When Everything Everywhere All At Once premiered at South By Southwest in March 2022, the festival crowd went absolutely nuts for it. For good reason too. Not only will this likely be one of the best movies of the year, but this chaotic sci-fi action comedy might even be one of the most important Asian American movies of all time. Following a woman that utilizes the powers of the multiverse to save it, this movie has so many unexpected, thoughtful, and hilarious layers that everyone should just experience for themselves. And absolutely on the big screen if possible.
Select cities entered Everything Everywhere‘s multiverse of shortly after the world premiere, but now the acclaimed production from the filmmaking duo collectively known as DANIELS is finally receiving a wide release for cinema fans to enjoy nationwide. Ahead of this expansion, we spoke to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert about their incredibly mind-blowing follow-up to their 2016 debut feature Swiss Army Man.
In our interview, we discussed the seeds that sprouted such a bonkers story, the ongoing conversation in media right now about generational trauma, and working with legendary stars such as Michelle Yeoh, James Hong, and Ke Huy Quan. Plus, after mentioning their almost involvement with the Disney+ original series Loki, we might have found the perfect Marvel Cinematic Universe project for them. And we get to the bottom of why the inclusion of a familiar song lyric from the 2000s earworm “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” turned into a top-notch running gag.
Like the movie itself, we’re going all over the place for our latest exclusive interview, so strap in for a wild ride.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is an appropriate title since that’s what you get in the movie. Like the main character Evelyn Wang, I found myself seeing the cracks in my clay pot afterward because I was just like… So… [insert mind blown emoji here] Where did it all begin for this story? Where did the whole creative process start? Was it all an elaborate ploy to get “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” by Nine Days back into the zeitgeist?
Daniel Kwan: I’ll start at the very beginning. We really wanted to make something fun and big for the theatrical experience like all the blockbusters and action movies that were coming out. But [we also wanted to] make sure that we still held on to something really intimate and sincere that you can only really get from an indie film. So we were trying to bridge that gap. Everyone’s talking about the debate between Marvel movies and Scorsese. But we really wanted to find a way to please everyone [in a way that says,] “We can all get along. The movies are this beautiful thing. Why are we dividing those two things?”
So I watched The Matrix once at a double feature. It was The Matrix and Fight Club. I got out of that screening and I was like, “Man, I miss these movies. I really want to make something like this.” So we came up with a multiverse idea about verse jumping, where you connect to other versions of yourself and for a moment you have all their skills, emotions, and memories. That was the seed, but then that wasn’t enough for us to actually make a movie. And that’s when [co-writer and co-director Daniel Scheinert] came in and was like, “I hate multiverse movies.”
Daniel Scheinert: Not that I’d seen many of them. I just dislike when a sci-fi movie tries to brush over the emotional implications of its premise. Like if there were an infinite number of universes, that would make me very upset and scared. In fact, it does make me upset when I read physics articles about the fact that there probably is a multiverse. That’s existential.
So we were chatting about that and as a joke, I think we were like, “What if this movie goes there? What if it goes to infinity? You can’t do that. That would cause and effect all causality. Reality all breaks down. How would you get back from that place?”
And that kind of became one of the biggest goals of the whole movie. To get you there and then to pull you back and give you a hug. And, in a way, to pull ourselves back from how 2016 was making us feel [because that’s] when we started writing it.
DK: Yeah, that’s where it came from.
You mentioned Marvel. In previous interviews, you revealed that you guys were in talks to helm the Disney+ series Loki. Obviously, your movie and that show are very different, but they both tackle the multiverse. Were you concerned at all when you found out that Marvel Studios was doing the same thing as your smaller movie?
DK: Only sort of. That was the biggest reason why we ended up turning it down. It conflicted with our schedule [since] we were trying to get this movie off the ground [but there was] too much overlap creatively. We also knew that Marvel would have to play it safe in a way that we don’t have to because our budgets are like a 10th of their movies usually. So in some ways, we had this weird little bit of confidence knowing that we were more nimble creatively and we could really just screw around and push limits.
I think that’s what audiences are responding to. A lot of people are saying this is unlike anything they’ve ever seen before and that’s like really flattering. But also I think it’s just a product of the fact that we have so much freedom. When you keep a budget low enough, you can do a lot more.
Do you think there is a universe out there where you do a Marvel project in the future?
DS: Yeah, we’ve been trying to figure it out. We would want to just make it the most unapologetic political propaganda and try to save the world and convince everybody to take climate change seriously. But we haven’t figured out what that is yet.
