The Daniels
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The Filmmaker Guide to the Oscar-Winning Daniels
Winners of the Best Screenplay and Best Picture awards at last night’s Oscars for their Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Daniels — Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — have appeared in our pages many times over the years, with the various articles and interviews offering a historical timeline of the iconoclastic creators’ move from music video stars to celebrated feature directors. The two showed up first in 2015, in our 25 New Faces list, while they were in production on their first feature, Swiss Army Man. But we had already been knocked out by their music videos for the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 13, 2023 -
Kept in Sync: Paul Rogers on Editing Everything Everywhere All At Once
Everything Everywhere All At Once editor Paul Rogers first met co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, or the Daniels, at OMG CAMERAS EVERYWHERE, a free filmmaking summer camp pairing kids with established filmmakers to shoot videos for musicians like Daft Punk, Diplo and Benny Blanco. When I called Rogers via Zoom to interview him, Scheinert sat beside him with a guitar and occasionally chimed in: “The first thing we worked on together was a silly music video with kids—no rules, directions or studio notes. We just had to make something that would make the kids excited about what they did […]
by A.E. Hunt on Dec 15, 2022 -
“The Silliest Use of IMAX in the History of IMAX”: DP Larkin Seiple on Everything Everywhere All at Once
“A messy but fun way to make something very stupid but very beautiful.” That’s how cinematographer Larkin Seiple describes the process of creating the multiverse-jumping singularity that is Everything Everywhere All at Once, a mixture of the silly and profound that careens through alternate realities populated with hot dog fingers, butt plugs and raccoon versions of Ratatouille while imploring us to embrace the fleeting moments of grace offered up by the universe in the face of our cosmic insignificance. Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn, a harried laundromat owner whose marriage, mother-daughter relationship and IIRS audit all crater simultaneously. Into that personal […]
by Matt Mulcahey on May 23, 2022 -
“I Wanted the Hotdog Universe to Cross Over with the Taxes Universe”: Costume Designer Shirley Kurata on Everything Everywhere All at Once
Beyond the cartoonish mania of the multiverse action-comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once is a story about a mother and daughter, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and Joy (Stephanie Hu). Their family laundromat is on the brink of falling out, though not for want of trying–both strive to get along, but the air between them remains tense and unpleasant. Under a scrupulous audit by a five-time award-winning IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis), the laundromat may be taken away from the family too, and Evelyn’s sweetheart husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), has secretly prepared divorce papers. Eventually, Joy decides it might […]
by A.E. Hunt on Apr 19, 2022 -
“All These Different Michelles Are the Stars of Their Different Stories” The Daniels on Their Michelle Yeoh-Starring Everything Everywhere All At Once
The multiverse threatens to swallow up Evelyn, a wife, mother, and laundromat owner in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Written and directed by The Daniels (Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan), the film is a spectacular showcase for Michelle Yeoh, one of the great icons of Asian cinema. Like their earlier feature Swiss Army Man, EEAAO is by turns experimental and defiantly audacious. But it also taps into a commercial sensibility that finds a way to combine social media supercuts, Russo brothers spectacle, and old school Hong Kong filmmaking. In addition to Yeoh, the cast includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, […]
by Daniel Eagan on Mar 24, 2022 -
Daniels’ Possibilia Explores the Possibilities of Interactivity
Billed as an “interactive love story set in the multiverse,” Possibilia, a short film from the dynamic writing/directing duo known as Daniels, tells the story of a couple (Alex Karpovsky and Zoe Jarman) on the verge of a break-up with 16 potential outcomes that are left to the viewer. The project, which screened at both Sundance, Tribeca, and other festivals back in 2014, now gets an online release over at Eko (previously Interlude), the interactive video creation platform. Like Daniels’ recent feature Swiss Army Man, Possibilia relies on humor to subvert the genre and push the conventions of the medium. Filmmaker recently […]
by Paula Bernstein on Aug 3, 2016 -
“A Fart to the Heart”: DP Larkin Seiple on Swiss Army Man
A few years ago I worked on a promo for a Jerry Springer-hosted dating show set in a soundstage-built TSA screening line. The concept involved potential dates in the queue afflicted with, shall we say politely, peculiarities – including a gentleman with a flatulence problem. For the sake of authenticity, the shoot’s assistant director emulated gaseous emissions during the takes – sometimes using the double palms of the hands method, other times opting for the tried and true armpit technique. The giggles spread like a contagion – to grips, to camera assistants, to set dressers. So as much as I […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jul 12, 2016 -
Human Highway: Daniels on Swiss Army Man
Some of the images and ideas that have turned up in the commercials, music videos, short films and feature films of Daniels are: A man gets his foot stuck inside another man’s ass; the more he tries to get it out, the deeper it goes. A grieving widow is relentlessly prank-called by a child. A man has bottomless pockets. A woman’s breasts begin to move and spin inside her shirt. A man dances so hard that he falls through the floor, where he meets a hard-dancing woman who crashes her ass into his face; together, they fall through the floor. […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Apr 21, 2016 -
Watch: Swiss Army Man: The Film That Polarized Sundance
Swiss Army Man, the debut feature from acclaimed music video directing duo The Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), divided audiences at Sundance 2016 like no other film. Now you can get a peek at the controversial film in its first trailer (above). Following its premiere, Variety declared that the film “could win the festival’s award for the most walk-outs, as a continuous stream of audience members kept standing up and bolting for the door throughout the film.” The premise of the dark comedy is certainly pretty bizarre. Paul Dano plays Hank, a man marooned on an island who is about to commit suicide. […]
by Paula Bernstein on Apr 4, 2016 -
At Sundance: In Defense of Daniel Radcliffe’s Farting Corpse
The atmosphere was tense at the Eccles Theater Friday afternoon. The premiere of Swiss Army Man, the debut feature from acclaimed music video directing duo The Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) was running 25 minutes behind and audience members were still fighting over the venue’s few remaining seats. The buzz leading up to the film’s premiere had been fervent, with many pegging it as the anticipated breakout of the festival’s competition lineup. Were audiences about to see the next Beasts of the Southern Wild or Whiplash? No. In fact, it wasn’t long after the film let out that the […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 25, 2016
