PNS — RICHARD Gutierrez looks like he lost weight when we saw him at the birthday party of his Ate Ruffa at Resorts World last Wednesday. “This is to prepare for ‘Survivor Philippines’ ,” he says. “I have to be physically fit when we start taping it abroad.”
He won’t say when he’s leaving and where the location is but we heard his departure with the celebrity contestants is on July 7 and the location is somewhere in Thailand. Before he leaves, Richard finished all his remaining scenes in his film with Anne Curtis and Claudine Barretto, “In Your Eyes”. He has also taped for his new environmental docu, “Wildlife for Sale”, in Myanmar or Burma to cover a market where rare animals are sold illegally. “It’s quite an experience kasi first time ko to go there and I went undercover, acting like a tourist as part of the investigation we’re doing. We had to pass 10 checkpoints before we got to the place where you can choose endangered species and have it cooked for you. They didn’t know I’m filming them for a documentary. When you watch it, it’s going to be a real eye opener.”
Aside from this docu, he also has a regular show about calamities, “Anatomy of a Disaster”, that studies floods, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions and how damage from this can be avoided. For the pilot, he went to the crater of Taal Volcano at the time it was quaking with alert level 2. Obviously, he was inspired by the award he got in New York for “Planet Philippines” so he’s even more immersed now in similar projects. “This is a truly worthwhile endeavor that will benefit us all and make us more concerned with caring for our ecology,” he says.