rene villanueva – before batibot, there was sesame

i met rene villanueva in march 1983 under not very easy circumstances for either of us. he was already a two-time palanca awardee and (if memory serves) teaching literature in u.p. while i, i was a u.p. psych-major drop-out writing a showbiz column notes of a tv junkie for a weekly magazine. yet i ended up headwriter of the philippine sesame street project, and rene was just one of my writers.

ang totoo niyan, january pa lang nabalitaan ko na that imee marcos was negotiating for a philippine version of sesame street. i had been looking forward to reviewing the show, not writing for it, so i almost fell of my seat when june keithley and then her friend project director lyca benitez-brown called, asking me to take on the job. i hardly felt qualified. my only experience writing for tv was for keithley’s late-night talkshow for adults, and my only experience writing in tagalog was a couple of adaptations of broadway hits staged by leo martinez and susan calo-medina, also for adults. besides, i told lyca, i wasn’t hot to be part of a marcos project. why not tap tv gagwriters instead or creativewriters from academe?

lyca begged me not to think of it as a marcos project, rather as one heaven-sent for filipino children, then gave me a sob-story about how professional gagwriters had too many bad habits, like resorting to slapstick and put-downs and other no-no’s to get a laugh, while the academics who went all the way to new york for orientation still had to get the hang of writing for tv in a tagalog that was light and simple. besides i was a mom with two kids and grounded in psychology, so she was convinced I could do it, learn the ropes and teach it to six new writers.

i still didn’t want to do it, i wasn’t sure i was up to the task, and i didn’t want a full-time job, no matter how great it paid. but my kids, ages 9 and 6 then, were so disappointed I changed my mind, dropped my column, and plunged in.

as it turned out i had to play catch-up with my pool of writers who had been through workshops and chosen on the basis of scripts they turned out after. rene was easily the best of them, the best of us.

as headwriter i was expected to produce scripts for a season’s 90 shows, to start airing in october, just six months away (akala nila ganoong kadali). each show required scripts for 10 segments of varying duration – from 15 seconds to 3 minutes – at least 3 segments to be written for two puppets, pong pagong (as huge as big bird) and kiko matsing (as grouchy as oscar) and the 6 adult characters they lived with in a sesame-like street; the other 7 segments to be written for other formats, such as light-action film, limbo, and animation. given the notoriously short attention-span of 3- to 5-year olds, every single script had to be funny, complete with a “tag” or punchline (!), and it had to be visually appealing and constantly moving on in surprising ways (like cartoons and tv commercials) even if we couldn’t count on help from special effects (pinoy tv was so low-tech then). writers also had to hew to a set of values that did not allow props or toys or accessories that would “raise material needs” or slapstick routines that would show disrespect of others. the 10 scripts per show were each pre-assigned a specific “goal” by the research team so that in every show, the whole person of the child was addressed—the physical, the intellectual, the emotional, the social, and the child’s relationship to home, neighborhood, and environment.

i lived and breathed sesame, no time for anything else. scripts went through rigorous review and comment by the executive producer (lyca), the research team (of psychologists and educators headed by feny de los angeles-bautista), the art department (headed by rodel cruz), the studio directors (kokoy jimenez & bernardo bernardo), the laf directors (noel anonuevo & herky del mundo), and last but certainly not the least, the ctw co-producer tippi fortune, a big egay who didn’t speak a word of tagalog. i learned (with great difficulty and humility) to take criticism without batting an eyelash (!!!) and to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite until everyone (as in every one) was happy.

i was just getting the hang of it when exile ninoy aquino came home in august to lead the opposition against marcos. i was heartbroken when he was assassinated at the tarmac in broad daylight. and when my car with its yellow ribbon was refused entry in sesame‘s studio grounds in imelda’s university of life, i knew it was time to go. contracts were being extended/renewed all around. i asked only for another month, time enough to finish writing 45 of the 90 shows, put together a guidebook for the writers, and prime rene to take over when my time was up.

it was painful, tearing myself away, not so much from the job and responsibility, but from the friends i had made, people i had worked and struggled and created with for seven months. maybe i would even have stayed if not for rene, if i weren’t convinced that i was leaving the writing in good hands. a year later when sesame morphed into batibot, i knew i had done the right thing. ang galing talaga ni rene.

the edsa tradition

a friend texted after reading my blog on the trillanes trip: “OMG the blogger wants blood!?! how demanding!”

not at all. i was just trying to point out (maybe i failed) that trillanes was doomed yet again unless he was on non-violent mode and willing to die for his beliefs a la ninoy-cory-butz, seeing as the arroyo police was on shock-awe-and-destroy mode a la marcos-ver.

let’s not forget that what was remarkable, and what deserves re-creating, about edsa one was not so much the military rebellion as it was the non-violent action of the people, stopping tanks with their warm bodies and ardent prayers, which “disarmed” so to speak, and rendered non-violent too, the marcos military.

cardinal sin “forgot” this noong edsa dos. and juan ponce enrile, miriam defensor santiago, and tito sotto “forgot” this noong edsa tres. this is why when historian rey ileto asked me, soon after edsa dos and tres, what differences i saw between “the original EDSA and its pale reflections,” i could only agree. pale reflections, indeed. poor imitations, in fact.

the edsa tradition would have been better re-lived by edsa dos if cardinal sin had not stopped the youth from moving the action to mendiola. noong edsa uno, day 3 pa lang, unarmed militant groups were already gathering in mendiola; coryistas marched in from edsa the next day. the mission: to scare marcos, make him think violent mobs were at the gates, on the verge of breaking in. in fact, non-violent pa rin ang strategy. some stones and bottles were thrown at the marines guardingthe palace gates and barricades but not to hit or hurt, only to provoke the soldiers to shoot their guns in the air and thus freak out the marcoses.

