How a Fanny Pack Attacks in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The action-comedy adventure “Everything Everywhere All at Once” deals with multiverses and family discord and existential questions. But in this scene, it’s all about skillfully wielding a fanny pack.

The movie is from the minds of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a.k.a. Daniels), and this particular segment, set in an I.R.S. office, contains one of the many outsize and bizarre fights in the movie.

In one moment here, the couple Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) are discussing divorce. In the next, Waymond is chewing Chapstick and using his fanny pack to help take down a flurry of security guards.

“Every good action movie has to have a good kickoff action sequence,” said Kwan, narrating the scene. He added that the directors wanted this one to “show off what this movie is going to be, but in a way that is mysterious, in a way that hopefully causes you to ask a lot of questions and want to keep watching.”

In staging the energetic fight choreography, Daniels went to a group of YouTubers (“kung fu nerds from Orange County,” Scheinert said) who call themselves the Martial Club. They staged a longer version of the fight and the directors worked with them to cut it down to hit the right beats.

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