Our 2022 Annual Report continues with the announcement of Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) as our Filmmakers of the Year. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2022. You can find it all in one place here.
About two-thirds into Everything Everywhere All at Once, there’s a dizzying sequence that takes the viewer flashing rapidly through vignettes of parallel universes. Finally, there’s a moment of stillness on a cliffside, where two rocks have a conversation (via subtitles, for the audience’s sake). The moment from the film has since heavily circulated social media, and the memorable frame clearly resonated with audiences.
“It says a lot about us as a culture that we are such broken people traumatized by the past 10 years that a shot of two rocks could resonate so much, because what it represents is a moment of quiet,” says Daniel Kwan, 50% of the writer-director duo behind the film. “The fact that it resonates is a little sad, but also really beautiful.”
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the second feature film by Consequence’s 2022 Filmmakers of the Year Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — known collectively as Daniels — following 2016’s similarly quirky and idiosyncratic Swiss Army Man. For the pair, who got their start in the music video world, visuals are incredibly important to their form of storytelling — they’ll often start from a visual concept and work their way backwards. Scheinert describes their films as “puzzle projects,” and finding the right combination of story beats and visuals is paramount. “This one started with chasing the too-muchness of being alive right now,” he explains.
Recalls Kwan, “The first image that got me really excited about this whole thing was the image of a character screaming as they flash — every frame a different image, a different universe.” It’s a shot that was, in fact, brought to life in the final version of Everything Everywhere All at Once, prompting the visual effects team to cheer the first time they saw it completed. “I remember the first time we watched it on the big screen, we were all just like, ‘Oh, it worked,'” says Scheinert.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
For those who haven’t yet experienced the movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once is exactly what the title implies — it’s a lot. But somehow, this sci-fi story about the decisions we could have made and the people we could have become in other timelines, complete with hot dog hands and “talking” rocks, feels deeply human. The film features a stunning lead performance by Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang and phenomenal supporting work from Stephanie Hsu (her daughter, Joy) and Ke Huy Quan (Weymond, the kindhearted husband). There are easter eggs for film buffs, pop culture references, mind-boggling visuals, and a thrilling plot.
By the time the credits roll, though, the true takeaway is the story of a family — the tentative steps towards healing a mother and daughter’s fractured relationship; a marriage that has been drifting for decades resetting its course; and a family that, in every universe, will try to choose each other. “Everybody that worked on it believed in it,” according to Scheinert. The passion for the details, from character quirks to the unforgettable costume work by Shirley Kurata, speaks to the truth of Scheinert’s statement.
To many people, it might sound like Daniels work backwards. From a striking visual idea, a story will take shape — then, once they have actors interested, they’ll retool the vision for the film. “We found Michelle, we found Stephanie Hsu and we were like, ‘Okay, now that we know that we have these incredible people who are going to embody these characters, let’s rewrite again with them in mind,'” Kwan says. “The character stuff is some of the last stuff that gets ironed out, believe it or not.”
“We did a table read of the screenplay a couple of days before the photography started,” Scheinert adds. “We finally had Michelle in town… We had the whole family there. And as they read the script, and they actually did it in Chinese, the whole family came to life.”
“That was probably the best moment — that was the moment where everything clicked,” confirms Kwan. “Every one of our actors gave us something special in a very specific scene in different ways.” The pair go on to describe a film set that often had people laughing until they cried, along with days where everyone was just crying because they were crying.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24)
The team required to pull off a film of this scale has to be very carefully curated, and Daniels prefer to view themselves as the summer counselors of a set; they set the tone, but they want to ensure that everyone feels welcome to experiment and create.
Early on, while participating in a lab at the Sundance Institute, they received similar advice from actor and director Joan Darling that became fundamental to their directorial style. “She said very early on that as a director, your job is to be a party host,” explains Kwan. “You’re there to set the vibe and make sure everyone is comfortable, because if you bring everyone into a party and everyone is comfortable, you are going to create the best party possible.”
Everything Everywhere All at Once was certainly the party we all needed in 2022 — how lovely that Daniels invited us all to join them, too.
Watch our full interview with Daniels above — which includes their go-to bagel orders at Belle’s Bagels in Highland Park — or stream it on YouTube.