Hooray for Howie & Egay!

Egay Navarro was of a younger generation than the gang that made nightly istambay and inuman on Tuberias in San Juan, outside the Arellano compound and right across the Ejercito manse.

This was in the early-to-mid-’60s. Egay studied at St. John’s Academy, like most of the guys I had fell in with, and so he’d sometimes join us and take in all the macho talk, boyishly wide-eyed and sporting a perpetual grin (which he still does).

Monet Serrano, our budding artist, sort of took him under his wing, and they developed a code we were all shut off from, consisting of dark subtle quips they found great humor in.

Botit Reyes, too, youngest in our wild bunch, and who occasionally hosted the gin-and-Tru-Orange sessions at his place in the Mariposa area, also humored the young Egay.

Sometimes we’d find ourselves dropping in on the Navarro place in Horseshoe Village, a multi-level abode cum professional studio where Egay’s father conducted his profession, which was documentary filming and editing. There were all sorts of fancy equipment lying around, with impressive-sounding names, such as the Arriflex 16mm camera and was it a Steenberg editing machine? They looked like monster gizmos.

Egay took over where his dad left off, carving a name for himself as one of our most creative cinematographers and editors, and eventually, as a videographer. I remember a time, decades ago, when I produced a docu and contracted him for editing. It almost ruined our friendship. I felt rather frustrated then, about how the young Egay was too loaded with substances to make any sense with his badly articulated rationales as to why the editing should be done a certain way, heh-heh. 

Fed up over his repeated violation of a timetable, I stormed out of his editing room, still at Horseshoe, mouthing imprecations, demanding in no quiet way that he grow up, and tossing in a threat or two that I thought would at least appeal to his sense of camaraderie as a San Juan boy. I think I barely stopped short of warning him that I’d “tell him to Erap.”

He came across, finally, albeit not in good time. I swore off ever working with him again. But that was long ago. Egay Navarro has since emerged as a brilliant videographer.

Sometime in June 2006, finding myself in Sydney for a writers’ fest, I was hosted one afternoon by a kababayan, Edd Aragon, the Sydney Morning Herald’s star editorial cartoonist. (By the by, he’s due in Manila in April for a series of exhibitions, from his brilliant caricature work to UV art and other paintings.)

In any case, while discussing substances at his place, Edd popped in a video cassette that featured a one-hour docu on our rock ‘n’ roll idol, Joey “Pepe” Smith. If I recall correctly, it was titled Pepe’s Myth.

It was terrific, following Pepe through the Baguio market where he regaled vendors with his cowboy attire and off-the-Marlboro Country quips, then to the former Clark Air Base where he had grown up, and in its most riveting highlight, the Quezon City jail where he had once done time. His former colleagues at that unique habitat welcomed his visit with glee, which soon turned to teary-eyed appreciation when Pepe took out his guitar and staged a rock gig right in the jail courtyard.

Ang Himig Natin drew the kind of empathetic adulation usually seen at Wembley, except that the inmates didn’t have lighters or cell phones to wave aloft in time with the rhythm.

I was glad to note that the GMA-7 docu was another collaboration between Egay Navarro and Howie Severino.

Now, as for this even younger chap Howie, I believe we first met when he was still a college kid visiting Sagada in the ’80s. I might have looked to him like what Shaquille O’Neal likes to picture himself, as one of the old guys with long white beards. Oh, make that fools on the hill. 

When Howie started practicing journalism, I recall once crossing paths with his dad, Rodolfo Severino, who was then deeply involved with ASEAN matters, and telling him he had a winner for a son. At the time, Howie was already commenting critically on political matters, both in print as well as in his then fledgling career as a video documentarist. 

Howie and Egay eventually formed a regular partnership, one that manifested fine creative synergy. All of this came back to mind because a month ago, the three of us found ourselves sitting together, cross-legged on a mat spread out on a lawn, at a garden party. Howie mentioned that they’d be off soon for New York. For something big, he said with a modest chuckle and a twinkle in the eye. 

Well, that something big turned out to be a silver medal at the New York Festivals, where GMA-7 garnered four other distinctions. Together with their executive producer, Ella Evangelista, the partnership won the award for a 2007 docu, Huling Hala Bira — of which is written at a website:

“A surprisingly uplifting Philippine documentary about people living under rail tracks in Manila has won a Silver Medal at the New York Festivals, an annual international competition for broadcast media.

“Huling Hala Bira (The Last Hurrah), shot by long-time collaborators, cinematographer Egay Navarro and journalist Howie Severino, follows three families in the last days before a government demolition operation removes them permanently from their beloved abodes. Among their activities is a last dance in the community’s annual Ati-Atihan fiesta.”

Howie has also sent a link to his blog posting about it: http://gmapinoytv.igma.tv/sidetrip/blog/index.php?/archives/238-The-cosmos-smiles.html

Well, hooray for Egay & Howie, Howie & Egay. I’m sure they’ll be gunning for a gold soon, and gaining it. In fact, they’ve stayed on in the Big Apple to shoot yet another docu, over which I’m already quite excited. May their wonderful partnership live on, and continue to create memorable video journalism.