Timothy Eulich Interview: Everything Everywhere All At Once

It’s safe to say that Hollywood is embracing the era of the Multiverse, with A24’s new movie Everything Everywhere All At Once drilling right to the core of that idea. Combining sci-fi, comedy, martial arts, and family drama, Everything Everywhere All At Once is heavy on action scenes right out of an old school Hong Kong movie. Stunt coordinator Timothy Eulich was the man tasked with handling the Multiverse-zipping action of the movie.

Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (or “Daniels”, as they’re known together), Everything Everywhere All At Once stars Michelle Yeoh as laundromat owner Evelyn Wang. In the midst of difficulties in both her business and her family life, Evelyn suddenly finds herself tasked with saving the entire Multiverse. With another version of her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) of another universe helping her out, Evelyn takes on the skills and abilities her alternate selves in order to complete her most unexpected mission.

We spoke to Eulich on the making of Everything Everywhere All At Once, working with a legend of martial arts films like Michelle Yeoh, and designing the action of the movie’s wild Multiverse adventure.

Screen Rant: You’ve worked with the directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert before on Swiss Army Man. How did that come about as the genesis of your working relationship with them?

Timothy Eulich: Actually, that wasn’t the genesis of my working with them. I’d been working with them before Swiss Army Man, and that’s information that you wouldn’t be able to find on IMDB or anything. I started working with them about eleven years ago on a music video they directed for a song called “My Machine”. The concept of this music video is they wanted to do it all in one shot, and have a stunt actor falling down an upward-moving escalator for the entire four-minute duration of the song. And I was that guy falling down that escalator for the 13 hour-long night shoot for this music video, and it was one of the more painful jobs I did as a stunt performer.

I developed this relationship with them there, and a lot of other crew members from Everything Everywhere All At Once started working with them on that music video, as well. The production designer Jason is one of them, and there’s a handful of others. We’ve all been working with them on all of their commercials and music videos and Swiss Army Man, and now Everything Everywhere All At Once ever since.

Was Swiss Army Man your first feature with them?

Timothy Eulich: It was. It was their first feature and it was the first one that I did with them.

Was Everything Everywhere All At Once being discussed at the time as their next project?

Timothy Eulich: That’s a great question, and not necessarily something I could answer. From my understanding, they started writing Everything Everywhere All At Once around 2016. The first draft of it that I saw was probably sometime in 2019, close to a year before we actually started filming it.

So, working with Michelle Yeoh on Everything Everywhere All At Once, she’s such a legend from her work in Hong Kong movies, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. You also had a bit of a time crunch on training for all the action scenes in the movie, which was only about three days, right?

Timothy Eulich: Yes, that’s accurate. She’s a busy woman. Her work was highly influential in my decision to become a stunt coordinator and an action designer. I’m first and foremost a huge fan, so it was such a privilege and so exciting to work with her in this capacity. We did not have a whole lot of time to train and prep with her. She had a lot on her plate, she’s in almost every single frame of this movie, so I can only imagine what she was dealing with on a daily basis preparing for this huge role. As a stunt coordinator, we only had three days to work with her and only maybe an hour or two each day.

She would come in, we would teach her the movements, we would put her in some of the wire rigs we had with her to do a little bit of rehearsal, and work through the action. She would never go full out and she would film it on her phone, and when we would get onto set on the days we would be doing these big action sequences, we’d try to get in a little bit of rehearsal with her in between set ups of other scenes. But it was a lot to ask of her to be rehearsing while she was filming some of the more acting heavy sequences. We’d work through the fight and the action with all of the other performers for camera and when we called action, she would absolutely just turn it on and send it in this beautiful display of balletic violence. It was just awesome to watch!

Well, Everything Everywhere All At Once has the Multiverse angle to it, but it’s also paying tribute to a lot of the Hong Kong movies that Michelle Yeoh launched her career in. What would you say were some of the major influences on the action from your perspective as the stunt coordinator?

Timothy Eulich: Yeah, I mean it was really the genre of Hong Kong-style action, Shaw Brothers and Jackie Chan movies. Overall, stylistically, that was what we were aiming to pay homage to. We grew up consuming these movies and it was really exciting to have an opportunity to design action sequences that reflect a style of action that was so influential to all of us when we were growing up.

What would you say is your personal favorite action sequence in the movie? 

