Everything Everywhere All At Once

'Everything Everywhere All At Once' has lots of bravura rapid-fire scenes that likely helped editor Paul Rogers earn an Oscar nomination today.

“So it was a lot of figuring out when we needed to give the audience a break, which was not that often.” “How to make sure that the audience was invested in these characters emotionally and that we were staying true throughout this two-and-a-half-hour film to the characters’ journey,” Rogers said of the challenge. The worst day on the movie was the day we locked (the print) and I realized it was over. Unlike the rest of the industry, Rogers said, “I had this really wonderful project that I cared about with my friends who I could get on a Zoom (call) and talk to every day and then keep my mind off the world by focusing on the story. Unlike the start-slow-and-build approach of many action films, Rogers said EEAAO took a different approach, launching at an explosive pace, before ending, more or less, with a scene featuring two rocks “talking” in the forest. “He gave me a lot of good advice in general, but one of the pieces he gave me was at the very beginning: don't think big picture, because you'll drown, you'll get overwhelmed,’” Rogers said. “But I think being there and seeing the kind of love for other actors and other directors that was just being shown amongst colleagues and friends, that cynicism started to wash away the more that I was there, and the more that I saw that genuine celebration of a lot of people's hard work and sacrifice and histories. And it was clear to me in our making of it, it was like a joke amongst us of like, wouldn't that be funny? “But I was lucky,” Rogers said. “Actually the first person that really mentioned it to me was (lead actor) Ke (Huy Quan) after we did the friends and family screening. Early on, they talked through the script with Rogers, “to workshop it, without any kind of presumption of involvement on my part.” “And I think that was clear in the (spring timing of the) release of it.