The new documentary MEET THE PATELS is actually about three different films in one. On the surface, it’s the story of co-director Ravi Patel (who made the film with sister Geeta Patel) going through the process of the American version of arranged marriage dating, meaning his parents are sifting through hundreds of personal profiles in search of the right woman for their Ravi. But the film is also about the bond between parents and children—even grown children—and how the parents never stop caring about their kids’ lives, no matter how old they get.
Perhaps most interestingly, MEET THE PATELS is also a fairly in-depth look at a certain aspect of Indian culture, comparing coupling practices in India versus the more modern take on the process on the Western world. The film is funny, educational, and unexpectedly moving, especially when Ravi finally reveals to his parents that he had been dating a non-Indian woman for two years before he agreed to starting dating in a way they approved. I had a chance to sit down with Ravi and Geeta just before their film opened in Chicago last week (the film is expanding this weekend). I can’t imagine you not having a great time watching this wonderful little doc. With that, please enjoy my talk with Ravi and Geeta Patel…
Ravi Patel: Did you know that we’re locals?
Capone: I didn’t know that, but in re-watching the film, I noticed that the first stop on your dating tour is Chicago.
RP: That’s a coincidence, but this si one of the major ports for our people. I was born in Freeport, which is like a half hour past Rockford. We also lived in Rockford. And then in ’89, at which point I had Chicago Bears fever, for obvious reasons…
Capone: I saw you wearing a Cubs hat in one scene.
RP: Yeah, but I’m the biggest Bears fan you’ll ever meet. I come to like two or three games a year.
Geeta Patel: He sits by himself at the bars in L.A.
RP: I bought the preseason package.
GP: He puts TVs all over the house.
Capone: You’re missing the Green Bay game here on Sunday.
RP: Oh man. I’m missing all sorts of games. It’s very stressful for me. I actually emailed my publicist today. We’re doing all these amazing interviews, and I’m like, “Hey, I really wanted to get on Waddle and Silvy [show on ESPN Radio; Tom Waddle is a former Bears player]. What happened?” And they’re like, “Why are you talking about Waddle and Silvy?” I’m like, “I know it’s not relevant, but I’m a huge Tom Waddle fan.”
Capone: I just watched the movie a couple of days ago, I got sucked in again for the first hour at this screening. The portrait you paint of your parents is that they’re relentless. And I think there’s also perhaps a misconception—or maybe it’s correct—that this is all they talk about. I’m guessing that’s not entirely true.
RP: It’s mostly true.
GP: You know when you’re going through something, but you don’t know how to explain it to everyone? This film was our way of being like, “This is what it’s like.” It’s legit.
RP: I would say they talk about other things, but this is their number one thing on their plate. Patels are a business people, so they’re always coming back to the business at hand. In this case, in many cases in our culture, it’s marriage or the businesses they own. Patels own a lot of businesses.
Capone: Would you want them to be any other way? Would you want them to not care as much?
GP: No. The truth is, and we know this now as we’re getting older, family is the most important thing in the world. They’ve been going on about it all these years, and we’re realize it’s dovetailing into the truth. As we get older and stop rushing so much and stop trying to be so ambitious and narcissistic, the truth is that the only important thing in life are relationships and family, and they’re right. We love them for it. They’re saving our lives.
RP: The main theme of the film is family and love, and the fortunate irony of the film is in not only the story you see on screen, but in making a film with a sibling, who you can’t fire so you have to love more, and with your parents and experiencing the joys of the seemingly amazing reception of the film. Doing that together has brought us all so much closer. Even as filmmakers, to watch mom and dad as characters, it’s made us both so much more appreciative and grateful of what we have. I don’t think I’d change one thing from the past, because whatever this is right now is perfect.
Capone: I didn’t realize how long ago some of this happened.
RP: Yeah, 2008 is when we started.
Capone: And the film follows you for about a year.
RP: I think it’s about 2008 to 2009-ish.
Capone: So the newest thing in it is 2009.
GP: Basically, the core story happened in the year between Christmases.
RP: Yeah, the story takes place a little over a year.
GP: Yeah, we were like, “Oh my god. It’s Christmas to Christmas,” like a romantic comedy. Some things were just magical in that way. After that, we did all the couple interviews. We kept interviewing and going, but really, the core plot was over that year. And then the animation took two years. It took a long time.
Capone: Was that frustrating that you were just sitting on this thing for a while just waiting for the animation to get done?
