Every Minute of Everything Everywhere All At Once

Jobu grabs Evelyn's hands and pries them apart in a slow, playground-style gesture — not the hand vagina from the hallway, something new — and the gap between their fingers becomes a window. Through it we see Temple Jobu's eyes, serene and goddess-like, perfectly aligned with the hurt, human Jobu standing right in front of Evelyn. The window rises past her bagel hair bun and then higher, revealing the actual bagel, now here, in the atrium. Everything starts getting pulled in. Two of Jobu's own acolytes go first. Then Daniel Kwan, in a cameo that ends with his face tearing off to reveal another identical face underneath. Jobu says she doesn't care if Evelyn comes with her — enjoy your life — and walks toward the stairs with Deirdre marching behind her. Evelyn Naruto-runs through the foliage, lands in front of her like an anime character, and Jobu just smiles, nods, and turns away.We open with something that didn't land until after last week's recording: Evelyn crossing back to Waymond without reaching for her daughter can only read, from Jobu's side, as I won't do this with you, but go ahead. Which is worse than a rejection. We also dig into why the film slowed this moment way down instead of doing it anime-style like the script describes, the three possible readings of Jobu's "I knew it" face, and why the Daniels refused every easier version of this beat. Plus: Evelyn choking Deirdre in a way that is genuinely too violent to be funny, the Daniel Kwan cameo and the ethics of director cameos generally, spaghettification, and an unpixelated glimpse behind the movie magic.Heads up: we've got a bonus episode coming at the end of the month on the 2018 Halloween requel, because we can't stay away from Jamie Lee Curtis.Show archive
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Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & Literature
The Exorcist Minute

Evelyn and Waymond are still holding each other, lit by the colors of infinite worlds, laughing like two people who can't believe they found each other. Then the lights fade, the music quiets, her fist unclenches — and a long, stretched-out, echoing voice comes through from somewhere else: ooooooh. It's Jobu, finishing the word "cute," in a brand new outfit covered in neon, teddy bear sleeves, and a single strand of hair curled on her forehead spelling out her name. She pulls Evelyn into the temple, points at the bagel, says come on. Evelyn walks out of frame — and reappears in the atrium, back beside her husband. Jobu nods. She says: I get it. And then, very deliberately: eventually, that all just goes away.We spend most of this one on Jobu's rejection, and why it's one of the rawest moments a villain gets. She didn't just lose the argument; she opened herself up in the rock universe and got turned down, and Evelyn choosing happiness is proof that the thing Jobu built her whole philosophy around might not be true. We talk about how rarely a major female villain gets to be devastated in a specifically feminine register rather than being made monstrous by masculinizing her, and compare that to Nurse Ratched, Annie Wilkes, and Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky. Plus: three of our barbershop quartet are now Jobu's guards (armed with pencils, scissors, and a keyboard), why they're dressed for the New Year's party, Jobu imposing a fake deadline on an infinite bagel, and a long, unplanned detour into bodkins.Show archive
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Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & Literature
The Exorcist Minute

We made it to the line. Foxy Waymond finishes it — in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you — laughs a small rueful laugh, and walks out of the alley and out of the movie for good. And then the film does something you don't expect: instead of cutting to Cinderella Evelyn's reaction, it cuts to our Evelyn, in the atrium, receiving that speech while looking at a completely different Waymond sweeping up broken glass in a laundromat. She crosses the room and hugs him. He drops the dustpan.We spend a good chunk of this one on translation. A listener sent us a Tumblr post years ago arguing the English subtitle is a slight mistranslation, and that the Mandarin is closer to "if we had another life, I would still choose to do taxes and open a laundromat with you" — a rich man explicitly saying he'd trade all of it. We dig into both versions, and then Kynan points out the chronology runs backwards from what everyone assumes: the English was in the script first, and the subtitles came from the script rather than from the performance.Plus: the smiley face stamped into the dustpan, why the sound of it hitting the floor isn't the sound a dustpan makes, the googly eye Waymond snuck onto a lantern two hours earlier that the movie deliberately didn't show us at the time, and Evelyn laughing so hard the tears come out sideways. This is the end of Act Two.Show archive
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Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & Literature
The Exorcist Minute

Evelyn says "It's too late, Waymond." And then, after a long pause, reaches out and takes his hand. That single touch opens everything: the two of them as newlyweds with their hands stacked on the couch, Waymond turning from the TV to ask if she saw that (she didn't, she was looking at him), tearing the newspaper off the windows of a brand new laundromat, twirling in their apartment, finding the remote under the couch and being genuinely delighted about it. He taps a service bell in a shave-and-a-haircut rhythm and asks what song it is. Then green light creeps across her face and we're in the Hong Kong alley, where Foxy Waymond turns around and says: in another life.And that's where the minute ends. We had to cut the most famous line in the movie in half, which we assume was done to us on purpose.We work through what "it's too late" means when she immediately contradicts it, and land on this: it's too late to be Jobu and too late to be Waymond, and what's coming next is Evelyn mode. We talk about how these aren't flashbacks — she's actually present in these moments, which is exactly the thing Jobu swore she'd never manage again. And Kynan spent most of his research week on that service bell: shave and a haircut goes back to 1800s minstrel songs, becomes the rhythmic skeleton of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," and was used by American POWs in Vietnam as a knock-code because the locals didn't recognize it.Show archive
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Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & Literature
The Exorcist Minute

Atrium Waymond finally finds the words — the only thing I do know is that we have to be kind — and then turns and aims it directly at his wife: please be kind, especially when we don't know what's going on. In the Hong Kong alley, Foxy Waymond tells Evelyn he knows she sees herself as a fighter. So does he. This is how he fights. The music swells. Evelyn is waking up. And then Jobu's voice cuts through with one word — bagel — and the whole thing stops dead. Alpha Gong Gong orders the attack. Jobu steps forward, completely earnest, and tells her mother she could still turn around and avoid all of this.Lester makes the case that this is The Last Temptation of Christ, and Kynan — who covered both the Kazantzakis novel and the Scorsese film on the other show — agrees completely. The temptation on the cross wasn't power or bread or kingdoms. It was a normal life: come down, get married, have children, grow old, don't be the son of man. That's the one that actually lands for a regular person, and it's exactly what Jobu is offering here. You don't have to be the hero. You can just walk away.We also dig into why the be-kind speech doesn't exist in the 2017 draft, what changed between 2016 and 2020 to put it there, and how differently it hits now. Plus: why Foxy Waymond calling kindness a strategy reframes the whole thing, and how that connects to the genuinely radical pacifism of Jesus, Gandhi, and King, which was never about overcoming anyone.Show archive
Banana for Scale Facebook Group
Connect with Kynan on Instagram or Letterboxd
Connect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X

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Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:The Devil's Details: The Evolution of the Devil Through Art & Literature
The Exorcist Minute