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Furious Annabelle Rama lambastes Bench show
“It’s not fair,” feisty celebrity mom and talent manager Annabelle Rama yowled over dinner, nearly stealing the media’s attention from the two young stars of the upcoming movie, Loving You, in the function room of Imperial Suites during a press conference with Aljur Abrenica and Kris Bernal.
Rama came in just in time when the open forum with the two teenaged stars was wrapping up, and then she started spewing invectives as she expressed her disappointment on what the organizers of the recent Bench denim/underwear show with her son Richard Gutierrez appearing on the runway for the show’s nearly hour-long show at the Araneta Coliseum Friday night a week ago.
“It’s unfair for Richard,” she said repeatedly. “My son had to hurry home from Greece (where he was shooting a movie with KC Concepcion) so he could be in that show, and for what? Nobody even recognized him when he finally appeared on stage!”
The models and stars were made up to conform to the theme, blackout. So, Richard’s creamy white complexion was darkened, making him unrecognizable if you were seated at the bleacher section, or even at the upper box section. The actor’s mom insisted that even she and her friends, already seated very close to the runways, nearly failed to recognize him. Worse, the crowd gave the actor less than lukewarm applause.
“They could have done something about it so that Richard didn’t made a fool of himself,” Rama, said, of course in her trademark Hiligaynon accented Tagalog, punctuated with Dong, and Day, the Visayan endearments for friends.
“Not to be misconstrued, I am not asking for anything more than something the audience could have known that it was already my son who was walking down the runway,” she continued. “Richard’s name flashed on the screen perhaps, or an announcement on the public address system. Is that asking too much?”
The bi-annual bench underwear show has become such a big thing in show business. While it caters mostly to the “pink” market, the guys over at bench have made efforts to broaden its audience base by making sure their young star endorsers like Gerald Anderson and Kim Chiu participate in the show.
Still, the centerpiece of this show is the flurry on stage of if not naked, nearly naked men and women, some of them are certified Kapamilya stars like Rafael Rosell, Jake Cuenca, Kian Kazemi, Bruce Quebral, and Kapuso star JC de Vera who elicited the warmest applause from the mostly gay crowd in the coliseum.
Recent bench acquisition Dingdong Dantes was, if the show were a dimsum, the filling in the bun, as the Kapuso star was given much fanfare when he made his appearance in the second half of the show.
Rama said she is not grumbling over what the show’s organizers did with Dantes’ portion, but what she was not quite happy about was the dismal job they did on the finale, and which unfortunately featured her son.
She was so upset that she was even blaming herself for asking Richard to come home. “My son didn’t really want to participate because he was saddled with work on Asero and the movie with KC, but I talked him into giving time for the bench show to show our gratitude to Ben Chan for making him an endorser,” she said.
Now, with what happened during the show, Richard’s loving “monster” mom has declared with finality that that it was to be Richard’s final appearance on the bench fashion show. “I will also evaluate our contract with bench for Richard’s endorsements.”