GP: Yeah, it was really frustrating because we thought it would take a year.
RP: I thought it would take a year. She told me, because her previous documentary…
GP: …seven years.
Capone: I’ve seen PROJECT KASHMIR.
RP: Oh, you’ve seen PROJECT KASHMIR?
GP: What? You’re one of the people. You’re the other guy [laughs].
Capone: When I looked up your credits, I didn’t realize that was your film as well
GP: Well, this one is better than that one.
RP: I actually think it’s a very important film because there’s not a lot done on that region, especially at the ground level with the people. The whole thing happened, without making it about that, because she was writing a book about Kashmir and realized the dearth of documentation and was like “I can go there” and took a camera with her. Ironically, a lot how this started, which was by accident. I broke up with this white girlfriend, who I had been hiding from my parents for two years, and then here we go on this 18-hour trapped flying vessel [on their annual family trip to India] where Geeta bought this new camera that she wanted to learn how to operate, and mom and dad are breathing down my neck about the number one issue in the family, and all of that stress is exacerbated by the fact that I know we’re going to a place where there’s a billion people who are just as upset that we are married as they are.
GP: You asked if it was frustrating to not have the film finished for so long, and it was so frustrating because my first film took seven years. I told Ravi this was going to take six or seven years. Average length of a documentary is seven years to make it for so many reasons. In the art world, you’re out of money and when you’re trying to make something with integrity and not reality television, you don’t force the hand. You’re really letting things be vérité. You’re letting things flow; you’re not cutting any corners.I think we both had an idea in our head of something that was different, which is what you just saw, but we didn’t know how to do it at the time. In the process of six years, we failed for more than half of it. We tried so many things.
RP: It also evolved, because you don’t script these things, right? So it’s life as it’s happening.
GP: And the voice of it took six years.
RP: I remember when we were going through all of this and she has a camera on me, the initial footage we had was just us having these very real conversations: “Isn’t this crazy that what we are going through is actually intensely familiar to every Indian in the world, yet, for example, if I went to one of my white friends and said, ‘I have this white girlfriend that I haven’t told my parents about,’ they would immediately judge me and say, ‘Wow. You’re a really bad boyfriend. You’re a bad person.’ But if I went to an Indian friend, the first thing they’d say is, ‘You didn’t tell your parents about this did you?’ It’s the exact opposite.” Think about that. That encapsulates the double life that we all live. I though we could give a voice to this thing. At the time, I didn’t think it would be about me. I thought we were going to do this fun, Morgan Spurlocklike thing, “It’ll be funny. It’ll be fun. It’ll be quick. It’ll get done in one year.” She’s like, “No way.” I’m like, “You’re slow. You’re dumb.” But of course, I was slow.
GP: We were going to do more of a “Frontline,” this is what it is.
RP: In a comedic way. We always knew we wanted it to be funny.
GP: Like a Morgan Spurlock thing, but the more we embraced these crazy ideas in our head, the more we realized how much we believed and were excited about something much more different and intimate, which takes more time.
RP: It started with these conversations that were so intimate between us, and there’s something so vulnerable and interesting to us about these real conversations, because we’re relating. Ironically enough, there’s this layer of how this person on the camera, you learn over time, is actually going through things just as bad if not worse.
Capone: You’re right, different people react differently. Seeing it with an audience for the first time today, different people are laughing at different things.
GP: Really?
RP: Oh yeah. I see that every time.
Capone: When you mentioned the bio-data thing, half the audience started to laugh and the other half was like, “What’s he talking about?” because about half the audience is Indian.
RP: Half of them are Indian, and they’re like, “What’s funny about that? That’s life.”
Capone: But then when one of your friends says to you about your parents pushing you to marry and Indian girl, “Isn’t that kind of racist?”, the other half of the audience laughs.
RP: That’s amazing!
Capone: The structure of the film is not unlike a romantic comedy, except that the female lead is almost never on the screen.
RP: I’ll tell you the secret there. This is a little nerdy, structural secret, and it’s very astute that you even like noticed that, because it was definitely intentional on our part. We were inspired by this movie THE COVE. Have you see it? They threw the heist genre on top of the documentary…
GP: We thought that was great.
RP: When we finally started looking at the footage, we’re like “You know what we have here? The potential to throw the romantic comedy genre on here, beat for beat.” We had something like 34 cuts of this, but the movie really went to the next level…
GP: When it shaped up.