Timothy Eulich: Man, that’s a tough question, Brad. That’s like asking who your favorite child is! When we were filming it, everybody, the whole cast and crew, just had a feeling that this was something special, and seeing the reaction it’s been getting so far has just been so wonderful to see. So, I’ve got a favorite bits for a few different reasons, because everything is a little bit different. With the whole Multiverse angle, there’s different styles of movements and stunts throughout the movie. The first fight you see in the movie is the fanny pack fight where Ke’s character Waymond fights some IRS guards with his fanny pack. I love that fight, the juxtaposition of using this really silly, kind of nerdy fanny pack as a devastating weapon was really exciting to me. It just combines humor and an opportunity to build this controlled chaos all together. It’s funny and devastating, and it’s such a great way to move the story forward and gave us an opportunity to enrich the stories and the action. And, it also really develops the characters. You learn so much about Ke’s character Waymond and Michelle’s character Evelyn in that fight. so, that one was really great, I love that one.

And then, as a fan of classic Hong Kong cinema, there’s a fight a little later on – a little spoiler here – there’s butt plugs in it, or trophies used as butt plugs. We built that in some very large pieces, so you could really see the three performers who are involved with that fight, just incredible performers in this style of action. And, of course, Michelle is one of them. you can really see in the shots of the characters the full scope of these performers performing all of this very, very intricate, detailed Hong Kong martial arts sequence, all while they have butt plugs hanging out of their rear-ends! We built some really fun wire rigs in there too, and again, it’s kind of a spoiler, but the way that one of them lands on one of these trophies, we really wanted to see that whole story unfolding. That was a really fun one to build.

Then, there’s a fight that was the “empathy fight”, where Evelyn learns to fight with empathy, with love. She learns to fight like her husband Waymond would fight, and there’s a piece in there where she jumps on Harry Shum’s shoulders, grabs onto his hair, and puppeteers him to fight off a horde of Alpha-jumper bad guys. So, we designed rig, which we called the “Raccacoonie rig”, which you see a few other places in the film, that is one of my favorite visuals from the film. You have Michelle Yeoh sitting on top of Harry Shum’s shoulders, grabbing onto his hair, and Harry is performing these exquisite martial arts movements and fighting off all of these bad guys. It’s such a fun visual and I really, really loved the way the Daniels shot that action.

You also mentioned Ke Huy Quan as Waymond. He’s of course remembered as Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and he really showed his Tae Kwon Do abilities in a movie called Breathing Fire. He’d gotten out of the business for a while and Everything Everywhere All At Once is really his re-entry, so what was it like working with him?

Timothy Eulich: Yeah, it was great working with him. He’s such a lovely man, and such a hard worker. He really put a lot and effort into this role and you could tell how passionate he was about making sure that he was serving that character. From my perspective as a stunt coordinator, one of his big fights was the fanny pack fight, as I mentioned. He is the star of the fight, and we really wanted to see the actors doing as much of the action as possible in all of the fights. You really see that shine through, everybody really stepped up. I think having Michelle Yeoh as number one on the call sheet really inspired everyone to bring their A-game and really rehearse all of their action to try to step up to her level, which is really cool.

Ke would come into rehearsals, he would work with us and get lots of reps with the choreography in. Then when our rehearsal time would be over, he wouldn’t leave, he would go off into a corner of the rehearsal room and he would keep on working on those movements. And then, when we had to shut it down for the day, he would take his fanny pack prop back home and continue to work, and I could tell he was working out at home because every day, he came back in and he was even better than he was the day before. He just did that on repeat, and it really shines through in this fanny pack fight. He’s just awesome.

You also had a lot of other martial artists in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Harry Shum Jr. as you mentioned, but also the folks from Martial Club on YouTube, so it’s quite an ensemble of not just Michelle Yeoh but also some up and coming stars creating the action.

Timothy Eulich: Yeah, we were really fortunate to have all of them in play. I don’ think we could’ve pulled it off without them, without Michelle especially. Just the scope of the character work she had to do for this is just incredible and there’s so many levels to it, and then being able to perform these intricate action sequences, there’s nobody else who could’ve done this. And then, having the Martial Club boys there, Andy and Brian [Le], the directors found them on YouTube and really liked them. They are living Encyclopedias of Hong Kong cinema and brought this raw talent and energy to the set that was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed working with them.

What other projects do you have in the works after Everything Everywhere All At Once?

Timothy Eulich: I did some work on Stranger Things season 4 with stunt coordination, and I was also fight choreographer on the movie Babylon.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is in wide release in theaters now.