Every Minute of Everything Everywhere All At Once

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Lester and Kynan attempt to explain, evaluate, enlighten and elucidate the Academy Award-winning film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, minute by multiversal minute! Now, you may only see a couple of chuckleheads trying to talk about a movie and getting distracted by all the cool references and easter eggs…but we see a story! Follow us through the multiverse as we explore each individual minute of this amazing film!

  1. 1d ago

    Minute 112 - We Put Cold, Unlovable B**ches Like Us On A Bagel!

    Waymond calls out across the chaos — Evelyn, please, no more — and she lets go of Deirdre's throat. The script said "no more fighting." The film cuts the last word, and it changes everything: he's not asking her to stop swinging, he's asking her to stop being the kind of person who would. Jobu, already walking away, stops and turns back to watch, visibly furious that her mother might be learning something. She raises a foot over Evelyn's face, moves it aside at the last second, and steps over her toward the stairs. Deirdre detaches the blade from an industrial paper cutter and comes back swinging. And then: Evelyn sitting down outside the laundromat, next to Deirdre, asking what her silly husband said. Deirdre tells her about the day her husband served her papers and she drove his Kia Forte through the neighbor's kitchen. And then the line: it's cold, unlovable bitches like us who make the world go round.We dig into the villain trope Lester loves most — the one where the hero's kindness makes the villain angrier, because being proven wrong this late means reckoning with everything you've already done. He also tells the story of the best villain death he's ever seen, from a 1983 Osamu Tezuka movie about a baby unicorn, which has stuck with him since he was five. Plus: the cut lines from the 2022 script that the performances made unnecessary, why "my ex gave me the papers" became "my husband gave me the papers," why "hysterical" was correctly removed from the famous line, and the specific horror of sitting on the same side of the desk as your nemesis.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

  2. Oct 28

    Minute 111 - We Put A SURPRISE BAGEL On A Bagel!

    Jobu grabs Evelyn's hands and pries them apart in a slow, playground-style gesture — not the hand vagina from the hallway, something new — and the gap between their fingers becomes a window. Through it we see Temple Jobu's eyes, serene and goddess-like, perfectly aligned with the hurt, human Jobu standing right in front of Evelyn. The window rises past her bagel hair bun and then higher, revealing the actual bagel, now here, in the atrium. Everything starts getting pulled in. Two of Jobu's own acolytes go first. Then Daniel Kwan, in a cameo that ends with his face tearing off to reveal another identical face underneath. Jobu says she doesn't care if Evelyn comes with her — enjoy your life — and walks toward the stairs with Deirdre marching behind her. Evelyn Naruto-runs through the foliage, lands in front of her like an anime character, and Jobu just smiles, nods, and turns away.We open with something that didn't land until after last week's recording: Evelyn crossing back to Waymond without reaching for her daughter can only read, from Jobu's side, as I won't do this with you, but go ahead. Which is worse than a rejection. We also dig into why the film slowed this moment way down instead of doing it anime-style like the script describes, the three possible readings of Jobu's "I knew it" face, and why the Daniels refused every easier version of this beat. Plus: Evelyn choking Deirdre in a way that is genuinely too violent to be funny, the Daniel Kwan cameo and the ethics of director cameos generally, spaghettification, and an unpixelated glimpse behind the movie magic.Heads up: we've got a bonus episode coming at the end of the month on the 2018 Halloween requel, because we can't stay away from Jamie Lee Curtis.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

  3. Oct 21

    Minute 110 - We Put Hair That Spells Your Name On A Bagel!

