Were very confident about our dumb ideas.
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Moreover, this post wont make a ton of sense if you havent seen the movie.
Daniel Scheinert: I started doing research into the multiverse in 2010.
I was watching the documentaryShermans March.
Daniel Kwan: In this weird, self-destructive movie, the documentarian/protagonist Ross McElwee is bouncing between women.
But one he meets is a linguist and she talks about modal realism.
And I started doing more research radical learning about the multiverse theory.
Of course quantum physics has its own version of that.
Mathematics has its own.
So all these different mediums are trying to point towards infinity.
Thats really appealing to us because were maximalist filmmakers.
Scheinert: As silly as our movies are, we enjoy reading pop science.
Kwan: Then, as we were working on the movie,Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Versecame out.
Scheinert: I feel likeRick and Mortywas the first.
It was actually hard to watch because we had already been working on the draft for a while.
Watching the second season ofRick and Mortywas really painful.
I was like, Theyve already done all the ideas we thought were original!
It was a really frustrating experience.
So I stopped watchingRick and Mortywhile we were writing this project.
Kwan: We could have easily gone into parody with this.
Scheinert: Wong Kar-wai leansheavily on imagery, not just dialogue.
So we were just trying to create a shorthand for the audience even if they dont get the reference.
We wanted to ensure they had some ways to tell the universes apart.
Kwan: We both grew up loving kung-fu movies, loving anime, Wong Kar-wai, all these things.
A lof of it just happens to be Asian: Asian stories made by Asian creators.
Scheinert: Those stories, those filmmakers, and those movies felt useful to pair up with these characters.
We didnt milk the premise as much as we could.
Scheinert: Its like the doomsday unit: What would be the weirdest thing to fight over?
We spitballed and settled onto trying to get something into your butt is pretty funny.
We could do it very high stakes.
But it could also be Jackie Chan playful.
But of course the mother-daughter bickering does not end there.
Kwan:The rock thing comes from a confluence of things.
Theres a childrens book calledSylvester and the Magic Pebble.
A donkey turns into a rock and basically is isolated from his family.
One of our friends is an animator and video-game maker namedDavid OReilly.
He made this game calledEverything.
Its a game where you’re able to literally play as anything.
And theres maybe a dozen different kind of rocks you’re able to be.
Just rolling around
Scheinert: just feels good.
Kwan: It feels good and that is really beautiful.
The whole purpose of the game is you have to look at it and not press anything.
Its a game where the longer you dont press anything
Scheinert: the more you progress.
Kwan:He called it a relax-em-up instead of a shoot-em-up.
Sometimes I just wish I was a rock.
So I didnt have to feel everything.
And what better place than a universe where life doesnt exist?
Scheinert:There were a lot of steps in the development of that joke.
Our producer Jonathan Wang, his dad was Chinese and an inspiration for the movie.
He loved movies but never could remember the names of them.
Jons family would collect the different titles that Dad had come up with for movies.
One time he was like, Oh I saw a very good movie calledShooky Shylock.
They were like, What isShooky Shylock?!
Then the idea that whatever she got wrong was real was a very exciting way to explore the multiverse.
Then the last cherry on top was we always imagined Randy Newman would be the voice.
Scheinert:In the first draft it said, Theres a raccoon on his head voiced by Randy Newman.
We never thought wed get Randy but we did!
Benihana/Teppanyaki Cooking
Scheinert:Initially it was just a chef.
At the same time, so many of them were just true.
Dan would be like, That is what my grandads laundromat looked like.
Also: Hibachi chefs are awesome!
Kwan:Theyre just badasses as far as the skill goes.
French chefs would lose in a fight against a Japanese steakhouse chef, obviously.
Scheinert:Oh my God, that blew my mind as a kid.
I was like, Why isnt every restaurant like this?
Theres a term for it: competency porn.
People love watching people who are competent at what they do.
You see sign-spinners and knife-twirlers and
Scheinert: people who lay bricks perfectly.
Theres some people who can do it so fast.
Kwan:That would have been a universe.
Someones coming at her and she just builds a wall.
It was way more fun to just make the everyday normal person feel like a superpower.
People have been using shields to fight for a while.
Obviously Captain America has been doing that.
But we just wanted to have a very playful take.
Our choreographers did such a good job with that prompt.
Were like, What can you do with the sign?
Scheinert:Michelle really had to practice her human directional skills.
Kwan:Its not an original idea.
If you look online, youll see people sticking fake nails on hot dog fingers and stuff like that.
I think there is something very funny about the idea that our fingers look like hot dogs.
But we werent interested in them until we figured out what the full arc was.
Scheinert:We wanted to take Evelyn somewhere that would break her brain, somewhere that shed hate.
Shed be like,No this universe does not exist,and we threw a lot at the wall.
I already hate her.
And she has gross hands and she is trying to touch me.
Then we wanted it to be as challenging as possible to make her accept this universe.
Can we get her there?
We had to get Michelle there too.
We had to convince her that it was worth doing.
I think she was like, Okay maybe.
Jamie did the final dance first and then was like, Your turn, Michelle.
It becomes a singularity and its hypothetical.
But the idea is, at a certain density, anything will become a black hole.
So everyone has their Schwarzschild radius.
Wouldnt it be funny if she did that to an everything bagel?
Because this movie is about everything.
It started as just a throwaway joke.
Scheinert:We spent a while inventing the religion of the bagel followers.
So many things didnt stick.
Shes a nihilist; should there be dogma?
Should there be a book?
What should their practices be as a religion?
The bagel stuck because it became such a useful, simple symbol that we could point to as filmmakers.
And you dont have to explain it much beyond the joke.
Kwan:It did two things.
It allowed us to talk about nihilism without being too eye roll-y.
And it creates a MacGuffin: a doomsday gear.
Again, like all our ideas, it starts as a kernel that just makes us laugh.
This became what it had to become and I cant imagine it being any different now.
