Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — collectively known as “The Daniels” — are the filmmakers behind the madcap multiverse drama Everywhere Everyone All at Once. The film is leading this year’s Oscar race with 11 nominations — but it’s not your typical Academy Award fare.
There’s no doubt that this year’s Oscars frontrunners for Best Picture aren’t your standard awards fare.
Everywhere Everywhere All at Once Laundered is an existential exploration of relationships and love through taxes and the multiverse, with themes of nihilism and absurdity thrown in for good measure.
The film’s writer-director duo, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — known collectively as “The Daniels” — admit they knew it would be a lot for audiences.
In fact, he told Sky News they were almost looking for a tipping point.
Kwan said, “We thought there would be people who loved the movie and then it would be too much for everyone else.”
“Because we made this film as a stress test, for that to happen, how much can an audience member hold in their mind? How much can they experience before giving up?
“So we were expecting a lot more people to be like, ‘this was too much for me’ — and some people are saying it’s too much, and that’s fine, but the reception has been amazing.”
The film’s journey with the Oscars almost a year before its world premiere at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival has been truly mind-blowing.
From there it became a widespread oral hit, eventually becoming US studio A24’s highest-grossing film to date – earning over £90 million at the worldwide box office.
It’s since carried over into awards season — stars including Michelle Yeoh and Ke Hui Quan have already picked up clocks for their performances at ceremonies including the Golden Globes and SAG Awards — and it’s looking to continue that success at the Oscars. where it is nominated for 11 awards and is the clear favorite to win Best Picture.
For Kwan and Scheinert, who began making music videos together prior to their first feature, Swiss Army Man — which featured Daniel Radcliffe playing a bloated corpse (yes, really) — this marked the beginning of their work. Eager to find an entirely new audience.
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“We’ve been doing weird things our whole career,” Kwan said. “It’s been over a decade since we put weird stuff on the internet and see how the world reacts.
“We’re used to a very specific crowd that loves our stuff — you know, the world’s weirdos … and they just engage with it because they see us as weirdos and that’s a beautiful thing where They love it, it’s some of their favorite stuff they’ve ever seen.
“But then for everyone else, they’re like, ‘It’s not my cup of tea’. We’re used to it.”
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But he also admits that many compromises were necessary during the production of the play.
The filmmakers took care to walk a line while raising a few questions, with a few scenes (not least one involving a sex toy) to make this film engaging for the audience.
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,[We asked ourselves] OK, if we include the butt plug trophy fight scene, what percentage of viewers do we lose and is it worth it? There was a lot of bartering with myself, okay, being selfish, I want this, how many people are we going to turn away?” Kwan said.
“Because we always have one barometer: Can we show this to our moms? It’s a funny thing to ask ourselves when there’s too much cheesy stuff in our movies, but it’s really important that we really I want to make weirdness accessible.”
Content was not the only area of compromise – budget constraints also led to some difficult decisions about what could and could not be included.
But Scheinert says that being somewhat constrained had some advantages. “Sometimes the challenges can be really demoralizing when you say, ‘Oh man, we bit off more than we should have’. But sometimes that process makes the film that much better because it makes us feel like forces the conversation of, ‘does it matter’?”
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With the film’s release soon after the pandemic changed attitudes towards cinema-going, the pair say their intention was to create something that would justify the extra length audiences went to watch the film on the big screen.
Kwan said, “This is the kind of movie that short attention spans don’t matter.” “If you just want to have a good time, this movie is for you; if you just want to feel things and feel cathartic, this movie has something for you.”
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“If you want to go out with friends, leave the theater and talk at the bar for a few hours, this one’s for you,” Scheinert continued.
“It’s a love letter to all the reasons we love going to the theaters — fight scenes are the obvious thing people love in the theater, but I love being uncomfortable in the theater, I love hearing I love watching other people cry while I have tears in my eyes – and I love the movie Jackass and I love screaming ‘oh no, no’ at the screen. “
You can watch the Academy Awards on Sunday 12 March at 11pm exclusively on Sky News and Sky Showcase. And for everything you need to know ahead of the ceremony, don’t miss our exclusive Backstage podcast now, plus watch for our special episode on the winners starting Monday morning.