Unforgettable interviews

I have been writing for the Philippine press since 1980 – first as a contributing writer for Focus Philippines, edited by the formidable Kerima Polotan, then after the EDSA Revolution, I worked briefly as a reporter for The Weekly Observer, with the brilliant novelist Wilfrido D. Nolledo as my editor.

Kerima told me, in one of the few times we talked in the hallway of her office near the pier, that she liked my features. She also added that writers should put not just the physical weather (“was the sun out or hiding because of your interviewee?”) but also the emotional and intellectual weather – the mood of the moment, the interviewee’s reputation or notoriety, the books or films he or she has done.

Nolledo, or “Ding” as he was fondly called, only edited me once. The first time I gave him my feature article, he drew a slash down the first page, then said: “Your article is very good. But it begins on page 2.” He was kind and solicitous, then he smiled and added: “Listen. Listen to the sound between the silences when you write.”

I also wrote book reviews for Greg Brillantes and Pete Lacaba at National Midweek magazine. Later, Rolando S. Tinio, whose book of poems Kristal na Uniberso I published as director of the Office of Research and Publications at Ateneo, asked me if I would like to write a column?

“For which publication?” I asked. So he called up Thelma Sioson San Juan, who was then the peerless Lifestyle editor of the Manila Chronicle, and that was how I began writing my first column called “At Random.” This was in 1993. And in the last 26 years I have been writing columns for various publications. I worked as an editor at the Saturday Special of the Inquirer, where my gray-colored headlines and misaligned fonts were the bane of the Editorial Consultant. I told him that this was the 1990s, when straight and rigid lines (whether in sexuality and typography) were on the way out.

Later, I worked as a senior editor at The Sunday Times Magazine of The Manila Times, which then tangled with President Erap Estrada whom we called “an unwitting ninong” in the corrupt IMPSA deal. The President wanted to sue us, and the Gokongweis were forced to sell the paper. I liked that newspaper because its editors would just be amused when the Opus Dei would send me letters with Hieronymus Bosch-like drawings telling me I would end up in hell.

When the Times changed management, I transferred to the Philippine STAR as its Lifestyle columnist in 1998, under the editorship of our kind and generous editor, Millet Martinez Mananquil. I also wrote for interaksyon.com, the online news site of TV5, where I served as head of research as well as TV and talk-show host for six years. And in 2016, I was transferred from the Lifestyle section to its Opinion-Editorial section, which has been my home and haven in the last three years.

This catalogue is being listed not to boast but just to show that I have been writing for the Philippine press – and later, its incarnations on television, radio, and online – for 39 years. Perhaps this gives me the chutzpah to ask some questions that younger, and less cheeky, journalists are loath to ask.

I had interviewed Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago once before, an interview that ended with us chatting about our favorite writers (she was also an English Literature graduate, like me). I asked her if she, indeed, threw a chair at a director in the Immigration Bureau who was trying to bribe her to shut her up.

She just looked at me, arched her left eyebrow, then said: “Danton, I did not throw a chair at her. I was just trying to rearrange the furniture.”

Later, I was working for the United Nations Development Programme and went to the Senate to meet a senator famous for her environmental projects.

At the Senate I met Senadora Miriam in the hallway, wearing her fiery red dress, and she smiled at me. She invited me to her office where she gave me a copy of her latest bestseller, Stupid is Forevermore. Then she said: “One day, Danton, I really hope you would run for the Senate. I know your political enemies won’t like that. We are the same: we both came from humble origins but we succeeded because of hard work and our multitudinous brain cells. And your mouth is just like mine –”

Which I interrupted with laughter. And before we left her office, she added as a parting shot: “If one day you make it, I hope you will get my office here in the Senate. It has a beautiful view of the Manila Bay sunset.”

The last time I saw her she was already ill. I was working at TV5 and I had a daily show called “Remoto Control” at Radyo 5. People often wondered how I could scoop the latest and freshest political news. The secret, I said, is to be friends with people who matter: the security guards, the drivers, and the secretaries of politicians. And then interview them.

So I went to the Senate to sniff for news when I met Senadora Miriam for the last time. She was no longer wearing her Ferragamo shoes. Instead, her feet were shod in elegant, leather sandals. When we spoke, her voice was fainter than before. She said, “You know, Danton, sometimes, blood would just flow from my hands and my feet. This illness is such a mess to deal with,” she said, smiling through her pain.

I could not help it and so I said, “At least, Senadora, you now have stigmata like Somebody Up There.” And her laughter, like before, filled the cavernous hallway of the Senate.

I miss her and my other interviewees at times like these – when numbskull politicians with IQs below sea level make the headlines, and fake news abounds.

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