I DIDN’T really plan to see the movie “This Is It,” at least not in the big screen. I am one of those they call “old fans” who didn’t stay faithful to Michael Jackson through all these years and now are back because everyone’s talking about his last breath in the big news last June this year.

So a few days ago, I found myself in Theater 1 in Ayala Cebu, cuing for seats with a friend.

We went inside the theater and looked for the seats assigned to us. We were two of the first few who came right after the end of the previous showing. As we were the earliest birds of that batch and had seats in the topmost row, I had the time to watch the balcony fill up.

Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

One thing amazed me. The moviegoers were coming in an age medley, you might say—small girls and boys here and there, teeners, Baby Boomers and last of all, the oldies who have a special heart for Pop and its King.

The crowd wasn’t noisy in expectation, eager but quiet, very Cebuano. I remember what a friend said that Pilita Corrales (her former classmate at STC) commented to her about the Cebuano audiences—that they didn’t scream nor go in a blast for big shows even if they did come, yes, but quietly. She said she used to worry about that when she had concerts here. But she as an entertainer and one of Cebu’s favorites, eventually obviously knew how to live with it.

Then the MJ show was on. I looked to the stranger in my left side and saw someone’s grandfather, surely as much as Jackson was a Baby Boomer (born between 1946 and 1964). From his chair, this oldie seatmate quietly started tapping a foot to go with Michael’s moonwalk beat while the singer-dancer’s magic voice resounded all over Ayala’s Theater 1. All the man to my left lacked was an MJ t-shirt, he’d look well in it.

The oldie fans at a certain point of Jackson’s life must have stepped back, perhaps unable to understand the problems in his life, such as changes in his face, his two failed marriages, the accusations of sexual child abuse, even the issue on his inability to accept the fact that Paul Anka co-wrote the song “This Is It” with him, even if it’s said that he did so, but only much later.

And I’ll never forget that scene where Jackson dangled his baby from a balcony.

But there I was at Ayala Theater 1, watching him dance in perfect beat in a film everyone’s talking about.

“This is it, here I stand/ I’m the light of the world, I feel grand!” Jackson sang.

An oldie even during Jackson’s Boomer years couldn’t have helped listening to him and watching him dance the way he danced.

He started as a child entertainer, the youngest of the successful Jackson 5 group composed of his brothers and him. But he burst into the entertainment world like an adult singer and the group became too small for a star becoming bigger.

Later on his own, Jackson produced albums which sold out like none others. His album “Thriller” has sold 108 million copies throughout the world, a record for anyone to try and break. It stayed number one for 37 weeks in the top-ten singles after its release.

Then he gave big concert tours around the world with his album entitled “Bad” who could have missed hearing him? They saw and heard him in China, in Japan, in the rest of Asia, in Europe.

All in all, there have been over 750 million Michael Jackson albums sold worldwide.

This could have been followed by his comeback tour, “This Is It.” At the age 50, Jackson died last June, just before he was supposed to begin a 50-concert run in London. The movie, named after the song, has rehearsal footage shots of Jackson practicing for the coming concerts.

Rhythm in music will always be a common language in the world—for young and old. Jackson was heard and seen from all corners, and also from all views.

(ecuizon@hotmail.com)