Ricky Lee. PHOTO COURTESY OF RICKY LEE
Ricky Lee, one of local cinema’s most popular scriptwriters, admits, “Writing a novel is a lot harder than writing a screenplay.”
He offers as proof: “I finished the script of ‘Moral’ in three months; ‘Himala’ in one month; ‘Sinner or Saint’ in 15 hours on a plane ride from Brazil to the Philippines.”
His all-time record? “I did ‘Sabel’ in four hours.”
One extremely busy year, he wrote three scripts—“Himala,” “Haplos” and “Moral”—in quick succession.
But for his debut novel, “Para Kay B,” he slaved away on the computer for over a year; for his second, “Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata,” he devoted three years of his life.
He explains, “It’s more challenging because I had to be exact with every word, detail, punctuation. It’s like creating an entire universe from scratch.”
In the movies, Lee says, he can let the actor, director and production designer do much of the work, “but in writing a novel I have to describe the emotions, the mood, even the texture of the walls.”
The world of his titular protagonist Amapola, a cross-dressing manananggal designated to save the country on the eve of the May 2010 elections, is as complex and colorful as, well, modern-day Philippines. It is inhabited by a time-traveling ancestor who falls in love with a Katipunero; a policeman who is a rabid Noranian; evolved vampires who would rather drink fake human blood, among other crazy characters.
“This novel allows me to address two frustrations I have working in the movies,” Lee says. “I never get to do aswang/horror and comedy films because I was always assigned to do drama. But with this novel, I get to do both.”
Why a transvestite creature of the night as unlikely, and reluctant, hero/heroine?
Filipinos, he observes, are “all hati … split, torn” between cultures, identities, loyalties, histories.
Reader-friendly
The challenge in “Amapola,” he says, is “to present a complicated story involving Philippine history and politics in a breezy, reader-friendly manner.”
Precisely because writing a novel is more arduous, it is more fulfilling for Lee, too. “In the movies, there’s a distance between audience and author. With a novel, there’s a connection.”
He waxes romantic: “A reader can clasp a book close to the heart while reading it in a waiting shed or a bus. A reader is not passive and is allowed to imagine and interpret the words written by a novelist.”
His training in journalism, movies and television served him well in his latest reinvention as novelist.
A stickler for accuracy, he based Amapola’s “universe” on a real place: Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City and its environs.
He spent not a few sleepless nights at Music Box on Timog Avenue, where someone like Amapola would’ve worked as comedy bar host.
“The house of Amapola is the actual home address of a friend,” he reveals. A map of that bustling area in Quezon City is included in the book, to guide the reader through Amapola’s world—where everyone, “boy, girl, bakla, tomboy,” is welcome, he says.
Celeb readers
Book launch is on Nov. 27 at the Skydome of SM North Edsa. Comedians Ai Ai de las Alas and Eugene Domingo will host the event, with Charo Santos, Judy Ann Santos, Cherry Pie Picache, among other industry luminaries, as readers.
Next stop for Lee is a string of short novels. “I want to publish 80-page novelettes worth P80. I want to popularize reading Filipino books among the masses again.”
He also vows to finish a long-running project, a magnificent obsession: the biography of Superstar Nora Aunor, in Filipino. “I think now is the right time to come out with Nora’s story. She has [told me] everything.”
And he means everything.
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