Meet the mathematical minds behind Oscar-nominated 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' : Short Wave (2023)

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The directors of Everything Everywhere All At Once credit their "math brain" for this genre bending story, about laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) battling for the fate of the multiverse. A24 hide caption

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The directors of Everything Everywhere All At Once credit their "math brain" for this genre bending story, about laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) battling for the fate of the multiverse.

A24

Directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively: Daniels) reimagined the multiverse movie in their breakout film Everything Everywhere All At Once. Tuesday, the film received 11 Oscar nominations for the 95th Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. Science played in early role in inspiring the film's concept.

Distributed by A24 Films, the 139-minute feature is simultaneously a sci fi movie, a kung fu action flick, a sci-fi, a romance, and a family drama. Starring Michelle Yeoh, the film is a multiverse of genres and possibilities.

"From a from a pop culture standpoint, we're borrowing heavily from Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, and the way they take speculative science or theoretical science and they just take the absurdity and dial it up to 100," Kwan told Short Wave host Emily Kwong.

"The thing about the multiverse that fascinated and scared us was the idea of infinity, and we wanted to make a movie that went to too many," Scheinert added.

Yeoh's character, Evelyn Wang, is a beleaguered laundromat owner who learns how to connect with different versions of herself in parallel universes. Key Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curis star in supporting roles as Evelyn's husband, daughter, and IRS auditor, respectively. Since its release in March 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once has garnered five Critics' Choice Movie Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. It was recently nominated for ten British Academy Film Awards.

Now, from a physics point of view, no evidence has been found to substantiate the idea of parallel universes. However, the film does directly reference a very real phenomenon in quantum mechanics. In one moment, Jobu Tupaki, played by Stephanie Hsu, holds a weapon that keeps changing form. She states how everything is a random arrangement of particles in a vibrating superposition. Superposition is the ability of a quantum system to be in multiple states at the same time and this fundamental principle is behind the speed of quantum computers.

The Daniels sat down with Emily last year to discuss how their indie film about laundry and taxes melds the arts with the sciences.

Interview Highlights

On the inquiry-based process that guides their filmmaking

SCHEINERT: A lot of times, people will be like, "What drugs were you on when you wrote this?" And you're like, "No, it's more my math brain that inspired the movie." We found out early on that our favorite projects were ones we weren't sure if we could figure out or pull off. And we knew we were going to be engaged in trying to crack this straight through the very last day of working on it — as opposed to like, "Oh, we know exactly how to do this." A hypothesis is what inspires us to make a movie, not a moral of the story or clear-cut story that we're totally confident in.

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Prior to directing Everything Everywhere All At Once, duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively: Daniels) were known for their first feature film Swiss Army Man and DJ Snake's and Lil Jon's music video "Turn Down For What." A24 hide caption

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A24

Prior to directing Everything Everywhere All At Once, duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively: Daniels) were known for their first feature film Swiss Army Man and DJ Snake's and Lil Jon's music video "Turn Down For What."

A24

On discovering STEM as kids and their love of learning

SCHEINERT: On math team, they give you 25 questions, one hour, and you get rewarded if you get any of them right. And there's no right way to answer the questions. So it's a creative way to solve problems. A lot of times, you'll end up with a score of 20 out of a hundred, and you can be proud of yourself.

KWAN: [My mom and I] would do so many science experiments. And so, if I was into, like, animals — I remember we got a cow's brain and owl pellets and a sheep's eyeball and we dissected them because my mom had a catalog for homeschool kids to buy science experiments at home. So that was a big part of me realizing that I actually do love learning.

On the power of asking bold questions and chasing the unknown

KWAN: In sixth grade, we were supposed to choose a science project, to basically do the scientific method: test out your hypothesis and see what the conclusion is. And being the person who is very afraid of failure and wanting to check the box, get an A-plus, I was like, "OK, I'm going to do an experiment on plants and the effect that different colored lights have on it." So I had the control group of white light and then blue light, red light, green light, whatever — all these different plants, just to see how it affected the growth. But I remember my friend came up with a experiment that I was terrified for. I was like, "But you're going to get a bad grade." And his experiment was basically the philosophical conundrum, which is, "Is the color green that I see and perceive the same color green that you see and perceive?"

SCHEINERT: But, like, what a fun, bold question!

KWAN: Exactly! But he had a bad grade. Even though he was searching for something that was actually meaningful to him. And, like, what lesson are we teaching our kids when things like that aren't possible? And so now as an adult, I feel like I'm atoning for my sins or atoning for the fact that I wasn't brave enough to actually chase after things I don't know how to do. Because that process is how, I think, on an individual level, I grow.

On Kwan discovering his own ADHD, while writing a main character with undiagnosed ADHD

KWAN: For this movie, we were trying to tell a story about someone who basically dissociates all the time, is constantly in another world in their mind ... and so I was like, "OK, this is a great start for the character." And in some ways, also, it's inspired by my mother, who was like that growing up, as well. And so we were like, "I guess we should do some research and make sure we kind of explore this, you know, in a very empathetic and accurate way." And then, I started reading about [ADHD] online. I started taking some ADHD tests. I started realizing that through tears — you know, as tears were falling down my face — I was like, "Oh, no, maybe this is who I am. Maybe this is why I had such a hard time in school and still have such a hard time in my day-to-day life."

Even without trying to put in ADHD, this movie was going to be infused with it from the very beginning. The DNA of it was all going to be there.

On telling stories about how science makes us feel

SCHIENERT: I do think that science facts sometimes can evoke a real intense emotional reaction or philosophical reaction. And from very early on, that was kind of part of this. Like, "Oh, let's talk about how the multiverse makes us feel." Like, we've been reading all this climate apocalypse stuff because apparently global warming's pretty real.

KWONG: Yeah.

SCHEINERT: And the stories that we're telling don't quite capture how this makes me feel. And as a filmmaker, it's part of our job, you know?

Curious about the science behind other pop culture? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We might give it 15 minutes of Short Wave fame in an upcoming episode.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Lu. Additional editing from Gisele Grayson. It was fact-checked by Rachel Carlson. The audio engineer for this episode was Hannah Gluvna.