First, let’s make Tony Labrusca play the “either/or” game.
• Food preference: cooked or raw? “Cooked.”
• Condiment preference: sweet or sour? “Sour.”
• Choice of sandwich: hotdog or hamburger? “Hamburger.”
• How eggs done: sunny side up or hard-boiled? “Sunny side up.”
• Coffee/Tea: hot or cold? “Hot.”
• Love or lust? “Love.”
• Daytime or nighttime? “Daytime.”
• Gets most high from top of the mountain or bottom of the sea? “Bottom.”
• Bedtime: bare or “blanketed?” “Blanketed.”
• Handling of finances: in (saving) or out (spending)? “In.”
That simple “test” was conducted after the presscon for Ang Henerasyong Sumuko sa Love, a Regal Entertainment, Inc. production set for release nationwide on Wednesday, Oct. 2, written and directed by Jason Paul Laxamana who has been coming up with critically-acclaimed films like 100 Tula Para Kay Stella (JC Santos and Bela Padilla), Between Maybes (Julia Barretto and Gerald Anderson) and Just a Stranger (Anne Curtis and Marco Gumabao).
The movie is about a barkada of five who agrees to camp by the lake overnight while witnessing a meteor slice the night sky. They decide to meet on the same spot the following year to celebrate friendship and update one another about goings-on in their lives, not expecting surprises and challenges in their careers, and about relationship/societal issues.
The cast includes Jane Oineza as a competitive vlogger who advocates empowered women; Albie Casiño as a video editor who lives-in with his girlfriend played by Myrtle Sarrosa, a promodizer who is the opposite of her boyfriend; Jerome Ponce as an openly gay restaurant owner; while Tony plays a guy who is determined to make it big until he realizes that there is a huge piece missing in his life.
Happily, not one of them has given up on love. As Albie put it, “Masarap magmahal. It’s nice to love and be loved.”
Because of the issues he has (perhaps unintentionally) gotten enmeshed in since he ventured into showbiz (after finishing a finalist in the Kapamilya talent search Pinoy Boyband Superstar), Tony felt that he is misunderstood.
“In showbiz,” he noted, “you say something and it gets magnified, multiplied a hundred times,” admitting in the next breath that, yes, “the hate I see online is heart-breaking,” having been victimized by bashers, especially that airport “incident” for which he has duly apologized.
He continued, “I don’t care what my friends are as long as they are not hurting anybody,” in answer to question about being friends with gays, seconding Jerome’s opinion that he has gay friends but he draws a line between friendship and, well, “making it.” In the movie, Jerome does have sizzling love scenes with another guy. As the cliché goes, trabaho lang, walang personalan.
Tony is inviting people to watch Henerasyon “so they can get a glimpse of the millennial lifestyle and the problems that we millennials have to deal with.”
Incidentally, after creating a big splash with the iWant Original sex-drama Glorious, a May-December affair in which he does steamy love scenes with Angel Aquino, Tony has not turned his back on similar roles, contrary to speculation.
“I’m okay with sexy roles but I want to show more my acting skills in my coming projects, Henerasyon included,” Tony clarified. “Sexy roles are okay as long as it is with substance.”
What about baring his butt or doing “frontal?”
“If it is really a good project and a good script, I might think seriously about it.”
Asked what was the biggest mistake that he had committed so far and how he corrected it, Tony said, “Burning bridges. I never should have done that. I corrected it by not really fixing it but learning from my mistake.”
Ang Henerasyong Sumuko sa Love also stars Kelvin Miranda, Kayla Heredia, Anjo Damiles and Thia Thomalla (2018 Miss Eco International who is Alden Richards’ leading lady in the GMA soap The Gift).
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