RP: …was when we realized “It’s not boy meets girl; it’s boy meets parents.” So the parents are the girl archetype in the romantic comedy structure. At the time, we thought the film was about a guy’s search for love and this girl. The name of the movie was ONE IN A BILLION for years. Then we realized it’s actually about family. That’s when it became MEET THE PATELS.
Capone: The moment in the film, when you tell them about Audrey, your mom’s reaction—as much as you knew it wasn’t going to be positive—it really stunned you, especially in light of your dad’s supportive reaction. Tell me about going through that and that brief disconnect from her. That looked like it really hurt.
RP: For me, it was a lot like pulling a Band-Aid off. I knew it was going to hurt. Let’s call it a really, really sticky Band-Aid.
Capone: Across your whole chest.
RP: Yeah, across your chest hair. I knew it was going to be painful. It’s like waxing. I knew the Nair was going to hurt, but I had to do it. But I also knew we would get through it. I don’t think I ever lost faith that mom and dad would be ultimately supportive. The question was when and how. You never want to break someone’s heart.
Capone: Were you surprised that your dad was like, “Oh, okay.”
RP: Yeah. And it was a heartbreaking moment, especially for mom as you saw.
GP: I think the entire end of the film was a ripple of surprises for us, because the hardest thing—and what we realized for so many people around us in relationships in general—is that at a certain point you just give up. You just assume that things are a certain way, that this person is never going to understand me—brother, sister, mother, father, spouse. This is as far as they can go. People don’t change. And I think we were at that point with our family. And what this film taught us, what this story we went through taught us, is that miracles can happen if everybody tries, and I think it changed our life. When we finished the film, nobody wanted it. It took two years to get into festivals. Nobody liked it—the cut you saw.
RP: It’s not that they didn’t like it. They didn’t love it.
GP: It just wasn’t being chosen. Ravi came up to me and said, “Geeta, it doesn’t even matter what happens with this film, because what we got out of it is the greatest success we could have ever gotten, because we got to the other side of it.” And that string of surprises is really the miracle that happens when everybody tries, and everybody has faith in each other.
RP: We’re genuinely best friends now.
GP: We weren’t like this before. We hated each other halfway through.
RP: We’re writing and directing other stuff together, which if you asked me two years ago, I would have said “Hell no. Never again.” It’s been a life-altering experience for us, and now that people are liking the movie, it’s even cooler.
GP: This has been frosting for us, because in the course of making a film about family, we learned to be one, and we didn’t expect that.
Capone: One of the things that made me laugh the hardest is how any time the focus of the film goes to Geeta, you deflect so hard. That one moment when you realize she’d been on hundreds of dates you’re like, “Well, we should be talking about you then.”
RP: I think it speaks to the differences in our personalities.
GP: That’s how we deal with pain. I hide and cry.
RP: She didn’t want to be in the movie at all.
GP: He cracks jokes. When we were making the film initially, he was like “I want to do this Morgan Spurlock thing,” I was like, “Look, Rav, I’m exhausted. I just came out of a war zone. I’m broke. I sold my car to finish my last film. I just want to get back on my feet.”
RP: It was a Corrola. It wasn’t that expensive.
[Everybody laughs]
GP: I was riding a bike around L.A., man. So I said to him, “I have a relationship with PBS. I’m going to get this thing funded, I’m going to help you, but I’m not going to have anything to do with this.” And he’s like, “Fine.” So I shot the beginning stuff just because, with family, you help each other get this stuff off the ground, and then we both saw what was happening. What I was afraid of was attracting me, and what he thought was hilarious was attracting him, which was his pain. I felt like we both just knew we had to do this, even though we did it kicking and screaming.
RP: I’ve got to say, even though we don’t see her a bunch in the movie, I feel like her emotional presence, by the end, of the movie is palpable.
Capone: As is her judgement. You laughing at him before he goes on his first date is priceless.
RP: Welcome to my day-to-day.
Capone: In talking about the dating world in Indian culture, the Patel distinctions, skin color, are you revealing things that maybe other people wouldn’t want revealed? How cognizant were you of being respectful of the culture?
RP: I’ve been shocked by how much people are grateful that it’s all being revealed. I think I know why. We put a lot of effort into being respectful and tasteful, not only to our culture, but to everyone who’s in the movie. Everyone who’s in it is a friend or family or someone who is connected to that group.
