'Everything Everywhere All At Once' Directors Interview: The Daniels talk about Reigning in Absurdity and Their Future
After throwing every idea they ever had into the multiversal adventure, directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert look at how their past shaped their filmmaking future, and what possibly awaits them in that future.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is the second feature film from Music Video alums Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Their first film, Swiss Army Man, mostly delighted audiences and critics with its charming absurdity coating a personal and heartfelt story. The Daniels have apparently hit the sweet spot with Everything Everywhere All At Once as the film is already receiving Oscar Worthy praise, specifically for the performance of the films lead, the legendary Michelle Yeoh. “With our music videos and stuff like that we’re used to getting nominated for things but we rarely win. I think people can appreciate our zeal for over ambitious projects but most people don’t want to reward us for it and so… yeah, I never expected any of this,” said Kwan on the Oscar Buzz. “All that being said, if Michelle Yeoh can win something off of this movie, I would be so proud to be a part of that legacy and be the two directors to finally push her into that place that she deserved to be for so long.”
To say that Michelle Yeoh was perfect for this role is an understatement, The Daniels have mentioned numerous times that they wrote the part around her specifically. This begged the question as to if they had any upcoming projects written around certain actors. “There is a movie that we are working on that may or may not star Rowan Atkinson, been a big fan forever so we will see if that happens,” explained Kwan. “I was thinking the other day about with this one writing it for Michelle it just ended up working. She was perfect for it in ways that we couldn’t even imagine, and it happened. And other times you write with someone in mind and it ends up not being the right person.” added Scheinert.
The film is being praised for their wild, unique and creative approach to the multiverse. A few of the multi-verses balance the line of genius and insanity, Daniel Scheinert spoke on what keeps them from from crossing that line.“ There is like a Kurt Vonnegut quote where he’s like: out on the edge there’s so much more you can see you just got to be careful not to go over. But I think it’s somewhat organic to our process and to our taste that we’re somewhat cynical guys but we’re deeply romantic deep down, like, we want to feel feelings and it takes smushing things together and saying a sincere thing but in absurd circumstances to get past our defenses. And We’re kind of just writing in a way that gets past our own defense.” Scheinert explained.
“Multiple people have said ‘This movie made me cry and I thought I was dead inside’ and I think that is like the sweetest compliment and I think there is something about absurdity that sneaks past people’s defenses.”
“There’s two of us so there is a tension there, creative tension, so that we make sure we don’t go off the edge. If someone is in love with an idea and it’s going too far the other person will pull it back,” added Kwan. “And the last thing is we always want to make our moms proud. So as wild as our movies are we always go ‘okay the litmus is would we be able to show this to our parents’ so…” So as to what didn’t make it to the final cut of Everything Everywhere All At Once, Daniel Kwan out lined the universe of Spaghetti Baby Noodle Boy. “Michelle Yeoh becomes a long spaghetti in a pot with other spaghettis and there is a little macaroni boy who is an orphan elbow macaroni who is named Spaghetti Baby Noodle Boy and he is having a crisis of identity because no one has a hole like he does and he is wondering why god would make him with a hole when everyone else is normal.” Kwan explained. “That got cut and it was going to be voiced by Jenny Slate and it was very stupid.”
One highlight from the film is the fight sequences which has garnered praise for their creativity and intricacy. Pulling off such sequences on a moderate budget harkens back to their days as Directors for Music Videos. Daniel Scheinert explains the similarities in constructing those scenes to Music Videos and what they learned from that period in their careers. “I do think that Physical comedy and Physicality is a common language that we share and it’s why music videos became such a good launching pad for us. Its because sometimes we communicate more with sound effects and dance moves more than big vocabulary words. And so we’ve kind of learned a visual language and a physical language over the years whether it is a fight scene or a dance number or just an action set piece where no one’s fighting.” He explained. “And we’ve collected… every tool that we’ve learned, every little trick we used again in this movie. It was such a great bed of resources because we were trying to pull off an action movie for like the tenth of the budget of blockbusters so we wanted to embrace that and keep it scrappy because sometimes scrappy movies are my favorite anyway. I think that is one lesson we learned over the years. Whether it was dance or fighting over the years it was like ‘huh, sometimes more people with guns makes for a boring movie’ sometimes keeping it small is more interesting. One dancer can be more riveting than thirty if it’s earned.” He went on to praise the work of their stunt team. “ Oh my god. Our coordinator Tim Eulich and the Le brothers Andy Le and Brian Le just elevated it and we are so grateful. They made us look very good.”
‘Everything Everywhere All At Once is now in theaters. Check out the full interview below:
