Fort York
Friday, June 23, 2023

Everything EVERYWHERE all at once

With the short film Short Round Up

In only their second feature together, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Schienert (also known as the “Daniels”) have exceeded all expectations with their Best Picture Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once (affectionately nicknamed EEAAO by its many fans). This film explores an endless number of parallel worlds and alternate versions of its characters, who all have one modest goal in mind: to discover the purpose of life. Starring 2022’s most lauded acting quartet, Michelle Yeoh (also appearing at TOPS in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the Chinese-American Wang family’s trials and tribulations take the audience through an action-packed journey with a wacky, wholehearted story that will be a beloved favourite for decades to come. 

The hilarious and heartwarming short documentary Short Round Up is a truly tailor-made pairing for EEAAO. In 1983, Toronto filmmaker Nobu Adilman was one of hundreds of Asian boys who auditioned for the role of Indy’s sidekick Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – a role that ultimately went to then-unknown child actor Ke Huy Quan. Several decades later, still wondering what could have been in a world where he got the role, Adilman rounds up a cohort of other people who auditioned for the role, learning about their experiences as wannabe child stars, their complex relationships with the final film, and their perspectives on Asian representation in pop culture. Adilman searched in vain for an interview with Quan for many years and could only speculate on his career, making the original Short Round’s triumphant comeback a few years later in Everything Everywhere All At Once the icing on the cake of an already delightful short.