    Evelyn and Waymond are still holding each other, lit by the colors of infinite worlds, laughing like two people who can't believe they found each other. Then the lights fade, the music quiets, her fist unclenches — and a long, stretched-out, echoing voice comes through from somewhere else: ooooooh. It's Jobu, finishing the word "cute," in a brand new outfit covered in neon, teddy bear sleeves, and a single strand of hair curled on her forehead spelling out her name. She pulls Evelyn into the temple, points at the bagel, says come on. Evelyn walks out of frame — and reappears in the atrium, back beside her husband. Jobu nods. She says: I get it. And then, very deliberately: eventually, that all just goes away.We spend most of this one on Jobu's rejection, and why it's one of the rawest moments a villain gets. She didn't just lose the argument; she opened herself up in the rock universe and got turned down, and Evelyn choosing happiness is proof that the thing Jobu built her whole philosophy around might not be true. We talk about how rarely a major female villain gets to be devastated in a specifically feminine register rather than being made monstrous by masculinizing her, and compare that to Nurse Ratched, Annie Wilkes, and Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky. Plus: three of our barbershop quartet are now Jobu's guards (armed with pencils, scissors, and a keyboard), why they're dressed for the New Year's party, Jobu imposing a fake deadline on an infinite bagel, and a long, unplanned detour into bodkins.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

  4. Oct 14

    Minute 109 - We Put Laundry And Taxes On A Bagel!

    We made it to the line. Foxy Waymond finishes it — in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you — laughs a small rueful laugh, and walks out of the alley and out of the movie for good. And then the film does something you don't expect: instead of cutting to Cinderella Evelyn's reaction, it cuts to our Evelyn, in the atrium, receiving that speech while looking at a completely different Waymond sweeping up broken glass in a laundromat. She crosses the room and hugs him. He drops the dustpan.We spend a good chunk of this one on translation. A listener sent us a Tumblr post years ago arguing the English subtitle is a slight mistranslation, and that the Mandarin is closer to "if we had another life, I would still choose to do taxes and open a laundromat with you" — a rich man explicitly saying he'd trade all of it. We dig into both versions, and then Kynan points out the chronology runs backwards from what everyone assumes: the English was in the script first, and the subtitles came from the script rather than from the performance.Plus: the smiley face stamped into the dustpan, why the sound of it hitting the floor isn't the sound a dustpan makes, the googly eye Waymond snuck onto a lantern two hours earlier that the movie deliberately didn't show us at the time, and Evelyn laughing so hard the tears come out sideways. This is the end of Act Two.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

  5. Oct 7

    Minute 108 - We Put A Shave And A Haircut On A Bagel!

    Evelyn says "It's too late, Waymond." And then, after a long pause, reaches out and takes his hand. That single touch opens everything: the two of them as newlyweds with their hands stacked on the couch, Waymond turning from the TV to ask if she saw that (she didn't, she was looking at him), tearing the newspaper off the windows of a brand new laundromat, twirling in their apartment, finding the remote under the couch and being genuinely delighted about it. He taps a service bell in a shave-and-a-haircut rhythm and asks what song it is. Then green light creeps across her face and we're in the Hong Kong alley, where Foxy Waymond turns around and says: in another life.And that's where the minute ends. We had to cut the most famous line in the movie in half, which we assume was done to us on purpose.We work through what "it's too late" means when she immediately contradicts it, and land on this: it's too late to be Jobu and too late to be Waymond, and what's coming next is Evelyn mode. We talk about how these aren't flashbacks — she's actually present in these moments, which is exactly the thing Jobu swore she'd never manage again. And Kynan spent most of his research week on that service bell: shave and a haircut goes back to 1800s minstrel songs, becomes the rhythmic skeleton of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," and was used by American POWs in Vietnam as a knock-code because the locals didn't recognize it.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

  6. Sep 30

    Minute 107 - We Put The Last Temptation Of Evelyn On A Bagel!

