‘Everything Everywhere’ duo win Oscars for directing and writing – The Mercury News

By ANDREW DALTON (AP Entertainment Writer)

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Writer-director duo Daniels won two Oscars in one dominant night for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

In wins that were fully expected on Sunday but might have seemed like a science-fiction fantasy a year ago, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won Oscars for best director and best original screenplay, two of seven wins for their multiversal dramedy. The Daniels led talented fields that included Hollywood royalty Steven Spielberg in both categories.

“There is greatness in every person,” said Kwan as he accepted the best director award. “It doesn’t matter who we are. There is genius in every person, you just have to find it. Thank you to the people who unlocked my genius.”

But Kwan assured his son that he would not impose similar expectations on him.

“This is not normal, this is kind of crazy,” he said. “I will love you no matter what.”

The Daniels went into the night as directing Oscar favorites, and “Everywhere All at Once,” the top nominee with 11, got a huge boost in awards season. It also won Best Picture, Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan, and Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis.

Scheinert dedicated the director’s Oscar to “all the moms in the world” and his own parents.

“Thank you for not squelching my creativity when I was making really disturbing horror movies or really kinky comedy movies or cross-dressing as a kid, which is not a threat to anybody,” he said.

When they won the script, Scheinert criticized the names of his favorite teachers, saying, “you all inspired me and taught me how to be less of a jerk”.

And Kwan said “my imposter syndrome is at an all-time high”. He called Scheinert “my confidence. He’s the person who told me I was a storyteller before I believed it.”

Each aged 35, the Danielses were the youngest and least experienced filmmakers in a group of directorial nominees that also included Spielberg, 76 (“The Fabelmans”), Ruben Östlund, 48, (“Triangle of Sorrows”) ”). Todd Field (“Tár”), 59, and Martin McDonagh, 52 (“The Banshees of Inisherin”).

His wins come almost exactly a year after the film’s release. The Daniels’ only previous film was the odd corpse comedy “Swiss Army Man.” At the time, it may have seemed like a pipe dream that such a pair would win the best director Oscar, which has eluded famous filmmakers from Alfred Hitchcock to Ridley Scott and Quentin Tarantino.

But “Everything Everywhere,” which mixed the same kind of weirdness with elements of Hollywood sci-fi and action epics, sparked buzz — and inspired memes — right from the start and became an awards magnet in recent months.

Kwan becomes the third winner of Asian descent to win a directing Oscar. Chloe Zhao and Bong Joon also won the award. The film was a boon for the Asian actors, who were cast in most of the lead roles, including Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan, who were all nominated for Oscars, with Quan and Yeoh winning and Hsu losing to co-star Curtis. .

The Daniels are the third directing duo to win an Academy Award. Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise won for the original “West Side Story” in 1962, and brothers Joel and Ethan Coen won for “No Country for Old Men” in 2008.

They are also among the youngest to win the award. “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle was the youngest at 32 in 2017.

Last month, they won the Directors Guild of America award, which proved to be a strong indicator of their Oscar win.

Spielberg was expected to cross awards season with his autobiography “The Fabelmans,” but the belated rise in affection for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” proved to be too much.

Scheinert, from Birmingham, Alabama, and Kwan, from Westborough, Massachusetts, met while studying film at Emerson College in Boston.

They began their career making music videos before moving into feature films, occasionally directing television episodes.

There were no directors nominated in the category. After two years of trending with back-to-back wins for women in the category, the Academy returned to its historic norm of nominating only male directors.

___

Follow AP Entertainment writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

___ For more coverage of this year’s Oscars, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards