Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterThe SXSW Film Festival delivered a doozy of an opening night presentation with Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” on Friday in Austin — offering up a buffet of images for viral memes.Fleshy hot dogs in place of human fingers, a talking raccoon voiced by Oscar winner Randy Newman, butt plugs that serve as portals to other dimensions, a martial arts showdown between Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis, and a universe-shattering bagel all populate the A24 release.
While Twitter will have its day with the inventive and well-crafted insanity, the filmmakers and cast also produced a rowdy crowdpleaser with themes of acceptance, optimism, and love literally conquering all. “We used to do a lot of music videos and we’d get rejected a lot.
So we had all these leftover ideas,” explained Scheinert about the kitchen sink approach to the movie’s plot. “So we said, let’s make a movie with everything in it, full of all those things Rihanna said no to.”Earning a standing ovation for her kaleidoscopic performance, Yeoh told the audience she was “so goddamn proud” of the work she put in –across storylines, continents, cultures and emotional tones in the multiverse crafted by the directors, who are professionally billed as “Daniels.”A buoyant crowd of “cinephiles and movie nerds,” as Kwan put it, were thrilled to pack Austin’s Paramount Theater, where an indoor masking was strictly adhered to (and no proof of vaccination status required at the door).
The men behind the buzzy 2016 Sundance title “Swiss Army Man” (dubbed “the farting corpse movie” by film Twitter) expressed their pride over the finished project in a Q&A following the premiere.“We took it kind of slow.
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