    Atrium Waymond finally finds the words — the only thing I do know is that we have to be kind — and then turns and aims it directly at his wife: please be kind, especially when we don't know what's going on. In the Hong Kong alley, Foxy Waymond tells Evelyn he knows she sees herself as a fighter. So does he. This is how he fights. The music swells. Evelyn is waking up. And then Jobu's voice cuts through with one word — bagel — and the whole thing stops dead. Alpha Gong Gong orders the attack. Jobu steps forward, completely earnest, and tells her mother she could still turn around and avoid all of this.Lester makes the case that this is The Last Temptation of Christ, and Kynan — who covered both the Kazantzakis novel and the Scorsese film on the other show — agrees completely. The temptation on the cross wasn't power or bread or kingdoms. It was a normal life: come down, get married, have children, grow old, don't be the son of man. That's the one that actually lands for a regular person, and it's exactly what Jobu is offering here. You don't have to be the hero. You can just walk away.We also dig into why the be-kind speech doesn't exist in the 2017 draft, what changed between 2016 and 2020 to put it there, and how differently it hits now. Plus: why Foxy Waymond calling kindness a strategy reframes the whole thing, and how that connects to the genuinely radical pacifism of Jesus, Gandhi, and King, which was never about overcoming anyone.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

  7. Sep 23

    Minute 106 - We Put A Plea For Peace On A Bagel!

    Two Waymonds. Two speeches. At the same time. In the Alpha Verse, a stabbed Waymond stands between Evelyn and a dozen armed jumpers — one of whom is holding an office desk phone as a weapon — asking if they can just stop fighting, and admitting that he doesn't know what's going on but somehow feels like it's all his fault. In a green Hong Kong alley, Foxy Waymond tells Evelyn that choosing to see the good side of things isn't naive. It's strategic. It's necessary. It's how he's learned to survive through everything.Here's the realization that reframes this whole stretch of the film: Ke Huy Quan has two famous speeches in this movie, and almost nobody thinks of them as separate. People quote both constantly — laundry and taxes, and be kind especially when you don't know what's going on — but they're braided together so tightly that they feel like one continuous thought from one person. They're not. They're two characters in two universes making two different arguments. We spend the episode pulling them apart and then arguing about whether they're secretly the same speech in different dialects.We also sit with "somehow this feels like it's all my fault," which is factually wrong — this is the Waymond who says Raccoon Waymond and Raccoon Joy, he has no idea what's happening — but lands on Evelyn at exactly the right moment. She's been telling herself that her whole life. She's also been saying it out loud to him for twenty years. Hearing it in his voice is what finally breaks it.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

  8. Sep 16

    Minute 105 - We Put Being Too Sweet On A Bagel!

    Deirdre pauses at the door on her way out, shares a look with Evelyn, and staggers off looking like someone dropped a bomb on her. Waymond, still kneeling in front of his handcuffed wife, tells her he doesn't know how he did it — he just talked to Deirdre — and he is openly, unmistakably crying while trying to look like he isn't. Then he stands up, picks up a broom, and sweeps the broken glass while quietly singing a Chinese New Year song. Meanwhile, in a green-lit Hong Kong alley, Foxy Waymond says Evelyn's father used to call him too sweet for his own good, and maybe he was right. And in the Alpha Verse, Waymond stands in front of the wife who stabbed him, arms out against a dozen jumpers, saying please.We stop the episode to sit with what Ke Huy Quan is doing here — real tears, in a performance where the character is trying not to cry, in a conversation that's clearly scarier to him than facing down the police. We talk about the specific kind of masculine melodrama that wrecks audiences, and about the twenty years Hollywood took from all of us by not casting this man. And then Lester looked up what Waymond is humming while he sweeps: "Gongxi Gongxi," written in 1945 to mark the end of the war, tied to an older myth about a beast that came each winter to eat villagers — so at dawn, neighbors ran out, saw each other alive, and shouted congratulations. Not on winning. On surviving. Waymond is standing in the wreckage of his marriage singing a song that means we made it through the dark together.Show archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more. Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & LiteratureThe Exorcist Minute

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Lester and Kynan attempt to explain, evaluate, enlighten and elucidate the Academy Award-winning film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, minute by multiversal minute! Now, you may only see a couple of chuckleheads trying to talk about a movie and getting distracted by all the cool references and easter eggs…but we see a story! Follow us through the multiverse as we explore each individual minute of this amazing film!

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