DK: Because if you think about it, Marvel has the biggest built-in audience in human history. If you think about just the sheer numbers that can hit and if we were Machiavellian and tried to and wanted to like shift the conversation, that’s really where our brains would go. How do we save the world? And also we ask for a final cut.
DS: We don’t think those things are going to happen. But yeah, I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe is very, very impressive. But we’re not ready to try.
I can only imagine DANIELS doing like an Alpha Flight mini-series about saving the environment and climate change. That would be wild.
DK: All right, let’s try it.
DS: Is Alpha Flight from the comics?
Yeah, they’re a Canadian super team. One of their members is a Sasquatch.
DS: All right!
DK: Well, okay, maybe. Maybe you may have convinced us to do a Marvel movie. Alpha Flight. Okay, we’re learning.
Oh, I would absolutely watch the hell out of that.
DK: My dad would be so embarrassed. My dad was a massive Marvel comic book guy growing up and I knew nothing about it.
Filming had to be a blast because you guys covered so many different genres in this film, each with its own tropes and whatnot. Is that how the shoot ended up being?
DK: More or less. Every department had so much fun because they got to put on basically a different creative hat every single day from the costumes to the lighting to the camera team. We even did a thing where every Friday we would have a dress-up day. So if you wanted to, you could dress up based on like what universe we were in. It was a fun costume party every Friday during the shoot. My favorite was when we were in the laundromat. We had a laundry day theme.
DS: Everybody just looked terrible. So sloppy looking.
DK: Yeah, everyone’s wearing sweatpants and mismatched socks. No one looked like they were responsible human beings on a film shoot. It was very fun.
Were there any elements of the multiverse that proved to be too difficult for you? As in, was there anything that you wanted to do, but it presented certain challenges?
DS: Not too difficult, I suppose.
DK: I mean, this whole thing was difficult. I would say the whole thing was difficult. It’s a miracle that it exists.
DS: It was always about what the emotional effect of the other universes would have on Evelyn because we had too many ideas and so we were constantly throwing them out. But usually, we threw it out for narrative reasons, not logistical ones. I think we’re pretty good at taking ideas that sound impossible and coming up with some execution technique that won’t be impossible if we love it enough.
DK: I will say we did want to break the movie even more than we did originally. At one point, I thought that the first half would be The Matrix and the second half would just be fully Magnolia. She’d be disassociating and then we just watch these five or six different versions of herself fully exist in these different universes and that didn’t work. It was not a good movie.
DS: We had a bunch of gags where we wanted to go into statistical possibilities. Like in one shot, we’d show 30 different Michelles attempting 30 different ways out of a room. Then you watch 29 of them die and only one of them escapes. My math brain was very excited about that. But then logistically, it sounded miserable to shoot, you know? I don’t actually want to shoot the same shot 30 times. It’s not worth it.
How about like the triggers to initiate the jumping pads? Were there any that someone on your team was like, “Maybe that’s too far.”
DS: We censored ourselves more than anyone else.
DK: I feel like the trophy fight was right on the edge. We were laughing so hard, but I was like, “We can’t do that. That’s like too much. It’s so mean to the audience members who have been nice enough to come watch this movie.” But we just kept laughing and then we couldn’t stop thinking about it, so it ended up in the movie. That was the cusp. If anything, our DP Larkin Seiple has a dark mind and he would suggest things to us where we would be like, “Oh no. No.”
DS: “No… We’re not going to do that, Larkin… That’s not….”
Okay, so I don’t know why I’m obsessed with this “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” bit, but I popped so hard when Waymond said that line. At least three other people that were around my age nearby also laughed. But then the older people were just like—
DK: Right! They had no idea. “Why are those people laughing?”
Yeah, exactly! How many of those little references did you throw in the script? Kind of as just like, “Hey, I think this is going to be funny. I hope other people do too.”
DK: That one, actually, is very funny. That one was a weird moment where the muses of our universe kind of just flowed through my fingers because I didn’t intend to put that in at all.
I remember one note was, “I don’t understand what the Alphaverse wants. What’s their mission?” I was literally like, “Okay, this is the Alphaverse mission. They’re talking about this.” I just wrote like this monologue where he says, “Your clothes never wear as well the next day and your hair never falls in quite the same way.” When I wrote that I was like, “Oh, that sounds nice. But where is that from? Because I’m pretty sure I didn’t write that.” I Googled it and “Oh my God! It’s ‘Story of a Girl!’”
