Tamils hold strong views on cinema, both negative and positive. Movies and actors are frequent topics of conversation among the urban poor. People who were unwilling to discuss the cinema in any formal context, such as with an unknown interviewer or in the presence of their elders, were eager to talk about it in informal conversations with one another and with me.

Much of my information about audience views on cinema comes from these conversations, as well as from more structured interviews (conducted after people came to trust me). I also gathered accounts of movie stories from more than forty viewers, some volunteered during interviews and others told by friends who had just seen a movie. Still other accounts – about half of my sample – were elicited directly by asking people to tell me both their favorite movie story and the story of one of the three films recounted in chapter 5.

Stories volunteered during the general interviews were usually fairly short – about five minutes long – and often ended with a proffered interpretation of the movie's “message” or “moral” (karuttu). The stories given in response to a formal request were usually much longer, often taking half an hour to an hour in the telling. I asked for the film's “message” at the end of each of these, and most storytellers responded readily. It was clear that perceiving messages in films was a natural way of thinking for many poor urban residents.