GP: Close to the community.
RP: And we wanted everyone who was kind enough to so blindly trust us with themselves and being a part of this project, we took that really seriously.
GP: It’s not a typical documentary experience. In journalism, you interview someone, they sign a release, you don’t show them your article. You don’t show them your film. That’s the way it was in the last film. It’s suicide.
RP: You’re going to write what you're going to write.
GP: But in this film, we’re dealing people that are very close to us. We are infiltrating the subculture. When we went to that Patel convention, that was huge. Nobody’s ever documented it.
RP: That was very controversial.
GP: This is a very private community.
RP: That they let cameras in…
Capone: Controversial among the attendees?
GP: No, controversial to show it, because it’s very private.
RP: It was an incredible show of faith that they let us in there with cameras, because that’s a hard thing to let people see.
GP: They didn’t want to be judged. They’re a very proud, private community, but they told us, “Look, you’re our bothers and sisters. We trust you.” And that’s what I’m saying. In this situation, we made a deal: Family came first, and community and friends came first. So we actually showed everyone the film before we locked the picture. And anyone who had something to say was allowed to say “Take it out,” and we would take it out. And that was the one thing that was important to us, because we knew they weren’t treating us like some stranger. They were treating us like, “I’m going to say everything, and you take care of me.” That was really cool and really difficult, but we also felt like that in art, limitations create great art if you just embrace them. That’s where the animation came from.
RP: We also felt that whatever happens with this movie, the relationships are going to outlast it. In a sense, we care more about the people than we do about the movie. It ended up being a good limitation. I think it made us be more creative.
Capone: What were your parents’ initial reaction?
GP: Shock, that we actually made this thing called a documentary.
RP: That we finished.
GP: They really had lost faith in us.
RP: When you make a movie for that long, the first people to freak out are your parents. Everyone had lost faith. We had lost faith.
GP: Everyone thought it wasn’t really happening.
RP: I was sneaking around to work on this movie because it was embarrassing to tell people why I wasn’t going to dinner. People really started to make me feel like, you’re pathetic. Remember in WONDER BOYS, when they’re like, “You never finish your script.” I was that guy. That’s a really old movie reference.
GP: We also, as far as our community, and what you asked about whether it meant smiting to us, obviously it meant a lot. One thing that we kept trying to do is, in a lot of media, arranged marriages and Indian parents seem to be depicted as a caricature or a joke. It’s always like comedy in a different way—a very black-or-white comedy…
RP: Or the parents are depicted as like weird or alien.
GP: And it was an alien concept.
RP: It’s very easy comedy. And that’s not an Indian thing. Even in like basic television, the parents are the traditional, antiquated characters.
GP: The arranged marriage story, it’s like polygamy. Everybody’s like, “It’s so interesting. Look at it. It’s so weird.”
RP: It’s so crazy. It’s shocking.
GP: And we didn’t have that experience of it, and most of our community and friends didn’t have that experience of it, so we felt like the media didn’t reflect the heart of it, because I think people felt like “There’s nothing funny.” And we felt like there’s greater humor and integrity in the pure humor that comes out of laughing so hard with your family members. The funniest stuff was in real life for us. We both came from a family where we were constantly saying that. We thought that’s what we want to do. We wanted to make a film that actually people would come out of going, “I wish I was a part of that family. I wish my parents set me up.” That was our challenge. Every time we did a cut, we were like, “Nope. Not working.”
Capone: I hear that’s what’s going on, though. They’re asking your mom [who is a professional matchmaker] to set them up.
RP: Oh, they’re blowing up. That’s a whole other… It’s crazy. You should go on the Facebook page. Dad, by the way, is on Facebook. He’s commenting on everything.
You know what it is? The way we look at our family—and I would imagine most families are kind of like this—is we’re stuck together, whether you love them or not. I think it’s love when you’re stuck, because nobody’s actually physically stuck. The idea is, we want to be together. We want to make this work. We all have the same goals on the high level. We just all tend to have different ideas on how to get there. Whether it’s in the day-to-day or year-to-year. If you acknowledge that, even telling the story, if you disagree with mom and dad, you still love them. We all acknowledge we’re going to the same place.
