Last spring, as I prepared to interview the director duo the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) upon the release of their second feature film Everything Everywhere All at Once, I came across something I hadn’t seen before.
No, I’m not referring to the hot-dog fingers and butt-plug-shaped candles sold by A24 but rather a comprehensive pronunciation guide for the names of the cast and characters, as shared by the film’s PR team for the press: Michelle Yeoh’s surname should be pronounced “yo”, Stephanie Hsu’s is “shoe”, Ke Huy Quan’s name is pronounced “Key Hway Kwan” and the surname of the family at the center of the movie (Wang) rhymes with “song”. It was a small but meaningful gesture infused with respect: yes, the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, veering often into the manic and puerile – but say our names properly.
Sure, those names naturally roll off the tongue much easier than Saoirse Ronan or Benedict Cumberbatch, but not so long ago such a guide wouldn’t have even been considered – because those names would never have been said aloud with frequency let alone graced an Oscar ballot. After all, Asian performers have long been overlooked. As the New York Times illustrated in a dismayingly sparse interactive report, just 23 of 1,808 acting nominees in the entire history of the Oscars could be identified as Asian, and only four have won.
The tropes of Asians in film have proven particularly persistent – nameless, faceless, or emotionless; seen through the lens of martial arts, war or sex; perpetual foreigners with funny accents and exotic names. And that’s after Asians were allowed to portray Asian characters: As 94-year-old screen veteran James Hong pointed out at the Screen Actors Guild Awards last month, white actors often played Asian character roles in Hollywood’s early days. “Guys with eyes taped up like this and they talk like this because the producer said the Asians were not good enough and they are not box office,” he said, pulling his eyes up towards his temples in a move stingingly familiar to Asians the world over. “But look at us now.”
The world is certainly watching. This unabashedly Asian American film has been crowned the past year’s best movie on Hollywood’s biggest night. That would be significant in any year, but it’s especially momentous in a year with a record number of Asian nominees overall, across songwriting, producing and writing in films spanning genres from animation to documentary. This year four actors of Asian descent were nominated for Oscars, the most in a single year – and Yeoh and Quan’s awards broke the record for the most Asian actors winning on Oscar night. (The record had been one.) Yeoh is just the second Asian best actress nominee (and the first to fully embrace her Asian heritage) and now the very first to win; she’s only the second woman of color to win in that category. We’ve come a long way from playing mere subservient sidekicks to white leads – although it’s only in recent years that Asian actors have been recognized for roles that defy stereotypes.
It’s hard to overstate how remarkable – and hard-won – this Asian American wave crashing on to Hollywood’s highest honors is. And even though the film has swept all the major guild awards this season and now taken the top prize of them all, it could not be further from what’s typically considered Oscar fare: an immigrant drama masquerading as a multiverse-jumping flick, influenced by the Wachowskis and Stephen Chow, replete with scatalogical humor, a giant everything bagel black hole of nihilism and emotionally resonant scenes between googly-eyed rocks. And this outlandish film about an incredibly specific family in an incredibly specific situation (their small business is struggling with its taxes) has managed to resonate with a large audience; unlike many recent Oscar darlings, it’s a bona fide box-office hit (with a perhaps too rabid fanbase), raking in $108m worldwide (off a rather modest $14.3m production budget) and becoming A24’s highest-grossing film ever. That’s all the more impressive given that the film is neither based on a classic novel or the life of a rock legend nor a much awaited blockbuster sequel.
This points to what is hopefully Everything’s most enduring legacy – that Hollywood will perhaps take more chances on idiosyncratic, utterly original fare, especially those centered on people of color. The directors (self-described weirdos whose first feature starred Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse) and cast have touted the movie as an example of flying one’s freak flag proudly; the best possible result of this win would be for more film-makers to put forth bigger, freakier risks.
Or as co-director Daniel Kwan put it to me: “This movie shows that Asian American cinema can be anything it wants to be … I’m very excited for the next five to 10 years. Hopefully, every single marginalized community gets this opportunity to announce themselves and be like, ‘Look, the narrative is usually this, but there’s so much more to us.’” If that happens in part due to this film, the triumph of Everything Everywhere All at Once truly is everything.
