So You Think You Know Baron Geisler

The Controversial Actor describes the Angels and Demons in his Lifelong Arch of Stumble and Stir.

- Paolo Enrico Melendez

Back when I was a college junior, I had a classmate who wrote a play with Baron Geisler in mind for the lead. It wasn’t some cutesy fifteen-minuter, mind you. It was a full-length piece, in iambic pentameter if I remember correctly, photocopied and bound in garish school zone copy center green. It was encyclopedia-thick and bowling-ball-heavy. No one ever volunteered to read it. I asked the guy why he’d written such a comprehensive story for Geisler, and he didn’t seem to know why himself. I suppose that’s exactly the thing with the actor—we think we understand the extent of his influence, until something new with him comes up and we realize we really don’t.

We fondly remember him as a child star in Ang TV, the kiddie gag show that dominated afternoon television in the ’90s; as Fonzie in the smash teen drama Tabing Ilog; as an excellent actor in a range of movies from the naturalistic indie, Jay, to the comic mainstream Kimmy Dora: Kambal sa Kiyeme. He was a clean-cut youngster, so we think he’s one of us. But that’s the thinking that often leads to disillusion. Jennifer Lawrence is an awkward girl next door? The Fappening. Lionel Messi is a kid who didn’t let poverty get in the way of his passion? The Panama Papers.