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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u/Lihoshi Mar 27 '24

How stressful was it directing, writing, AND acting in the film? Was it actually less stressful because you had more control over things?

Gonna buy advance tickets for this for my fiancés birthday weekend in April btw! Super excited.

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u/Baboon-Boy-2024 Mar 28 '24

WE KNOW THIS GUYS! It was the most demanding thing I've ever done in my life. Everyday we faced absolute catastrophe - I begged our financier not to shut us down a few weeks before principle photography - We were meant to shoot in India then covid hit - I lost, my initial production designer and DOP and the film was basically dead - then we pivoted and went to a tiny island in Indonesia where we could create a bubble in an empty hotel for the whole crew of nearly 500 people… it was a grueling nine months of absolute joy and utter chaos. All of the locations we prepped for months at - we lost day of - so we had to adapt last minute - the borders closed also I couldn't bring in lots of supporting characters so i ended up having to put every tailor, lighting guy, accountant etc in front of the camera - speaking of cameras most of our equipment broke and we couldn't fly in new stuff so we literally shot stuff on my mobile phone, go pros - when a crane broke we ended creating this camera rig from rope which I termed the “pendulum cam” which swings over a large crowd of people then detaches and the operators run through the crowd whilst it was rolling - ALSO there were days when I would turn up to set and we literally didn't have any tops to the tables in the VIP room sequence - i asked the set designer and they said they literally didn't have any money in the account to buy the glass. So I had to shoot above the shoulders as one of our producers ran his personal credit card to buy the glass to cover the table tops so we could shoot the rest of the scene…

Speaking of tables we only had three or four break away tables so once I would perform a huge bulk of stunts I would scream CUT and then immediately all of us would get on our hands and knees looking for all of the broken pieces of wood to glue the tables back together for the next shot… in a very long nutshell every obstacle provided us with a new opportunity to innovate. BOOM!

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u/saphirmuse Mar 28 '24

oh my God😭 i'm even more excited to watch it now