A version of this story about “Everything everywhere at once” Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert originally appeared in TheWrap awards magazine’s Race Begins issue.
In one of the dozens of crazy metaverses that populate “All at Once Everywhere,” Michelle Yeoh is a teppanyaki chef who discovers that the secret to her colleague’s culinary brilliance is a gastronomically gifted raccoon hiding under her hat. of chef. As she tries to explain this strange discovery to her family in a different universe, Yeoh’s character Evelyn calls the animal “Racacoonie,” which is, of course, a reference to Pixar’s “Ratatouille.”
The homage is one of many in the crazy maximalist film written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Released last spring, it became the biggest independent trailer of the pandemic era, grossing $100 million worldwide. Audiences and critics enthusiastically embraced the story of an ordinary woman (Yeoh) who must save her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and the whole world by jumping from verse to verse. The film’s success came as a surprise to the Daniels (as they are known), who thought “Everything Everywhere” would be closer to the $4 million gross of “Swiss Army Man,” their previous film starring Daniel Radcliffe as a corpse farting. They certainly weren’t expecting to meet Brad Bird, the director of “Ratatouille,” at a recent DGA dinner and learn that he’s one of the fans of his new movie.
“We started talking about the Raccoonie prank,” Kwan said. “He was very flattered, he thought it was very funny. But then, while we were chatting, another director came up to us and showed us a picture of a Halloween costume his brother had made as a Raccoonie, not knowing that we were talking about it. I looked at Brad Bird, like, this is so surreal. It’s so wild, honestly, all of this.”
Is it safe to say that you never envisioned a universe in which your movie would be a huge commercial success?
DANIEL SCHEINERT: No, no, we didn’t imagine that. It’s crazy.
DANIEL KWAN: We tend to do things ourselves. It’s very much like a niche, fun thing where we try to create movies that we wish we could see. But something happened where what we were doing suddenly got in sync with the rest of the world. And we’re very thankful that no filmmaker can plan for that.
No one but Michelle Yeoh could play Evelyn, who expresses a beautiful range of emotions and becomes a martial arts action hero. Were there times when you saw her do her magic on set, especially with stunts, and you found yourself in a this-is-really-happening state of disbelief?
SCHEINERT: Yes, almost every day.
KWAN: Oh, absolutely. It was every kung fu nerd’s dream. My father is from Hong Kong and our family’s love language is speaking in kung fu movies. When my dad saw the movie, he was like, “Oh my gosh.” You know, a very Asian father of him, but it was the first time he had said that he was proud of me. Because he saw me working with Michelle Yeoh. It was incredible.
There’s also the return of Ke Huy Quan, who plays Waymond, Evelyn’s husband. Ke was in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Goonies” when he was a child, but then he stopped acting for 20 years. Since his film plays with the idea of other beings, other lives lived, was he intending this meta-commentary on Ke’s journey as an actor, that we missed out on decades of his talent because Hollywood wasn’t interested?
KWAN: I wish we could say that we were smart enough to think about all those things while casting it. But it was one of those lovely, beautiful, synergistic things that happened, where not only was he the only person for this role, but also this meta-narrative added so much more depth to the experience of watching him blossom on screen. We had a hard time finding an older Asian American star who could not only do all the fight scenes, but was also genuinely cute, playful, and goofy. Waymond is kind of the secret heart of the movie. I remember while we were watching the sequence when he is trying to convince Michelle Yeoh to stop fighting and be nice and he is giving us a very emotional performance. In fact, he triggered a sensory memory in me when (I thought), “Wait a minute, did we just rewrite the scene from “Indiana Jones 2” where Short Round is talking to Harrison Ford because (Indiana Jones) has turned evil, at the end of “Temple of Doom”? He’s been, like, voodoo, brainwashed or something. And he goes (kind of like), “Indy! Indian! Please! Stop, he stops fighting ”. I was like, Whoa, this is weird.
SCHEINERT: As we were shooting, we started to reflect on how the whole movie was becoming this opportunity to show that all these Asian actors have so much more to offer than what Hollywood has been giving them. Michelle has a crazy resume, but she was showing new sides of herself. Ke had to come back and say, “Hey Hollywood, I was this good all along. You really messed it up. Or like James Hong and Harry Shung Jr., who is usually a heartthrob, and we have to say, “Dude, he’s got more to offer.” [Laughs]
Daniel K., in an interview of April, you said you’ve been thinking a lot about the Oscars. I don’t know if you remember this.
KWAN: [Laughs] I don’t remember, but I’m excited to hear this.
You said that many of the people who attend the Oscars just want to be loved and have a deep emotional void that they need to fill. And you said that if you ever won an Oscar, you’d say, “This doesn’t fill the void!” Now that your movie is in the Oscars conversation, have you thought about this differently?
KWAN: [Laughs] That’s so fun. I remember saying this now. I don’t remember the context. I remember it was a joke, but you know, most jokes have a lot of truth to them. I remember (when) David Byrne won an Oscar for “Last Emperor” and said, very briefly, that this is great fun, but it’s more fun to do it. And I feel like that was so elegant. Like, yeah, this is really fun. The fact that we are considered in this conversation is so beautiful and really satisfying to watch, especially for our cast and crew. We feel like proud parents that our cast and crew are being lifted up right now. And we don’t want to run away from the moment, but at the same time, we filmed something: a TV episode last month. And it was so beautiful to be on set again. We just remember, Oh yeah, that’s why we do it. And this will probably be what fills the void, just the creation. So I’ll take David Byrne’s line: This is a lot of fun, but it’s a lot more fun to do.
He’s a good person to quote. Was that TV episode “Mason” (for A24 and Showtime)?
KUAN: No, no. It is a nameless project. It was just a guest director thing that we did. We actually checked in before the movie came out and then the movie came out and we were like, oh no, our schedule is crazy. Why are we doing this TV episode?
SCHEINERT: We have to get those days of medical care.
KUAN: Exactly. “Mason” will probably be early next year. We are still developing that script.
In the summer, you signed a new production deal with Universal and are developing “Mason.” Has the huge success of “Everything Everywhere” changed the way you approach your work?
SCHEINERT: Yes, it has gone to our heads.
KWAN: It’s too late!
SCHEINERT: We’re going to wear sunglasses wherever we go. I mean, we’re relentlessly trying to preserve what we love and not change it too much, but also lean into it right now, because it’s weird. Our dream is to continue making movies like this and we are happy that it seems possible. We’re trying to enjoy this without messing up something that worked.
Read more of the Race Begins issue here.
