"MY THANKS TO HER FOR DYING SO HORRIBLY" - CS AMUDHAN

Director C.S.Amudhan, who is riding high on the box office success of his film, Tamizh Padam 2, has now put up a long emotional note on his Facebook page, thanking his entire team, who worked behind the film extensively.
 

His Facebook statement is as follows:

"Vanakkam!

It’s been an incredible couple of weeks starting with that 5 am show in Rohini. From the time we announced TP2 we have been confident that it will do well but the magnitude of its success has been well beyond the scope of our imagination. A big thank you to all of you here in Tamilnadu & all around the world who saw the film in theatres. Thank you also to the many who have tweeted, DMed, texted & called to let me know they enjoyed the film.

I am under no illusion that TP2 is a perfect film. Voices that I respect which include reviewers, tweeters, friends, family & colleagues have been critical of the film, I hear you. Much of it is reasonable & considered & will surely help me going forward, thank you for that.

As those who have seen the film know, it rests squarely on the shoulders of Shiva. I can’t think of anyone in his place. A man who’s truly got the gold dust that every actor wants, a unique & original presence. His range stretches much beyond comedy, I will watch with interest as he shows us that in the future. We have not agreed over everything in this movie but it’s heartening that not only has the partnership succeeded but the friendship has endured.

The surprise package in this film is definitely Sathish, not just to the audience but even to us. The enthusiasm he brought to his various looks & to that dance-off gave us some much-needed assurance that the gambles we were making would pay off. I am very proud that a man who debuted in a minor part in Tamizh Padam is now one of our prominent comedians.

The heroine audition in this film is one of the most hilarious episodes in my life & I will probably tell it someday but all’s well that ends well & we finally landed the very pretty Ishwarya Menon. She is for me, the find of the film. She is the complete package, can produce every expression on demand, has an instinctive take on situations & dances like a dream. I am sure she will have a great career, I’ve already seen an #IshwaryaMenonArmy on twitter!

My thanks also to Disha Pandey who very sportingly did that small role & for dying so horribly.

TP2 is a fairly long film shot in a variety of locations & across time-zones, from dusty village roads to skyscrapers...from foreign airports to Kongunadu circa 3000 BC. It, therefore, shocks even me that we shot it in 47 days! 3 less than my commitment to my producer. To do it in that time & still achieve the quality we did is entirely down to the brilliance & commitment of DoP Gopi Amarnath. I would not say we achieved everything we set out to do but we did a helluva lot.

Kannan & I have spent the last 8 frustrating years in the wilderness together. He has worked on & off in these years but the big break didn’t seem to come. Right after the joy of the film’s success comes my happiness that things have worked out for him. His Kalavaramey is topping the charts in all the radio stations & Naan Yaarumilla is closing in on 6 million views! The lucky b****** has already received 3 good offers! Kannan belongs to a breed of music-directors that is getting rarer by the day, the ones that still trust in melody. May the species never go extinct!
 

Editor Suresh is the kid-brother I never had ( and never wanted). Long after the shoot was over & the dust had settled & right up to the eve of release he & I have sat in dark rooms staring at monitors agonizing over every last detail. Things got chaotic towards the end with the censor-cuts, animal control & the pressure of release just hours away. It’s down to him that the release on a Thursday with a 5 am show ever happened. To think I begged production to give me any other editor than him in the first film 🙂

I must say we got our costume-designer Sruthi Kannath on-board under false-pretences. She was told it was a small-film with regular costumes that would not take a lot of her time. He he 🙂 She had to do 13 different looks for Sathish, the Game of Thrones costumes & an entire palace ensemble set! I can think of many people who would have been blindsided but she took it in her stride making sure every costume was ready on time & exactly as specified. And oh yeah, she wants me to tell you that she makes exquisite bridal wear.

Action Choregrapher Dilip & Dance Choreographer Kalyan have shot for 25 days between them, that’s more than half the film! Despite being vastly more experienced than me, they have been ready to go on any hare-brained scheme of mine most enthusiastically. Dilip also debuted with Tamizh Padam but has since gone on to greater glory...with films like Kala, Theeran & Vikram Vedha under his belt. Kalyan, of course, is a veteran who has worked with every big name in the industry. Hard to think of these guys as anything but family.

All the people who I’ve mentioned above had the luxury of reading the script before starting work, the one person who did not was our art-director Senthil Raghavan. He was roped in at the last minute because the art-director who was originally contracted backed out suddenly. A large proportion of TP2 was shot on sets ( the entire police HQ complex, villain’s lair, evada song, resort, riots & the Kongu Nadu dharbar) & I never saw Senthil during the shoot. He was always working on the next set while we were shooting on one & I made what was an already incredibly tough job almost impossible by asking for last minute revisions. My apologies & thanks.

Almost everything I said about Senthil is also true of our sound designer Suren whom I suspect of being a vampire. The guy locks himself in his studio during the day & ventures out for a few hours in the night. He must have slept for a maximum of 2 hours each day that led up to the release & yet nothing passes those bat-ears.

My heartfelt gratitude to the team of outstanding young men who make up the direction & writing team. My co-director Ravishankar is so much my senior that I’m probably the only director afraid of his co-director. Everybody in my team, Ravi, Sundar, Gerry (or Bodhidharman as he is popularly known) Yuga, Rajavel, Suresh, Suman & Sridhar worked their asses off & had to put up with a cranky me when things didn’t go well. Big thanks to Chandru & Barani who are the crutches I lean on when writing.

Being a production manager is the most thankless job in the Industry. When you do your job well nobody notices, if u slip up slightly u get yelled at from all sides. Raghu, Rangaraj, Sekar & Cheenu did fabulous jobs in keeping the machine running. I must single out Rangaraj who was detained for 3 days in the Malaysian airport & was put through a lot of hardship for no fault of his. Despite that horrendous experience, the minute we landed in Chennai he was back on the job like nothing happened.

Why did it take 8 years for a full-length spoof to be made after Tamizh Padam? Especially when the first one was a blockbuster..? This is an Industry which will squeeze out a success formula till it runs dry. I mean we have had nearly 7 years of unrelenting horror-comedies, so why not spoofs? The answer is, it takes a rare kind of producer to pull it off. You have to be fearless, completely assured of the content & willing to handle a lot of external pressure. Sashikanth is & does all those things pretty naturally. We started our film journey together & here we are now.

The last few years have been tough on Sashi as his friends will know. If he is a much more relaxed & happy man today & able to go vacationing in Italy that is down to our executive producer & YNot’s CEO, Chakravarthy Ramachandra, long may they prosper.

I will end this by once again thanking you our audience & friends in the media. By going to theatres, reviewing, tweeting, interviewing & generally spreading the good word you have launched, re-launched & refuelled many careers & for that we owe you a debt of gratitude.

Thanks
C.S.Amudhan"