100 days reign of The Boss

Things have been pretty hectic here at my end and that is the reason for this scarcity of posts here. The fact that I was not able to post something even for the completion of 100 days of The Boss should bear testimony to the same. Anyway, got some time today and with the logic "Better late than never" at the back of my mind, decided to post about the 100th day celebrations of Sivaji, that we had in Seattle last Saturday.

Just like how I was apprehensive when the movie was screened during the 50th day weekend, I was a lot worried whether there will be decent enough crowd for my friend (who was the one screening the movie) to at least break even. He was screening the movie just for the sake of fans like me and I want o proudly disclose here that, it was just for the sake of me that he changed the timing of the show from the usual 1pm start to a 7pm start, just bcos I had something else going on during the afternoon. So, I was even more worried and I had in fact decided even before the movie that if my friend were to incur a loss bcos of the movie, I will share some of the loss. So, that was my mentality heading into the weekend.

On the way to the theater on the D-day, I get a call from my friend asking me if I still needed the 10 tickets that I had earmarked for my friends. I said "Yes, I do need that. But why are you even concerned about it?". He goes "The movie might be a sell-out and that is the reason why I want to make sure that all your friends get a ticket". I really thought that my friend was joking around. It was hard for me to believe when he first told me that bcos there was no way the movie could have had even sold half of the tickets.

I was one of the first to reach the theater and as time of the show neared, the crowd swelled and it was about 20 mins before the show did I realize that my friend was indeed serious. The theater was brim to the full and we still had people coming. Since we did not want family audience to go back without a ticket, fans like me (a good 15 of us) decided to relinquish our seats and watch the movie standing from the side (anything for Thalaivar J). Even after doing that, we had to send 30-40 folks back home bcos of the non-availability of tickets. During all this commotion, I was sporting a big smile, a smile of just having seen a miracle happen. A smile arising out of sheer pride being a fan of Thalaivar, the only man who can pull a crowd to the theater in this remote corner of the world. Like I had said a few posts before, it is hard for Tamil movies to attract the Seattle Tamil audience to the theater even for just 1 show. And The Boss was being screened for the 12th time here in Seattle and that too on the 100th day, by which time the movie would have been available for download from all web sites. In spite of all these obstacles, Thalaivar pulls off a miracle, thus proving his clout and hold over the Tamil folks, no matter which corner of the globe they reside.

At least half of the crowd consisted of fans like me and that only mean one thing - mayhem and celebrations inside the theater. It was almost as though we were watching the premier show on June 14th (a day I can never forget). As the movie progressed, Thalaivar fans who had been seated in various corners of the theater, started to group together in the place where we were sitting and the excitement naturally grew from then on. All the agmark Thalaivar scenes – Thalaivar intro, Vaaji song intro, Style song, Adhiradi song, Mottai Boss intro, to name a few – drew the maximum applause & whistles while some fans like me were busy at the front of the theater throwing up torn paper pieces before the screen.

Personally for me, I was starved - this was my first glimpse of Thalaivar on the big screen after close to 90 days and in spite of watching all those scenes and songs in the form of YouTube videos, the experience was just electric. I was way too excited and elated during the screening. This was my 7th time watching the movie and I simply wasn't bored for one sec. If ever there was one thing I felt during this watching (and if I were given a choice to make just ONE change to the movie, that would also be the thing), it was as the Adhiradi song was being played, when I really thought how good it would have been if only Lawrence had been made the choreographer for all the songs, instead of just one. Shankar who had made the movie as a Thalaivar fan for Thalaivar fans could have made this one more thing for us which would have made the movie even more memorable. The Adhiradi song is one song which I do not think I will ever get tired of watching. Everything about the song is just perfect, making it easily the best Thalaivar song of all time, when it comes to picturization.

I don’t know what else to say than "The Boss rocks!""