William Barrios 
Everything Everywhere All At Once is one of the most unique movies that’s come out in years. It’s hilarious, action-packed, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. It takes a lot of work to achieve such a feat, so let’s take a peek behind the scenes to see how they pulled it off.
1. The hot dog hands were real prosthetic gloves, not CGI.
A24 / youtube.comTechnically 18 years, since Everything Everywhere All At Once was mostly filmed in 2020.
Ke Huy Quan even has a small reference to his iconic Indiana Jones character, Short Round. The scene in which he tells Evelyn to “snap out of it!” is performed just like in Temple of Doom, and even staged similarly.
4. “Your clothes never wear as well the next day, your hair never falls in quite the same way,” is both a line Alpha Waymond says to Evelyn and a line from the Nine Days song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl).”
A24 / youtube.comThe whole song is a guy talking about how he loves a girl despite her sadness, which is pretty much how Waymond feels about Evelyn. The song can also be heard briefly in the office sex dungeon.
5. Five people who did not go to school for visual effects did all the CGI for the film in their bedrooms during the pandemic.
WIRED / youtube.comI said I would learn guitar and didn’t even do that, but this small, self-taught team created blockbuster-quality VFX to blend with the practical effects.
Check out some of their tricks in the video below:
A24 / youtube.comThe filmmakers are the first to admit that this was an insensitive idea, but during the brainstorming process, director Dan Kwan discovered that he actually had undiagnosed ADHD!
Daniels started out in music videos, most notably DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down For What.”
Columbia / youtube.comIn case you forgot, she’s the woman who gets mustard and ketchup squirted on her face in the Hot Dogs For Fingers universe. Very haunting.
Mani is also in a dance group (Cocoon Central Dance Team) with Tallie Medel, who plays Joy’s girlfriend, Becky. Daniels produced a short film called “Snowy Bing Bongs Across the North Star Combat Zone” for the group.
8. Co-director Dan Kwan shot some of the city scenes that flash by as Evelyn is pulled through different universes himself, walking around New York with a pocket cam.
WIRED / youtube.com9. Director Michele Gondry’s blend of surreal special effects and heartfelt storytelling was a big inspiration.
A24 / youtube.comThe main philosophy that the filmmakers share with Gondry is that effects should serve the story, not the other way around. Gondry started in music videos just like Daniels, and some of his notable works include:
Music Videos
White Stripes — “Fell In Love With A Girl” (2002)
Bjork — “Army Of Me” (1995)
Chemical Brothers — “Star Guitar” (2001)
Lucas — “Lucas With The Lid Off” (1994)
Daft Punk — “Around The World” (1997)
Movies
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
The Science of Sleep (2006)
Is The Man Who is Tall Happy? (2013)
The We and the I (2012)
10. International titles for the film include: 瞬息全宇宙 (In an Instant, the Entire Universe) in China, 奇異女俠玩救宇宙 (Weird Woman Warrior Fucks Around and Saves the Universe) in Hong Kong, and 媽的多重宇宙 (So Fucking Many Universes) in Taiwan.
A Really Happy Film Company / youtube.comHowever, the Taiwanese “媽的” can also mean “mother’s,” so another possible translation is Your Mother’s Many Universes.
The Taiwanese translations get even better with the tagline: 比媽佛更媽佛, which translates to “Even More Marvel than Marvel.” Though, as Twitter user Jeremy Tiang points out, this uses slang for the word “Marvel,” making it literally translate to “Mom-Buddha.”
Other possible interpretations are “Mother’s Multiverse” and “Fucking Multiverse.”
11. In this shot, Ke Huy Quan is in LA, Michelle Yeoh is in Paris, and Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t present at all.
Vanity Fair / youtube.comThe arm outside the window does belong to Deirdre, the IRS agent, but that’s not Jamie Lee Curtis’s arm. It’s co-director Daniel Scheinert wearing her outfit so that they didn’t have to get Curtis on set for just a couple seconds of footage.
Movies are just lies.
12. Many of Deirdre’s wardrobe details were chosen by Jamie Lee Curtis herself.
A24 / youtube.comThis includes the wrist brace, the watch over the brace, and her beaded eyeglass keepers.
13. Ke’s body language coach read the script and told him there were three Waymonds. Regular Waymond (Evelyn’s husband) is a squirrel, Alpha Waymond is an eagle, and CEO Waymond (in the kung fu/movie star universe) is a fox.
A24 / youtube.comThis helped Ke Huy Quan better distinguish the three versions of his character and show it to us through his body language. Regular Waymond is quick to panic like a squirrel, Alpha Waymond is powerful like an eagle, and CEO Waymond is quiet yet unflappable like a fox.
14. In the kung fu/movie star universe (where Evelyn is basically Michelle Yeoh), they used real red-carpet footage from Yeoh’s career. You can even briefly see her in front of a sign for Crazy Rich Asians.
A24 / youtube.com15. To prepare for her dual-performance as both Joy and Jobu Tupaki, Stephanie Hsu drew a map to chart both of their arcs throughout the movie.
A24 / youtube.comShe wanted elements of Jobu to be present in Joy’s performance, and vice versa. Hsu created the map to “figure out when Joy and Jobu would start bleeding together to land back at Joy.”
