‘Everything’ wins best picture, is everywhere at Oscars

The metaphysical multiverse comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once” wrapped its hot dog fingers around Hollywood’s top prize Sunday, winning best picture at the 95th Academy Awards, along with awards for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Though worlds away from Oscar bait, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s anarchic ballet of everything bagels, googly-eyed rocks and one messy tax audit emerged as an improbable Academy Awards heavyweight. The indie hit, A24’s second best picture winner following “Moonlight,” won seven Oscars in all. Only two other films in Oscar history — “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Network” — won three acting Academy Awards.

Fifty years after “The Godfather” won at the Oscars, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” triumphed with a much different immigrant experience. Its eccentric tale about a Chinese immigrant family — just the second feature by the Daniels, as the filmmaking duo is known — blended science fiction and alternate realities in the story of an ordinary woman and laundromat owner.

“The world is changing rapidly and I fear our stories are not keeping that pace,” said Kwan, who shared best director and best original screenplay with Scheinert. “Sometimes it’s a little scary knowing that movies move at the rate of years and the world on the internet is moving at the rate of milliseconds. But I have great faith in our stories.”

Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win best actress, taking the award for her lauded performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The 60-year-old Malaysian-born Yeoh won her first Oscar for a performance that relied as much on her comic and dramatic chops as it did her kung fu skills. It’s the first best actress win for a non-white actress in 20 years.

“Ladies, don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re past your prime,” said Yeoh, who received a raucous standing ovation.

“Everything Everywhere,” released all the way back in March 2022, helped revive arthouse cinemas after two years of pandemic, racking up more than $100 million in ticket sales with scant initial expectations of Oscar glory. In winning best director, the Daniels — both 35 years old — are just the third directing pair to win the award, following Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (“West Side Story”) and Joel and Ethan Coen (“No Country for Old Men”). Scheinert dedicated the award “to the moms of the world.”

Best actor went to Brendan Fraser, culminating the former action star’s return to center stage for his physical transformation as a 600-lb. reclusive professor in “The Whale.” The bestactor race had been one of the closest contests of the night, but Fraser in the end edged out Austin Butler.

“So this is what the multiverse looks like,” said a clearly moved Fraser, pointing to the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” crew.

Jordan Strauss/Associated Press Ke Huy Quan, from left, Michelle Yeoh, Brendan Fraser and Jamie Lee Curtis pose with their awards at the Oscars on Sunday in Los Angeles.