but during edsa dos, cardinal sin was so afraid that violence would break out, remembering only the violent entry into and looting of the palace. in fact all that violence happened only after the choppers had lifted off with the marcoses and the marines had withdrawn. and had ramos and gringo/the new armed forces bothered to send troops to the palace along with the people (it’s not as if they didn’t know marcos was leaving), the transition would have been completely orderly.

and so, had the edsa dos crowd been allowed to march to mendiola a la edsa uno, with the mission in mind of peacefully, through sheer numbers, pressuring erap into signing an unequivocal letter of resignation drafted by the people, then that particular issue would truly be closed. instead, erap freaked out only enough to leave the seat of the presidency, but not to resign the office.

as for edsa tres. imagine if the edsa tres “mob” had been better informed by their leaders about edsa 1986, in particular how the non-violent strategy worked to neutralize the armed forces and freak the marcoses out. imagine if the masses who marched to mendiola marched peacefully instead and surrounded malacanang in a giant sit-in, filling the streets, stopping traffic, with priests saying mass and nuns leading the praying of the rosary24/7… the armed forces would have been helpless, gloria would have had to negotiate, the erap question could have been more quickly and more clearly resolved.

our problem is, we’re fixated on a rebel military as the key to mobilizing people power. our problem is, we don’t see, or we forget, that by the time enrile and ramos defected in february ’86, people power was already mobilized, it was already day 7 of cory’s civil disobedience campaign, coryistas were on non-violent revolutionary mode, the boycott of Marcos-crony businesses was peaking, and the economy was reeling from bank runs and capital flight. there was no doubt by then that cory’s strategy, to compel the business community to force marcos to step down, was succeeding. in fact it was succeeding so well, the military reformists just had to get into the act, and that’s when people power was diverted to edsa.

in other words, change is not up to the military, change is up to us. cory showed us the way, if we would only see.

fwd text

lessons learned from trillanes:

1. pwede pala maglakad from makati trial courtto manila pen

2. kasya pala tangke sa hotel

3. pag naposasan pala media, nakakalimutan ang nag-aaklas, sila na muna pinag-uusapan

4. di pala maganda si pinky webb pag walang make-up

5. kulot pala si ces drilon pag di nag blower

the trillanes trip, the media mess

early on in the trillanes-lim stand-off at the manila pen, when i saw on anc how the pnp-swat forces were quickly surrounding the hotel, i knew for sure that trillanes and lim didn’t have a chance. there was no way people would come to show their support and shield them from bullets a la edsa one, simply because naunahan na sila ng pulis. it only worked for enrile and ramos in ’86 because marcos and ver refused to take the threat seriously that first night, thinking that the defectors could be talked out of it. if they had sicced the military on camp aguinaldo right after that saturday night presscon, when there were no real crowds yet to speak of, then there would have been no edsa one to speak of either (and no edsa dos and tres) because the rebels, who didn’t have the numbers, would have been wiped out.

as for the people, i have no doubt (even if the media do, forever asking why few people came to support trillanes et al, wittingly or unwittingly lending credence to government propaganda that people are bored and done with extraconstitutional edsa-like actions) that, given time and adequate information, trillanes et al would have been able to muster enough support from some of the 11 million who voted for him in the may 2007 elections.

information is critical. in ’86 the critical mass of people didn’t start marching out to edsa upon hearing of the enrile-ramos defection. first they sat down and listened closely to the replays of the presscon on radio, made sure that enrile really said that cory was cheated of some 300,000 or so votes in cagayan and that they were prepared to support cory if that was the will of the people. then they listened to justice cecilia munoz palma on radio veritas declaring support for the rebels; then they listened to butz aquino calling for people to march to edsa, promising non-violent action a la cory’s civil disobedience campaign; then to cardinal sin telling them it was all right to support the rebels, they are our friends, they have no food. then they sat through marcos’s televised midnight presscons, when he accused the duo of plotting a coup with military reformists to topple him and replace him with a junta. and then the people slept on it. the next day, first thing sunday morning, they marched to edsa, hopeful of winning for cory the support of the rebel military.

but as in the oakwood caper in 2003, trillanes neither had the time nor the inclination to be transparent/informative, expecting people to take him on his word (and maybe face value). sorry, no dice. if there’s anything that thinking people have learned from edsa one and two, it is that we can’t trust in motherhood statements that can always, eventually, inevitably, be bent this way and that to preserve the status quo.

trillanes and his ilk simply have to get more creative. as creative as the arroyos and the generals were in building an impeachment case against erap in 2000. the impeachment strategy no longer works, as we all know, but neither does, and never has, the fivestar hotel strategy.

and so, watching that scene at the pen over late lunch, i was thinking that the only way trillanes and lim and the magdalo could come out of it winners was if they were prepared this time to fight to the death. they should have shooed away the media people who were only there for a scoop (such as ces drilon? pinky webb?) and allowed only people who were prepared to die with them (like bibeth orteza, maybe dodong nemenzo, teofisto guingona?). only their deaths at the hands of gma’s loyalists could have truly rocked the boat, raised a stink, challenged the status quo, upset gma’s applecart, and shown her up for the pseudo-democratic tyrant that she really is.

when ninoy came home in ’83, prepared for the worst, he was moved by, and armed only with, ghandi’s wisdom: that

“…of all the responses of God and man to oppression, nothing is more effective than the sacrifice of the innocent.”