16. In the universe where Evelyn and Jobu are rocks, there was originally supposed to be audible dialogue. It was Michelle Yeoh who suggested the scene be totally silent.
A24 / youtube.com17. The pandemic halted shooting with just one day left.
A24 / youtube.com18. The film wrapped way back in March of 2020, and they got two weeks of post-prediction in before everyone had to go remote due to the pandemic.
A24 / youtube.com19. The first cut of the movie was almost three hours.
Adobe Video & Motion / youtube.comTwo hours and 50 minutes to be exact. This isn’t uncommon for the first cut of a movie, but Everything Everywhere editor, Paul Rogers, offered some insight into how he whittled down the runtime:
“In general, I think there are a lot of moments where you’re thinking, ‘God, this moment is so good, but it doesn’t service the film.’ Maybe it slows it down, maybe it hints at another narrative between two characters but you just don’t deliver on it later, or you can’t because you don’t have the footage or that just complicates the film in an unnecessary way.
We had this one scene with Jamie Lee Curtis and in this scene she was incredible. She was so compelling and mesmerizing to watch, but I kept struggling with this scene and it took us like five or six months to eventually say ‘Gosh, what if Jamie Lee wasn’t in the scene. Can we just try it?’
It’s this really intense scene and all of a sudden it becomes this weird existential crisis/comedy tragedy scene with her character and it’s a little ping pong back and forth between these two places. So we just took it into After Effects and did a rough job cutting her out because she’s in all the shots and we realized it’s feasible, so let’s give it a shot, and then all of a sudden it unlocked the scene.”
20. The actors would go to each director for different questions. For example, Daniel Schienert (right in the picture below) used to act, so he’s the go-to for many character questions. Dan Kwan (left), on the other hand, is great with physical comedy.
A24 / youtube.comOf course, both co-directors have similar skillsets and worked with the cast and crew in every aspect of the film. As Stephanie Hsu (Joy) puts it:
“Dan Kwan is much more of a maximalist. They’re both [wild] but for this movie, in particular, Dan [would] be like, ‘I don’t know, try anything, do this and then pick your nose.’ If I had a scene work question, maybe I’m going to go ask Scheinert. He used to act in college. And so he loves getting into the nitty-gritty of scene work. Sometimes when I was looking for a more intimate answer, I would find myself going to Scheinert. But sometimes I would also shake it up. And that was the beauty of collaborating with them.”
21. Both Daniels (the directors) make appearances in the movie.
A24 / youtube.comDan Kwan is one of the people who jumps Evelyn in an alleyway in the kung fu/movie star universe. He also plays an engineer in the IRS building (the first face sucked into the bagel).
Daniel Scheinert is the manager who gets led out of the office sex dungeon by a dominatrix. He is also the ape with hot dog fingers who kills the bony-fingered species in the 2001: A Space Odyssey homage.
22. The security guard and the guy who fights Evelyn alongside him (better known as the two dudes with butt plugs) are Brian and Andy Le, brothers who run the MartialClub YouTube channel.
A24 / youtube.comYou can check out a behind-the-scenes look at some of the fight choreography in the movie on their channel here.
23. The rainy alleyway where Evelyn and Waymond talk in the movie star universe was inspired by In the Mood for Love.
Not just in the aesthetics and cinematography, but in the writing as well. In the Mood for Love is all about lost love and whether or not to act on your feelings.
24. Awkwafina was originally considered for the role of Joy.
Daniels even directed an episode of Nora from Queens — which stars Awkwafina — in which Stephanie Hsu was a guest star.
25. The film’s inspirations include The Matrix, Kill Bill, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Michelle Yeoh’s entire filmography.
Miramax / youtube.comGroundhog’s Day was another big inspiration. Daniels calls that and It’s a Wonderful Life movies that are “existential but comedic.” Anime like Paprika and Masaaki Yasa’s Mind Game also influenced the filmmakers.
Of course, Hong Kong action movies played their part as well, and you can’t talk about Hong Kong action without talking about Michelle Yeoh. Jackie Chan’s work was also an inspiration, and he was actually considered as the main character in the early stages of development.
Daniels also compares the movie to a piece of art that “implodes in on itself,” and has cited Kanye West’s album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and The Beatles’ song, “A Day in the Life,” as music that implodes.
26. ?[SPOILER]? — The bagel and the googly eye are exact opposites, with the bagel being black with white in the center, and the googly eye being white with black at its center. Each symbolizes a side of the core conflict in the movie.
The bagel represents Joy’s belief that life is meaningless so things like love and attachment are also pointless. The googly eye represents Waymond’s ability to find the bright side of any situation and try to focus on the good in life. Both philosophies rely on the idea that life is fleeting, but they have opposite conclusions. Since Evelyn is caught in the middle, she is initially drawn to the bagel. But after Waymond opens up to her, she realizes what’s worth appreciating in her life. Daniels expresses this by having her embrace the silliness that Waymond has been spreading throughout their laundromat — the googly eyes.
Also, the best Joy outfit is the Elvis look with the leashed pig. Prove me wrong in the comments!
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