Minute 87 - We Put Randy Newman On A Bagel!

Everything in This MinuteIn minute 87 of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Opera Evelyn collapses onstage and Gong Gong rushes to help, calling her name in Cantonese. She gets up on her own and pushes past him, exiting stage left. We get a final shot from behind the ornamental archway—a clear circle—with Evelyn leaving the circle and leaving Gong Gong alone on stage.We follow Evelyn into the Teppanyaki kitchen where she's now Teppanyaki Evelyn. As she emerges through the partition, she looks at her uniform and her eyes catch something. Before we even see who she's looking at, we hear singing: a voice sings "we're a family," a deeper voice responds "culinarily," the first voice repeats it, and both sing "now we're cookin'." We pan out and reveal Chad—with a raccoon perched on his head pulling tufts of his hair to manipulate his arms and help him cook. It's Raccacoonie, voiced by none other than Randy Newman.Evelyn mouths "Raccacooni?" in utter disbelief. Over her shoulder looking at them from the back, we hear Raccacoonie say "yeah, we make a pretty good team." They continue singing, but Evelyn has grabbed a knife sharpener. The noise makes our singers turn around in surprise—but it's Raccacoonie who notices first (he's the one controlling Chad). Chad turns and says "you can't tell anyone," but Raccacoonie makes an executive decision: "she's seen too much, you know what that means." Evelyn puts her hands up and begins backing away as Raccacoonie pulls Chad's hair saying "get her, get her." Chad's arms begin to flail and he says "I'm begging you," but his hand suddenly brandishes a spatula—a teppanyaki spatula that still makes that shink metal knife sound. Chad and Rackakoonie advance, and Evelyn, terrified, backs through the partition and into the hot dog universe.This is our first callback to that universe since the laundromat scene. Evelyn puts her hands up to her eyes which have been blindfolded—and that's when we see the hot dog fingers. Then we're suddenly in the room with them looking at Evelyn. Her blindfold is off, resting around her neck, and she's looking around at a room that's been made to feel romantic with soft candles and wine on the table. It's obviously a home. Behind her we've got hot dog Deirdre watching her take it all in, hopeful, looking like she can barely contain herself.Evelyn's first words are "what do you want?" Deirdre says "I want you" and proceeds to do the little dance we saw in the hot dog version of Soldier and Queen. Evelyn puts up a finger and says "no, stop that," wagging her finger at Deirdre. Of course that makes her see her finger and she can't take how ridiculous this all is. She shakes her head almost like she's trying to shake herself out of this universe. Suddenly we cut to our Soldier and Queen and they're doing the dance with hot dog fingers flapping. This is intercut with hot dog Deirdre advancing as Evelyn backs away, still holding her finger out saying "nope, stay back, this is wrong, stop it." We've got Deirdre trying to say "but it's not wrong."This Episode All at OnceWe dive deep into the circle imagery and what it means that Evelyn leaves the circle where Gong Gong stands alone. This Opera universe is the only place we've seen Gong Gong in a circle, and it's also the only universe where he's a loving father. The idea is that Evelyn could stay here in this circle with her father who loves her—very tempting—but instead she chooses to leave that circle and go after Joy. But then we debate: who is actually piloting Opera Evelyn's body at that moment? Is it our Evelyn making an emergency exit to save the world, or is Opera Evelyn herself a diva who treats her Gong Gong poorly and brushes him off? The same action could read as rejection or heroism depending on who's in control.We go on a fascinating tangent about pet care sociology and how forced proximity changes relationships. Back in the 80s, dogs were never allowed inside—now we have a billion-dollar pet industry with people calling their pets "children." Being around them 24 hours a day changed how we think about them. This parallels the idea that maybe Opera Gong Gong was forced to care intimately for his disabled daughter after her accident, and that forced proximity made him grow closer to her and become the loving father he is now—versus our universe where Evelyn resents having to care for her disabled father.We get an EXTENSIVE Randy Newman deep dive covering his entire career. We talk about how revolutionary it was in Toy Story that the characters weren't singing their own songs (contrast with Disney Renaissance Broadway-style numbers). We learn about the Newman family dynasty: his uncle Alfred Newman composed the Fox studio theme song, his cousin Thomas Newman scored Finding Nemo and Shawshank Redemption. We cover Randy's pop hits like "I Love L.A." (Dodgers stadium song) and "Short People" (parody song about racism that completely fooled Lester). We go through "Political Science" (satirical 1972 song about dropping nuclear bombs—"Let's drop the big one, there'll be no one left to blame us"). We discuss how Pixar eventually had to wean themselves off Randy Newman because they feared becoming a parody of themselves, doing the same movie over and over. We cover the Family Guy Randy Newman parody ("Fat man with his kids and dog"). We learn that Rackakoonie is voiced by Randy Newman but he's not credited in the film, and that he didn't score Ratatouille because Pixar had already moved on from relying on him. The lyrics to the Rackakoonie song ("we're a family, culinarily") were written by Son Lux, probably with Daniels consultation, and they're the perfect parody of what Randy Newman does while also being exactly what Randy Newman does.We talk about the raccoon puppet itself—it's made from a taxidermied real raccoon (not animatronic, not Jim Henson style), which is why it looks so real but moves in that herky-jerky puppet way. The obviously fake puppet makes the whole thing way funnier, just like Debbie the Dog Mom's obviously fake dog Tawny. We learn that the Rackakoonie puppet sold at the A24 auction for $90,000—the most expensive prop from the film, even more than the Winnebago. It went to benefit the Asian Mental Health Project.We discuss sound design and "snickersnack"—the term for that metal-on-metal sound effect when metal moves through air (like swords being drawn or the teppanyaki spatula being brandished), even though it wouldn't actually make that sound in real life. We talk about how this appears everywhere: guns being picked up going "ch-ch-ch," bats going "whoosh" when swung at zombies.Then we have a serious, extended conversation about the hot dog Deirdre/Evelyn scene and whether it constitutes assault. We examine the history of this trope in comedy—Pepe Le Pew sexually assaulting the cat, Peg Leg Pete chasing Minnie, Revenge of the Nerds (where the hero literally rapes someone through deception). We discuss how comedy has been filled with this for decades and we're only now recognizing how problematic it is. We talk about how the scene could be read as mistaken identity (Evelyn accidentally doing the mating dance), or as Deirdre not recognizing that her wife is saying no, or as the movie using the absurdity of hot dog fingers to make us overlook what's actually happening. We discuss how younger listeners might not understand that we grew up genuinely not thinking this was wrong, and how scary it is that current manosphere/alpha bro culture is erasing progressive work that's been done. We explore whether hot dog Evelyn and Deirdre's relationship was already on the rocks before our Evelyn showed up—Deirdre's romantic surprise could be a Hail Mary attempt to fix a rift between them, to rekindle why they fell in love. We debate whether Deirdre saying "it...