The editing process for Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017) was the most difficult and complicated I ever experienced – and these included the peer reviews I had to solicit and help finalize for the special journal issues that I edited. The text underwent one extensive revision whose directions I had not anticipated, plus at least one minor overhaul for style and tone. The final editing stage was also difficult in itself: it involved reading through the manuscript with all the changes tracked in Microsoft Word.
I still print out my drafts and edit the hard copy at every opportunity, so I thought this would be the digital equivalent of that practice, but gurl was I wrong. This accounts for a few oversights in the final version, while one major wrinkle involved the clarification of a picture source. Where the corrections involved the addition of words or punctuation marks, they’re indicated here by highlighted entries.(Since all my other sole-authored books were either out of print or generated from this blog, they benefited from my typically obsessive correcting and updating processes.) The groups of corrections are as follows:
• Corrigenda, strictly speaking, refer to errors of the author while errata would be errors that arose during the process of production. In both instances, I prefer to use the former for its etymological association with “correction” – i.e., during an earlier analogue period, readers would correct their texts by referring to such a list as this. These affect pages 23, 38-39, 40 (fn 7), 42, 46, 56, 57 (affecting page 193), 68, 72, 82, 104, 114, 122 (with a more focused rereading of Nashville), 139-40, 142-44, 151, 184 (fn 23), and 193.
• Textual Problematics (now its own page, click to open) is the term I use to refer to issues that occasionally are unresolved, or that otherwise would be too cumbersome to attend to within the physical and/or editorial limits of the publication; the list was becoming too extensive and has been spun off into its own page.
• Illustrational Problematics (also a separate page, click to open) is a self-descriptive category spun off from the previous list, which also needed to be separated as its own page.
Page 23, second paragraph:
“I was working at the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines…”.
Page 38, Figure 4 caption:
“… (bottom, Sampaguita Pictures’ still of Iginuhit ng Tadhana: The Ferdinand E. Marcos Story [Conrado Conde, Jose de Villa, and Mar S. Torres, 1965]).”
Page 39, second paragraph:
Replace “policies” in “… involved the selective withdrawal of censorship prerogatives…”.
Page 40, footnote 7, third sentence:
Insert space after comma in “… agreeing to a snap presidential election, as proof…”.
Page 42, last paragraph, second sentence:
Replace “were” in “After Bernal died in 1996, the bulk of the material he had compiled … was lost in a fire….”
Page 46, fourth sentence:
Replace “It’s” and “Grey” and add to the name in “When It Is a Gray November in Your Soul Coffee Shop”; see discussion of photos on pages 45-46 in the Illustrational Problematics page.
Page 56, end of first paragraph:
Final clause in the indented quote should read as follows, with transposed period, capitalized parenthetical reference, and no close quotation mark: “Van maintained an excellent student record and has become a promising agent in reforming the kind of people who bring darkness to Manila. (Trans. by the author)”
Page 57, second paragraph, fourth sentence:
Final clause should read as follows, with unlisted citation: “[the critics group] issued a statement condemning the excessive censorship imposed on the film (Parel 16).” Cited entry on page 193 of References section should be: Parel, Tezza O. 1983. “History of the [Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino]: 1976-82.” In The Urian Anthology 1970-1979, edited by Nicanor G. Tiongson, 4-19. Manila: Manuel L. Morato.
Page 68, second paragraph, final clause of second sentence:
“…and the sidewalk gang that fatally lynches its male protagonist comprises lumpenproles.”
Page 72, end of first paragraph:
This sentence must be added: “Meanwhile, out filmmaker Jun Lana has been steadily accumulating a growing record number of Filipino queer projects, performing for the mainstream what Crisaldo Pablo used to do for independent production.”
Page 82, Figure 15, last sentence:
Replace “Lee Kumchong” in “Photos: Kumchong Lee (top)…”.
Page 104, second paragraph, second sentence:
“…, in which her character was named Manay Sharon. (Duplex is considered significant among queer scholars of Philippine TV for featuring the first out gay character, performed by the late theater and film director Soxie Topacio.)”
Page 114, first paragraph:
“… (… played on park speakers), provides ironic contrast…”.
Page 122, second paragraph, second sentence:
“… builds up to the final outdoor concert where everyone
(save for one character who announced his departure from the city the night before)shows up.”In re Nashville (1975), after Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) admits to Wade (Robert DoQui) that she consented to perform a striptease for the stag audience at the smoker for Hal Philip Walker, he tells her he plans to leave the next day and asks her to come along but she refuses – not her first refusal of the night, after she brushed off the drunken advances of Delbert Reese (Ned Beatty) prior to Wade’s intervention. For some reason this had the effect on my mind of erasing Wade during the next day’s concert, until I recently rewatched the film with the added intent of scanning for his presence. There he was, onstage, presumably to continue looking after Sueleen’s welfare, a singular display of devotion from the narrative’s quintessential troublemaker.
Page 139, caption for Figure 28:
Comma needed: “… Maritess (a writer married to a chauvinist husband),…”
Page 140, first paragraph, first sentence:
“… a comparison with the genuinely subversive exposés of Manila by Night, with the more recent project paling in comparison.”
Page 142, first paragraph, last sentence:
“… planned sequels to Macho Dancer (1988), titled Midnight Dancers (1994, a multicharacter narrative), Burlesk King (1999), and Twilight Dancers (2006).”
Page 143, first paragraph, last sentence:
Because the movie had already been mentioned: “…whose director, Lawrence Fajardo, has specialized in the milieu format with Amok (2011) and Posas (Shackled, 2012)
, and the aforementioned Imbisibol.”
Page 144, first paragraph, third sentence:
The comma after the film title Caught in the Act has to be deleted.
Page 151, second paragraph, third sentence:
“… soft– and hard-core gay movies were produced…”.
Page 184, footnote 23:
Replace “127” in “See Figure 25, p. 125.”
Page 193 (references), Pinoy Kollektor entry:
Italics needed: “48. Dawn of Freedom — Philippine World War II Japanese Propaganda Movie.”
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