Chapter 101: Daniels existentially explore everything everywhere

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The best movie I have seen in years is called Everything, Everywhere All At Once and it was written and directed by Daniels. Daniels? Yes, Daniels. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, to be specific. Two brilliant artists who met in college and began stitching together short films before working on music videos like Turn Down For What by DJ Snake and Lil John (over a billion views), Simple Song by The Shins, and Tongues by Joywave. Watch those to see their energy and magic.

Daniels made their feature-length debut at Sundance in 2016 with Swiss Army Man also known as the “Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse movie” and then followed it up with this twisting multiverse action flick Everything Everywhere All At Once starring Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

And how’s this arthouse flick (with a paltry $25 million dollar budget!) doing? Well, it is the highest rated film of the decade on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s being credited with bringing back multiplex crowds post-pandemic. And the people who see it and love it (like I did) end up going back to see it again and again. (You’ll pick up so much more on the second time through and now I’m just itching for a third!)

Daniels create art for art’s sake — that David Foster Wallace Nature of the Fun ethos we’ve talked about before — and the result is this incredibly provocative and non-conformist stuff that just squeezes your mind until the smiles and tears start rushing out.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 101 now…

What You'll Learn:

  • What is the greatest compliment for a filmmaker?

  • Why should you journal about a project before sharing it with your audience?

  • How might we evaluate our own projects?

  • What is the tension between humility and hubris?

  • How do we deal with imposter syndrome?

  • What is it like growing up with ADHD?

  • How do we learn to appreciate discomfort in art?

  • How do we supercharge our creativity and access ideas?

  • What is the education system getting wrong?

  • How can we cultivate creativity in our kids?

  • What should we question about sex?

  • How do we learn to live in a post-physical world?

Notable quotes from daniels:

“Tears come from laughing or crying but they're both the result of the intellect being unable to process something.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“We wanted to create a movie that just smashed through the intellect, that cage that we've built around our brains so that we can just feel things that we can't put into words.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“We're so disempowered because of how connected we are to everything. We now have access to seven billion other lives at the same time. None of us feel like we have any control and none of our decisions matter.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“Of course people disappear into video games where it is a meritocracy. It's like you can actually spend a few hours and learn a skill and get points. In life it doesn't work that way.” Daniels (Scheinert) #3bookspodcast

“Kindness is power.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“If you don't have humility, you won't listen. When you're not listening, you're not actually going to make something that will truly resonate with other people. On other hand, you have to have the hubris to say ‘My art deserves to be seen by millions!’ It’s this kind of crazy tension.” - Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“Growing up with ADHD the moral judgment was I must be so lazy, selfish, I don't care about anyone else and I let everyone down because I'm so distracted. You just build up this view of yourself where you are a burden on everyone around you.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“The difference between normal people who procrastinate and ADHD people who procrastinate is like we procrastinate until we want to kill ourselves.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“Let’s start celebrating the pros of atypical brains. So many great artists aren't neurotypical and we want them to feel less shame about it.” Daniels (Scheinert) #3bookspodcast

“There's something so freeing about reading stories that are funny and perverted and profound. Where all the characters aren’t aspirational.” Daniels (Scheinert) #3bookspodcast

“I don't want to be a comedian who just makes people laugh. Like, that's kind of just the fast food of art. I want to say things and poke at things and get into provocative nooks and crannies.” Daniels (Scheinert) #3bookspodcast

“We don’t take drugs to come up with ideas. We take drugs to turn off the ideas.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“I spent most of my life with my brain in this box of morality and a more traditional worldview. The moment that it got released, it forced me to stretch out in every direction in ways that I think some people usually wouldn't want to so creatively.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

I like being a cheerleader for my friend’s most unpronounceable ideas.” Daniels (Scheinert) #3bookspodcast

“We teach kids to be creative for the first few years of their life and then we teach them how to quit being so creative for the next 10 years of their lives.” Daniels (Scheinert) #3bookspodcast

“School is designed to create obedient factory workers. What we need to be teaching is emotional intelligence and resilience and collaboration and kindness.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“When we're a team of fifty and we share all our food and we raise each other's children we're kind of an unstoppable species.” Daniels (Scheinert) #3bookspodcast

“We are the summation or the amalgamation of all of our influences, all the things that we consumed and read and watched while we were growing up.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

“We live in this world that is kind of post-physical and kind of the fictions and the other realities that are colliding with our brains at all times is now woven into how we look at the world.” Daniels (Kwan) #3bookspodcast

connect with daniels:

word of the chapter:

Resources Mentioned:

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