also can we talk about the fact that it was waymond, who’s been this diminutive and more or less ignored character for most of the movie, it’s he who delivers the line “i know you’re scared, but please be kind.”
DAN KWAN: We love genre mashups and we love sci-fi movies. We love, you know, things like The Matrix, we grew up on kung fu films, and this film kind of became a way for us to do all of that at the same time. I’m very proud of what we did. Somehow, it all works. Somehow, it mashes together and it’s a beautiful stew. It’s a cosmic gumbo.
using a multiverse as a narrative framework to tell an immigrant story really is THE best possible implementation of this concept. like the idea that every time you make a decision in your life a different branching universe splits off where you chose differently, while obviously broadly universal because of course everyone wonders what if (what if i had chosen differently, what would my life look like then), really does hit such a specific core question that is imo fundamental to the immigrant experience
all the time my parents talk about imagining what lives they might have lived if they had chosen differently, if they had never left home, if they had never come here, if they had not raised their daughter in a world and a culture so utterly foreign to their own where she might make her own choices that are painfully incomprehensible to them. it’s all tied up with a sense of grief and loss and regret and almost existential melancholy, not necessarily because they think they chose wrong specifically, not because they think they’d actually choose differently if they had a chance to do it over again, but merely because that choice is such a monumental one and the enormity of it and the ripples it would end up causing are only obvious in retrospect. you make the choice to uproot your life and move to a different world, a different universe, and once you cross that bridge you can never go back. you can never truly go home again. and when we do go back to visit, we see in their old friends and classmates and relatives funhouse versions of ourselves, people we might have been but never were and never will be.
every immigrant story is a ghost story and the ghosts that haunt you are all the people you left behind including yourself—versions of yourself, of your family, of your children, of the people that are you but that you are not, lives that you recognize but are not yours. immigrant stories are ghost stories are multiverse stories and in multiverse stories all of your ghosts inhabit your body simultaneously, everyone who came before you and after you and everyone you left behind, everything that is and everything that never was… it really is everything everywhere all at once i am going to scream
There is just too much. Too much to think about, too much to hold on to, too much to fight against. Too many people to talk to, too many restaurants to eat at, and definitely, definitely too many movies to watch.
At the end of 2016, when we started to write Everything Everywhere All at Once, we were already feeling the too-much-ness of it all. We asked ourselves, why add to the noise? In a world where everything and everyone is clawing for our attention, where billion dollar corporations see every single minute of our lives as potential real estate to be bought up and sold off for profit, asking anyone for two hours of their time to watch one of our films felt like asking for, well… too much. We realized if we were going to make a film and ask an audience to give us that precious time, the only responsible thing to do in return was to blow their minds and change their lives forever. Or, at the very least, we were going to attempt that.
Movies can change lives. Though the cynical parts of our hardened hearts often come close to forgetting this fact, it is why we became filmmakers in the first place: films changed our lives. We carried those films with us into the writing process as we weathered years of increasing polarization and a global pandemic, all the while, our newsfeeds filled evermore with contradictions and chaos. We felt the too-much grow into too too-much. Everything was stretching, all the seams were being exposed, and most troubling to us, our movies, our stories — our cultural glue — felt too slow to keep up. Film production moves at the speed of years, the world was moving at the speed of milliseconds.
Writing Everything Everywhere All At Once was a foolish prayer to a cold, indifferent universe. It was a dream about reconciling all of the contradictions, making sense of the largest questions, and imbuing meaning onto the dumbest, most profane parts of humanity. We wanted to stretch ourselves in every direction to bridge the generational gap that often crumbles into generational trauma. It was an attempt to create the narrative equivalent of the Theory of Everything. A Big Data approach to myth-making. A post-genre deconstruction of traditional narrative. A maximalist’s manifesto for surviving in the noise of modern life. And holy shit, these two clowns named Daniel were not up for the challenge.
We struggled for many years to crack the code for this script. We went to weddings and we went to funerals. Had kids, became uncles. Planted trees; the tress grew fruit. And every year, the too-much grew. We were the proverbial room of infinite monkeys, diligently smacking away at our typewriters, hoping to stumble upon a script that could hold all of this, and not break. Eventually, we got close. Close enough. We knew if anyone was going to be able to help us over the finish line, it would be our friends. It was time to bring in our crew.
If our script was a prayer, then our movie was a miracle, and the hands doing God’s work belonged to the film crew/family we had slowly collected over the course of our decade long careers as directors. Though our script would have made most industry veterans laugh in our faces, we had faith that our film family was ready to handle the task of creating a film that tried to touch infinity but with the budget of a rom com. With only 40 days of principal photography we were trying to make 7 or 8 movies all at the same time, we averaged over 30 lighting set ups a day, we used every single possible camera lens, played in every genre. We made an entire action movie in the same amount of time some Hollywood blockbusters shoot a single set piece but in an environment that promoted safety and respect above all. From the dizzying number of costumes and looks, to the clear and confident flow of the editing and sound design, every frame of this film is filled with their love, passion, and trust. We knew with our crew we could get even closer to making a movie about everything, but we would have to find the right cast to ground the blistering chaos.
Oh, lord, this cast. Between giving the unmistakable Ke Huy Quan his first American role in decades, showcasing the fact that the legendary James Hong still has more to offer even after nearly a century of being in the industry, allowing space for the iconic Jamie Lee Curtis to fully let her beautiful freak flag fly, and introducing cinemagoers to the undeniable talent of Stephanie Hsu, there is no doubt that bringing this cast together will be one of the things we are most proud of in our careers. Despite all of that, we cannot imagine many things in our lives ever topping the fact that Michelle Yeoh said yes to this movie. Not only did Michelle say yes and dive right into the deep end with us, she practically triple back flip cannonballed in. This movie does not exist without her incredible talent and her unwavering trust in our team. This movie is a miracle because she is a miracle. To be a part of any one of this cast’s legacy is a privilege enough. But to have even a small hand in revealing to the world all of the untapped potential of these Asian actors who have been waiting their whole careers for roles that demanded this much range and this much heart, is truly soul-bending.
So now after many years of miracles piling onto miracles, the movie is coming out in theaters everywhere. Working on this film has been one of the most beautiful and fulfilling experiences of our lives. We hope many of our see yourselves in the characters. We hope you laugh, cry, and throw your hands up and enjoy the ride in a theater full of strangers. We hope it gives you the beginnings of a vocabulary for better understanding the too-much and how to exist in it. But most of all, we hope after you watch it, even if you agree we didn’t quite reach our goal of including everything, that at least you feel included in this giant, messy, group hug of a film.
From these two Daniels, the cast, and our entire crew, thank you for giving us two hours of your attention. We tried our best not to waste it.
“You tell me that it’s a cruel world… and we’re all just running around in circles. I know that. I’ve been on this earth just as many days as you. When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one, too. This is how I fight.”
