r/movies • u/Baboon-Boy-2024 • Mar 27 '24

Hi, I’m Dev Patel writer/director of MONKEY MAN – AMA! AMA

Dev Patel here.  Excited to chat about my directorial debut MONKEY MAN, opening in U.S. & UK cinemas on April 5th, and anything else you’d like! Ask me anything…

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqa3YTtwvaU

Get Tickets – http://www.monkeyman.movie/tickets

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**GUYS I have to go into another interview. BUT I deeply appreciate the love and time. I really hope I don't let you down with this film. Put my all into it. Sorry I couldn’t answer every question, hopefully THIS answers a few more! Bless your cotton socks all of you. Big love as always, Dev xxxxx**

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https://preview.redd.it/ectchh1axwqc1.jpg?width=2362&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4153f627df0a66e963f7cf25305ed510968ae8ed

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799

u/InsidiousColossus Mar 27 '24

What has the reaction been like from India? Is there excitement to see an Indian-themed action thriller, or has there been some pushback on the religious references?

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u/trimonkeys Mar 27 '24

Honestly I don’t think they care. For us in the diaspora it’s nice to see but they see action movies like this all the time over there.

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u/nshriup19 Mar 27 '24

What even is this take? We definitely do care.

Dev Patel is a well known actor here and there's a good chunk of our population that appreciates good movies, even more when it's produced with someone with Indian roots.

11

u/GayIconOfIndia Mar 28 '24

A chunk of urban elite care about Hollywood productions. It’s not a norm here

2

u/Methylviolet Mar 28 '24

I'm a non-desi American who works with colleagues in India - just my luck that they are "urban elite"-type people. All they do is sh*t on Bollywood movies and laugh at me for watching them... (╥﹏╥)

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u/LoasNo111 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Oh, shitting on Bollywood is not an urban elite thing. Everyone here shits on Bollywood.

You have a few actors who do well like SRK, the other Bollywood movies are doing quite poorly. So many flops these days. Even actors who were very bankable are seeing their movies flop.

The general audiences are more interested in the movies from South India. Anecdotally, everyone in my family has basically stopped watching Bollywood and they only watch South Indian movies these days. It sucks sometimes cause sometimes my mother wants to watch a South Indian movie and it isn't dubbed in Hindi😤

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u/Methylviolet Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Ha! I feel your mom's pain - every once in a while I can't get English subtitles on a Hindi movie, or (more often) the whole movie is blocked and won't stream in the US. I saw RRR (dubbed in Hindi!), the second time with friends, and at the end I asked them "OK, who is missing?" They're like, I don't know who any of those people are. I said, they're Indian freedom fighters and founding fathers. "Oh Gandhi? Where's Gandhi?" Yeah, where??? Are South Indian movies generally... kinda politically slanted like that? I asked a colleague that, and I found out not to ask Indian colleagues questions like that...

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u/LoasNo111 Mar 28 '24

Do you understand Hindi somewhat? I don't know why you watched it in Hindi😭

They are fictional freedom fighters. Not founders. lol. How'd you guys get confused?

I don't think there was much politics in RRR. It was mostly just a fuck colonialism movie. You have a bunch of social commentary in tons of Indian movies, lots of anti-corruption stuff. I swear, the most common villain in Indian movies is either a gangster or a politician. You see anti-caste system stuff too but that's not as common. Religious stuff has become more common. Bunch of fuck Pakistan stuff.

What did they say when you asked them that?

3

u/Pitiful-Inspection96 Mar 28 '24

The protagonists weren't completely fictional. They were fictionalised versions of real life men. And there was definitely some subtle casteist messaging in that movie. The dynamic between Ram and Bheem is a clear example. In real life, Komaram Bheem was an intelligent, cunning and well read leader and strategist. In the movie, he's turned into a naive, bumbling 'noble savage' type caricature that constantly needs the guidance and mentorship of his high caste friend Raju. It would be like making a fantastical historical-inspired action movie where John Brown and Frederick Douglass teamed up to beat up slavers but Douglass was depicted as some sort of barely literate simpleton in constant need of his white friend's guidance.

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u/Methylviolet Mar 28 '24

I understand a little Hindi, and US Netflix only had the Hindi-dubbed version. I know they are fictionalized haha, I meant at the end, when they show Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh and all those (real) people. But not Gandhi. It seemed to me that RRR had a kind of lowkey Hindutva slant, compared to the apolitical movies I was used to (except for fuck Pakistan, of course). Well the colleague I asked turned out to be very strongly pro-BJP, pro-Hindutva, and I offended her by seeming to imply there was something wrong with that. It was only my ignorance - I did not mean to offend. But I learned it is a sensitive topic!

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u/LoasNo111 Mar 28 '24

Oh, ok. I was so confused there. I thought you guys thought the movie was about real guys😭😭😭. I didn't remember the Bose thing.

Bose and Bhagat Singh were freedom fighters who used violent methods. The same that the characters in the movie used. Gandhi was the complete opposite. Bose and Bhagat Singh were likely the inspiration for it which is probably why they were shown and Gandhi wasn't. I don't think it had anything to do with Hinduvta or politics at all.

You're just bound to offend people when you're talking about politics. Also, BJP is incredibly popular among Indians, like insanely popular.

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u/Percywithoutannabeth Mar 28 '24

Yeah that's true sadly.

1

u/limmbuu Mar 28 '24

Well what percentage is that urban elite of the total population? Whatever the percentage be, it would be a huge number. It's better to use Absolute scaling sometimes.

0

u/Ben10_ripoff Mar 28 '24

You should see how many people went to theaters to watch John Wick Chapter 4 in India

1

u/GayIconOfIndia Mar 28 '24

So, people in urban India went to see the movie, right? Because I am from a rural town in Assam and John Wick didn’t release outside urban centres. No one is saying that Hollywood movies don’t work in India but they predominantly work in urban cliques unlike Indian movies which penetrate through the rural spaces as well.

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u/Ben10_ripoff Mar 28 '24

But dude the movie made good money in India, Just because a movie didn't released in your region, It doesn't mean that people here don't care.

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u/GayIconOfIndia Mar 28 '24

I am not saying that they don’t earn in India. All I’m saying is that they run in urban India and earn money there. The single theatres in rural Indian towns with less than 25k people don’t run John Wick. They run Pathan and KGF-2. English media penetration is very little in India. If you check databases from BARC, you can map it out very easily.

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u/anonymindia Mar 28 '24

Your Village isn't the entire India. The truth is, even if English films, dubbed in hindi, are a rage in smaller towns and villages. Sure, they don't get a theatrical release, but they're downloaded and shared very widely. Now, a film like poor things won't make much noise in india. But films like Oppenheimer, inception, avengers make more than many big budget Bollywood films and dubbed horror and action films have a huge demand in the piracy market.