Richard Bolisay and I met literally in the comments sections of our respective film blogs. I didn't know Chard but I had been voraciously reading his work. We eventually met in the flesh, the same year I met Oggs Cruz in the flesh, too, the same year Tarantino visited Cinemanila, a year or so before Alexis lumped the three of us together in his wishlist and fed our so-called film critic careers vitamins, and even more years before we became a collective object of troll ire. (Ang Bakla, Ang Barko at Ang Madungis, I think, we were called) When I transitioned to filmmaking, in deference to a possibly imaginary conflict of interest, I divested myself of possibly even more imaginary film critic credentials (I never made money from my blog anyway), and took a different slant in my film writing, as the three of us went from being colleagues to being the sort of friends that go to your father's wake, which was the last time the three of us spent a significant amount of time together. Chard and I had long talked about self-publishing books, we had ideas for several, some were on film, some weren't. I actually started writing my first one many years ago, partly in response to an exhortation from a filmmaker friend to own my shit and put it out before I lost time to the breakdown of my own biology and to the obsolescence social media and this industry likes to dole out to anyone who commits the sin of not trending. But I kept getting distracted. Chard soldiered on and eventually finished his, which has become, in the months since I found out it was for real, both an impetus and an inspiration to soldier on and finish too, not to mention a pleasure to look forward to. Of course I read the book, voraciously from cover to cover, even if the version I read had no covers, and I wrote something at the back of it, mostly as a longtime friend. I'm pimping the book now, though, mostly as a longtime fan.
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