The fact that it was just this thing buried deep in my subconscious that I wasn’t even aware of was kind of terrifying. So I was like, “That’s good. Let’s keep it for now because I can’t think of anything better, but we’ll rewrite it before we shoot.” Then right before we shot, I finally admitted to [Scheinert that] no one’s pointed it out yet because I wanted to see if anyone would notice. We spent an afternoon trying to rewrite it and we couldn’t think of anything better.
DS: It’s just so good. We ended up leaning into the joke and reaching out to John Hampson, who wrote it, and we licensed the song. Then we snuck it in the movie in three different places. He recorded special versions of the song with new lyrics, [so there’s] a bunch of “Story of a Girl” Easter eggs in there.
This is even better than I imagined. I caught the song playing in the background the one time. Then I caught the line and was even more pleased, but three different times?
DK: Yeah, there’s one when the dom comes out. It’s like, “This is a story of a dom who ties me up and it feels so wrong.” And then there’s one with the chef. “This is the story of a chef…” I forget, but it’s just so stupid. One of these days, we’ll release them out in the world.
That’s phenomenal. But speaking of phenomenal, I have to bring up your cast. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, you guys worked with some legends in Asian and Asian American cinema. What was that like to work with Michelle Yeoh, James Hong, and Ke Huy Quan?
DK: I mean, we feel the same way that everyone does. When people first saw the trailer, everyone was like, “Oh my gosh this cast!” I’m so excited for them to be in a movie like this, especially with Michelle Yeoh finally being the top-billed actress.
But at the same time, when we met them, they were so down to earth, each of them, and so willing to jump into this project with us. A lot of people ask if we were nervous and it was actually very easy to transition onto set because of how comfortable we all were and how connected we all were from the beginning.
On the one hand, it’s wild that we got to work with these people. But on the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone else playing these roles because, first, the talent required for these roles to play multiple versions of themselves. But then also just the spirit of these people. All three of them have been working in the industry for a long time in different ways. And they are finally able to show another side of themselves that they might not have normally gotten to show.
Like especially you think about James Hong. He’s been working for a century now, literally, and he has like 500 different IMDB credits. This is one of the first times I’ve seen him portray [someone] very goofy and playful, [yet] sometimes very dramatic. His final sequence with Michelle is very beautiful.
DS: Yeah, we cast them because we love them and we were like, “How lucky would it would be if these people were in our movie?” But it ended up being this sort of meta-narrative about the film itself [where] these people with untapped potential [have] so much complexity to them. You meet them and it turns out they’re like these complex, wild, interesting, lovable people. It’s so exciting that the movie became that, too.
Sure, you love Michelle, but she’s capable of so much more than Hollywood has allowed her to do. And Ke Quan was incredible as a kid. Why the hell wasn’t he in tons of movies for the past 30 years? And James is in everything, but they’re not like letting him show what he’s capable of. That’s what it was like behind the scenes. It’s just been so fun to watch and to shout from the rooftops.
Finally, generational trauma seems to be a prominent topic for POC filmmakers in recent years. We’ve gotten Encanto. Earlier this year, Turning Red addressed similar themes. And now it’s a big part of Everything Everywhere All At Once. How do you hope your film contributes to this ongoing conversation that’s so important?
DK: Yeah, I think one thing that many people are coming up to us and remarking on is the fact that this is the first one where the point of view is actually from the mother, not the child. It’s the perpetrator of that trauma or the one who has the potential to pass it on who has to deal with it [as the protagonist].
I think that’s really powerful because I’m a millennial who was the one who was receiving that at one point. Now, I have a kid and I’m really starting to realize how hard it is to be the parent who has to stop [the trauma]. I feel like one of the hardest things anyone can do as a parent is to be aware enough to undo the DNA that was woven into you as a child so that you don’t pass it on to your kid and the next generation.
I’m hoping when people watch this, they [see that] generational trauma isn’t spoken about just from the perspective of the victim. Instead, it can be from the perspective of the perpetrator so that everyone can grow a little self-awareness and say, “Oh, this is my trauma, it’s my turn to be responsible. It’s my turn to realize that if I don’t fix this within myself, then it’s going to have ramifications beyond just me. If not [fixed], it’s going to be passed on to the next generation and the next generation after that.”
I’m really excited for this conversation to be happening right now with all these other movies, and I feel very honored that it’s all happening with our movie as well. It’s very exciting.
Based on what you just said regarding this whole conversation about generational trauma, despite several different genres and thematic labels being thrown around to describe the movie, would you say that above all else Everything Everywhere All At Once is about love?
DK: Yes, but [beyond that] it’s really about finding kindness in the chaos.
Following a limited release in select cities earlier this year, Everything Everywhere All At Once starring Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis opens in theaters nationwide on April 8, 2022.
