![]() How did your interest in music spark in the first place? So, first of all, I have to tell you - I’ve been listening to both your songs on repeat. But as soon as we’re seated and we’re talking music, it’s as if a spool comes unravelling - and I can only listen with rapture. On the surface, Gaston may not seem like a man of many words. It’s plain to see that Gaston is someone whose creative well never runs dry. And he always, always has something to share with the world. It’s the language he is most fluent in the ideal form of communication with which he can express himself - and that’s a pretty hefty statement to make for someone who’s actually multilingual, as he is. For as long as he can remember, Gaston tells me, music has been a huge part of his life. His range is all-encompassing, but he has a distinctive style that shines through. Listening to the bulk of his oeuvre, I can’t help juxtaposing him with the likes of musicians-turned-producers Jack Antonoff, FINNEAS, The Weeknd and also Suga (thanks to the strong K-pop influence). Gaston’s sound is a pleasant blend of dance pop, R&B and hip hop. (Fun fact, the latter was a demo track he wrote for Luhan, a former member of K-pop group EXO.) This year marks Gaston’s English debut in music, with the release of his two latest singles, “i luv u, just kidding” and “Birthday Cake”. His musical portfolio has surpassed a whopping 70 songs, spanning almost all the quasi-Asian pop music genres, including C-pop and K-pop. And all the while he’s been writing, composing and producing music for artists across the region. In 2017 he and his sister, JE Pong, formed the musical duo Pong Pong, which went on to dominate the local Chinese music scene. He spent the better part of his youth as a child singer. ” This single tongue-in-cheek line proves prophetic - it would come to be the definitive guide on how he navigates his own career: free, unfettered, and most importantly, without any boundaries.Īt 26, Gaston has achieved so much in so little time. This might have been a hit a decade or so later but then we wouldn't have the wonderful performances of Kahn and Jenkins in that film.There’s a lyric in the song “i luv u, just kidding”, in which Gaston Pong, lamenting a short-lived situationship, sings: “ You hate the dictionary ain’t don’t wanna be defined. No small part of it's lack of success in 1980 was it's sympathetic attitude to homosexuality (though nothing remotely sexual ever happens) which was way ahead of the general population of the era. The direction is not particularly good and the film resembles a TV-movie programmer from the era with it's camera shots but the script still has much of the punch of the play and the seven leads are all quite good. Theirs is one of the best smother-mother and child duos created on film and there's even a lovely moment when they sing "Moon River" together off key as Kahn hammers at the piano. ![]() ![]() Sadly he appears to never had another major part. On the other hand the even less known actor Timothy Jenkins as Bunny's infantile son whom she alternately babies and bullies actually steals the film in an endearing performance. The fairly obscure young leads (Robert Viharo, Sarah Holcomb, David Marshall Grant) are good but not unexpectedly unable to hold their own with a master comedienne like Kahn. ![]() Her unsuccessful suicide attempt is a gem of a comic scene. Top-billed Kahn is actually a secondary character (second-billed Moreno has an even smaller role) but she's delicious as a faded, crude mantrap who is just realizing her best days are now behind her. The wealthy young siblings though are warmly welcomed by Francis' father and his middle-aged girlfriend (Rita Moreno playing an Italian Catholic!)and a neighbor, aging floozy Bunny Weinberger (Kahn) and her twentyish, plump, clumsy asthmatic son Herschel. 20-year-old college student Francis Geminiani is not happy by a surprise visit from his quasi-girlfriend Judith and her brother Randy on the eve of his birthday mainly because he's begun to realize he's gay and actually attracted to the brother rather than the sister. A wild farce about some earthy, low-income Philadephians, it's based on a hit play that premiered in 1977 and was still running almost a year after this modest movie adaptation was made! I remember the bad reviews at the time of it's release but had never seen the movie until recently watching it on youtube where it exists in a not very good print that has been sliced into ten episodes but this is likely to be the only place you will be able to see it, it was briefly released on videotape in the 1980's and probably played on cable premium channels a few times back then but I doubt it's been on TV since as much for its limited appeal as for Madeline Kahn's hilarious potty mouth. HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEMINI turned out to be a happy surprise for me, the best widely lambasted movie I've seen in years.
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