bury minor hatchets, every day putting it off for the unknowable future. He was in great spirits the last time I saw him at our mutual friend Rey’s play in Pasadena. Chris was one of the first people to screen a film of mine in LA (Still Lover), at a series he was curating at the ArcLight. He was also an OG member of LADS (L.A Death Squad), & had many great stories of 80’s LA punk street life (pretty hardcore stories I’d add).
May he rest in peace, the same peace he found on the 2d screen & while working to fill the flicker in his heart. A combination of sweetness and unpredictable anger rolled up in a soft Filipino shell. Rest in Peace, Christopher Ad Castillo.
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Post Script:
While Chris was shooting a feature film (i had a minor acting role as MIRS), we teamed up to co-direct this MIRS music video (i just remembered the name MIRS was, in fact, his suggestion after bouncing the idea of a solo music project I was pursuing). We had collaborated a few times prior & after, but this was my favorite, mostly because of the spontaneity. We shot the performance in-between setups for his narrative feature project. That project never saw the light of day I believe, but nevertheless, it was an interesting time & actually fun in hindsight (time softens blows). Chris had caught the DIY bug from a sort of bubbling cabin fever from having multiple projects fall through the Hollywood development crack, and without letting anything get in his way, he steamrolled through the project, much to his cast/crews terror. But it was a grand learning lesson for him, and a jumpstart to being prolific after many years sitting on the sidelines.
