If I weren't a film director, I would have been a lawyer like my father, or perhaps a painter, a full time novelist, or whatever artistic craft you have hereabouts.

In the end, the film won out in me, luring me into it like a bee to a pollen, film being the ultimate art – no art form shall never supercede it – the film director being the ultimate artist, a filmmaker must necessarily be today's most respected artist.

If I came before film got into the scene, so to speak, I would have invented it just so to discover my own metier. I just feel I am a born filmmaker.

None of his confreres can doubt such an utterance, in itself an affirmation of Celso's faith in his art. Now into his third decade in the movies, many believe that Celso can point to his uncluttered imagination as forming the very bedrock of his wonderful craft.

He is thus entitled to a few undiplomatically harsh judgemental observations which he usually dishes out a privileged audience, like the Rotary Club of Makati Central, where he was once a guest speaker.

There are, Celso told them, Three film categories: The Intellectual film, undoubtedly outstanding, a classic, understood by the learned and intellectual audiences, but only these people; second, the lousy film, that which is blindfoldedly made by pseudo-Directors, who mistake technical excellence as the equivalence of a good movie; and finally, the good film, that which relates to the audience, the message being communicated, a commercial and artistic success.

In the year 1977, Celso Ad Castillo believes that he was able to merge commercialism and artistry when his film Burlesk Queen became the multi-awarded filmfest entry as well as being the top box-office grosser among the other entries in that particular Metro Manila Film Festival.