Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Breakout Character Was Made From a Real Raccoon Corpse
Andrew Mccoy “It’s really not that crazy,
A couple of mammals makin’ gravy.
Together you and me,
A multispecies team,
We’re a family,
Culinarily.”
A raccoon sings this song to his human buddy, a hibachi chef, in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The raccoon is voiced by Randy Newman, the song is a jaunty little ditty. The scene is a sweet idyll riffing on Pixar tropes …
… But it is secretly a filmed document of Cronenbergian mutilation and body horror that makes the fox from Antichristlook like Paddington Bear. The Ringer has revealed that Raccacoonie used “an actual taxidermied raccoon as a skeleton for both internal machinery and external prosthetics.” In other words, they split open a raccoon corpse and outfitted it with robot parts to bring its body to shambling life beyond death. Makeup-and-effects supervisor Jason Hamer didn’t want it to be this way. He says Everything All at Once directing duo Daniels “were like, ‘Think cheap. We don’t want it to look good. It should look goofy, like a bad taxidermy.’”
And consider poor Harry Shum Jr., who had to wear the 15-pound reanimated roadkill on his head, and who apparently entered some sort of Stockholm Syndrome relationship with it. Shum Jr. “appreciated the use of practical effects … eschewing CGI for Raccacoonie,” per the Ringer. At least the raccoon wasn’t really pulling his hair; they outfitted his little claws with extensions. Now revisit the abomination’s scenes for yourself and witness a dead raccoon voiced by Randy Newman spit in God’s eye.
