The SXSW saw the world premiere of Dev Patel’s feature directorial debut, Monkey Man. The screening prompted a rousing reaction from the attendees at Austin’s Paramount Theatre.
SXSW isn’t really known for giving standing ovations, however, Dev Patel changed the course, as he received a well-deserved ovation for his bloodied portrayal of a young man avenging his mother’s death from a crooked cop. Patel is Monkey Man’s director, producer, writer and action star.
Jordan Peele was on hand to introduce Patel ahead of the screening.
“This is a film that simply demands to be seen in a theater with a huge rockstar audience,” said Peele. Monkey Man was originally set up at Netflix, which took the film’s global for $30M. Now it has a big screen release set for April 5.
“I’ve never seen someone pour his heart, soul, body, mind and energy into a film, into a story more than this man,” Peele said about Patel.
Taking the stage before the screening, Patel said: “People thought I went crazy. I’ve been away for a while. I was reading all these things on the internet ‘Where Are They Now?’ ‘What Happened to Him?’”
“I’m not really fit for public consumption right now, I’ve been in a dark room, the paint is literally not dry on this thing,” the multihyphenate continued.
“I did a little film where I was just as awkward as I am now –it’s called Slumdog Millionaire. That film was discarded because people underestimated you guys, basically,” Patel told the audience.
“And the same thing happened here. I put everything into this, I shot this film in the biggest slum in India, Covid hit, and the film went down. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. And then Jordan came along in the end, he picked up from the ground, he brushed the dust off and put it on the mantel piece.”
The movie based on the Hindu deity Hanuman, was inspired by Patel’s love of Bruce Lee movies, Korean movies, Bollywood titles and tales his grandfather told him as a child.
“I snuck downstairs when I was a little kid, and I watched Bruce Lee on screen through the banister in Enter the Dragon. I’d never seen anyone who looked slightly like me before and this guy had the same pigment as me, and from that day on, I fell in love with action movies.”
“I think the action genre has sometimes been abused by the system,” said Patel, “I wanted to give it real soul, real trauma, real pain and you guys deserve that. And I wanted to infuse it with a little bit of culture.”
“Basically, this is a story about an underdog, being helped by a whole other load of underdogs to realize their true power collectively.”
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