GP: Also, there’s a grey area that we wanted the film to explore, which is that yes, there’s this whole idea that “It’s alien, it’s crazy, this arranged marriage thing.” In America, we have the highest divorce rate we’ve ever had. More and more people are choosing to be alone. More and more people are suffering depression. More and more people don’t want to have kids. So it’s not like we have it covered. It’s not like we know what we’re doing as a dating society. Our parents are the happiest people we know. Most of our extended family has gone through this process that Ravi and I have had a hard time with, they’re the happiest couples we know. They are the healthiest families we know. So, regardless of wether we subscribe completely to the process, let’s see what we can learn from them and let’s celebrate family. We feel like the media doesn’t reflect what we as a society really want.
RP: That was one of the coolest parts of this whole process of making this film. There’s the inherent intersection that came along with that time of my life, but also we did a lot of research on relationships and what makes them successful, and one of the coolest things we learned is that, in the American model of marriage, love is primary. Often, it’s all that matters. I think in my parent’s model of marriage, what’s primary is compatibility and commitment. When you look at it holistically, you realize these are like the three pillars, and all of them need to be serviced, and sometimes you don’t have all three, and you need to lean on the other two. That kind of blew my mind, and it’s really affected the way I look at, not even love and partnership, but also how I look at family and friendships.
Capone: It is crazy that the process many colleges use to find the perfect roommate makes us learn more about that person that we ever do about the person we marry.
RP: That’s so true.
GP: It’s so true.
Capone: There’s a scene where your father accuses you of not respecting the [dating] process, and in a weird way he’s not wrong. You’re not disrespecting it, but because you’re comparing every woman you meet to [ex-girlfriend] Audrey, you’re not giving any of them the fair shake that your parents thought you would. Is that fair to say?
RP: I think I was actually all in when I was doing it.
GP: I think that’s when it started happening. When I committed to doing this thing, I remember I was like, “Look how much this works for my parents. They’re so happy. Our entire family.
GP: And all our cousins—our cousins who are younger than us and were born here. They’ve all done it.
RP: Even the ones who were born here, they’ve done it, and they’re all happy and successful.
GP: We’re so jealous. We go to visit them and are like, “Oh man.”
RP: Really what I’m hesitating on is this awkward way to meet. But after that, it’s all kind of the same. The difference is, your parents are there the whole time, and that doesn’t stop being awkward. Having to report to your parents after a date never stops sucking.
GP: But the whole time you keep thinking the success rate is so high, I just want to fall in love.
RP: Giving your parents a performance review after a first date with some stranger that was set up though eight degrees of mutual Patels, that doesn’t get easier.
Capone: You mentioned before that humor is the way you deal with the pain.
RP: It’s a defense mechanism for most people, right?
Capone: A lot of comedians use it for material.
RP: Comedians especially!
Capone: I think I had read somewhere that some of the initial discussions about arranged marriages started there. Can you talk about how that transitioned?
RP: Yeah, sure. I’ll get asked to be like an emcee for some charity event—and I don’t really pursue standup anymore. At the time, I was though. And I was doing this like 400- or 500-person event. I don’t know if you know Jainism. It was an Indian lawyers association event.
GP: It’s a certain sect of Indian Hinduism.
RP: I did a set, and they asked me to talk more, so then I just started talking about mom emailing me these matrimonial resumes and headshots, and now I have to cold call this girl who might live in Toronto and say, “Hey, this uncle who knows this uncle who knows this uncle connected us and thought that we may make a good husband and wife. I’m Ravi, nice to meet you.” I was talking about this and I was killing in a way I’ve never killed before, and I could feel a connective energy in the room, like we all came out of the same war.
GP: He said they were laughing like it was a cathartic laugh.
RP: And in that moment, I felt it. It was so powerful. And I’m like, “Wait a second. How many people here are single?” And everyone raised their hands, and you realize there’s no legal reason to actually get another Indian on the horn in a court case. It’s actually just another false institution created to modernize this thing that mom and dad did to meet each other.
GP: After that is when we went on a trip to India, and that’s when he’s telling me this, and I’m like “That’s great.”
RP: And all these people coming up to me saying, “Thank you for talking about this.” And they’re sharing their stories. They’re hilarious, but they’re also tragic at times—stories of suicide. That was really the moment of thinking, I’m in a position to tell these people’s story, and hopefully in some way empower or help them. I didn’t know really if it would actually help anyone, but I felt like I should do something about it.
GP: He came to India and was like “This is a story that hasn’t been told, but everybody knows the story, but a lot of people can’t express it.
Capone: That you both for taking the time to talk.
