The multiverse martial arts comedy Anything Anywhere Anytime requires a lot of decompression. Lots of followers Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan Swiss Army Man goes by at breakneck speed, with pop culture references, goofy cameos and elaborate effects-driven visuals for the home video freeze-frame approach. Some of these jokes are loud and obvious, like a prehistoric sequence involving ape-like creatures fighting to the death, inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey“discover tools” sequence. Others are relatively subtle, like how the Daniels emulate an alternate universe after the Wong Kar-Wai films. In a world where laundromat owners Evelyn (Duong Tu Quynh) and Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) are rich, successful characters in the movie industry, they regret the romance that never happened between them. , and the stinging emotions, intense colors, limited dialogue, and bright lights all recall Wong’s films like In the mood to love and Chungking Express.
At a movie show in Chicago Everything is everywhereDaniels talked to me about those scenes and said they weren’t modeled on a particular scene – as Kwan said, their cinematographer, Larkin Seiple, spoke a little about the critics’ take. specific quote In the mood to love was the only source of inspiration there and wanted people to notice that the dominant lighting and color systems didn’t exactly match that movie. We discussed some of the other points of interest in the film – like the name of the film’s villain, Jobu Tupaki, which comes from a list of interesting sounds Kwan and his wife make as they search Find a name for your daughter.
And Daniel Scheinert shared the above photo, allegedly Everything is everywhereThe Greatest Easter Egg. Bear with me here.
Longtime fans of Kwan and Scheinert’s work are used to seeing them in their own projects. It’s Kwan leading the crazy dance, smashing naked in the cho “Turn Down For What.” By DJ Snake and Lil Jon. (I learned in a previous interview that even though Scheinert wasn’t in that video, he handled the penis puppet whenever Kwan’s crotch began an aggressive, independent life.) In one of their wildest and best stub shorts, “Bag”, Things go very badly for Daniels’ longtime friend Billy Chew as he tries to crush Scheinert. In one of the weirdest first shorts, “Interesting Ball,” an inexplicable cosmic event that had many surreal effects, including Kwan being sucked into Scheinert’s rectum slowly, inexplicably. And in Scheinert’s solo directorial project, South noir Dick Long’s DeathScheinert plays the main character, a man who dies under circumstances that send his closest friends into a spiral of grief and rejection.
So it’s no surprise that Kwan and Scheinert appear in Anything Anywhere Anytime. What? To be Surprising, at least for fans who think they’re quick enough to recognize their faces, is the fact that they’ve been there multiple times – including, as Scheinert put it, in a cameo that didn’t go unnoticed. No one can catch without help.
Scheinert’s most obvious performance in the film is as a character purportedly “District Manager” – he’s someone who has a light S&M play in a secret office closet full of bullies and restrictions, and was led out of the closet by a leash. He appeared again with the same character in the fight at the grand staircase against Evelyn, who won the fight by bending him and spanking him.
Kwan, meanwhile, briefly appears when Jobu Tupaki activates her Bagel With Everything – he’s the first guy to be sucked into its vortex, the man whose face is pulled into layers before Even his body was pulled in. He also appears earlier in the film, although it’s much harder to see his face in that scene – he’s the vandal trying to steal Evelyn’s wallet in the Wong Kar-Wai timeline, where there is A mysterious white-haired martial artist (Li Jing) saves her, and the attack inspires her to learn kung fu.
But Scheinert cameo said that no one can catch? That was because his face and body were completely covered by an ape suit. In there 2001styled scene, Daniels visually explains the origins of a universe where everyone had hot dogs to hand. In that world’s prehistoric history, the primates race before humans won the contest for dominance over other primates, as demonstrated by a hot-handed ape beating to death an ape with a strong hand. normal finger. . It was Scheinert in a hot-dog ape costume, dealing a fatal blow on behalf of his species and evolutionary descendants.
But it gets better. Scheinert said the film only features two ape suits, so he’s not just the main ape in the film – he plays almost all of them. At that Chicago Q&A, he described how he “spent all day running around that ridge,” performing winning lemur moves in a variety of positions and from a variety of angles for him. She and Kwan have footage that they can digitally stitch together to form an ape that looks like their crew. In a movie full of quirky ideas and fast-paced special effects tricks, the idea that one of the directors plays an army of hot-fingered gorillas seems obvious. Strange things happen in this movie – but it’s still a special joy to see photographic evidence of Scheinert looking exhausted, overheated, and tired of being an ape everywhere, all the time.
