There was a huge wave of applause when Dev Patel took the stage after the world premiere of “Monkey Man” at the Paramount Theater on Monday night. As the crowd rose to its feet to a standing ovation, Patel walked away from the audience and wiped tears from her eyes with her sleeve.
Nominated for an Academy Award for 2016's “Lion,” the actor had largely put his on-screen career on hold so he could co-write, direct, produce and star in his latest project. “Monkey Man” is an unexpectedly meditative and hallucinatory action story that is deeply personal to Patel.
When asked how he was feeling at that moment, Patel replied: “It's fucking overwhelming.”
Patel called out to cast members, producers and his director of photography, Sharone Meir, who made their way from their seats to the stage. As they settled in and the audience continued to applaud, Patel asked, “What happens now?”
Patel would go on to say that during the filming of the film, he broke his hand and foot, tore his shoulder, and contracted an eye infection from dirty water on the floor of a bathroom where they were filming a fight scene. Patel would rattle off many other production difficulties, including a crane that broke, so they simply tied the camera to a swinging rope. Some moments were filmed using Patel's own phone.
Set in a fictional Indian city similar to Gotham City, “Monkey Man” is built around mythical elements: Patel plays a young man known only as Kid who wears a monkey mask, reminiscent of the legend of Hanuman, to be defeated night after night. in a clandestine fighting ring. He gets a job washing dishes at an exclusive private club so he can get closer to the city's powerful elites and get revenge for the brutal death of his mother.
The film will be released next month by Universal Pictures, having initially been created on Netflix. The project was saved in part thanks to the intervention of Jordan Peele, who introduced Patel before the start of the screening.
Peele said: “It's a movie that shows that movies can be everything. You can have a movie that tells an incredible story, that has meaning, that has depth, and you can still kick a lot of people's butts along the way.”
Of Patel, the “Nope” director, he added: “All I can say is that I have never seen anyone put their heart, soul, body, mind and energy into a film, into a story, more than this man. And he has done it so that we can enjoy this movie tonight.”
Patel told the crowd that once his production was underway, “Everything that could have gone wrong from that point on went wrong. And then Jordan showed up at the end. She picked it up from the ground. He dusted it off, put it back on the mantelpiece and gave us this opportunity.”
As a child, Patel saw Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon” on television: “I had never seen anyone who looked even a little bit like me before,” he recalled. “And this guy on the screen had the same pigment as me. And from that day on I fell in love with action movies.”
Patel would go on to declare his affection for Indonesian and Korean action cinema, the comedies of Jim Carrey and Indian actor Johnny Lever, the “John Wick” films and the classic Bollywood films loved by his grandparents.
“I'm taking my hat off to so many things here,” Patel said.
Before “Monkey Man” began, Patel said, “What you're going to see here is a guy who doesn't have a joke for every scenario; he's not the biggest guy in the room and it doesn't look like he is. He is going to win because he is not the favorite. And that's what I've felt my whole damn life.”
In the irreverent spirit of SXSW, Patel said he hoped everyone liked his film. “And if you don't, blame Jordan: it's his fault.”
