‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’: Raccacoonie Was Actually a Real Raccoon Corpse
A24’s smash movie Everything Everywhere All at Once has become a global success following its premiere in spring 2022. The movie featured many sequences that seemed impossible to film. Even some special props were created for the film specifically to create a lifelike feel.
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ stars Michelle Yeoh
Crazy Rich Asians star Michelle Yeoh stars in Everything Everywhere All at Once as a woman who finds herself in the middle of a fight for humanity across multiple universes. The film takes Yeoh and her co-stars through various universes, including one where people have hot dogs for fingers.
The movie clearly doesn’t shy away from the ridiculous. One character in the film, Raccacoonie, is a raccoon who works with a chef to cook food, much like the plot of the classic Pixar film Ratatouille.
Before Raccacoonie appears on screen, Yeoh’s character misremembers the title of the iconic Pixar movie. But the inclusion of Raccacoonie in the movie was used to emphasize the size of the multiverse.
Co-director Daniel Scheinert spoke about Raccacoonie in an interview with Vulture.
“The idea that whatever she got wrong was real was a very exciting way to explore the multiverse,” he said. “That’s always when we know a joke is going to be worth pursuing—when first the idea is so ridiculous that we can’t stop thinking about it.”
Raccacoonie was a real raccoon
Bringing Raccacoonie to life on screen was a whole other story. In an interview with The Ringer, makeup and effects supervisor Jason Hamer revealed just how he made the incredible Raccacoonie prop.
“The guys were like, ‘Think cheap. We don’t want it to look good. It should look goofy, like a bad taxidermy,'” he recalled. “That was one of the challenges. The guys [were] going, ‘Cheap and quick and dirty.’ And I’m going, ‘No. Cool and beautiful and funny!’”
Ultimately, Hamer opted to use an actual taxidermy raccoon for the project. He planned to turn the raccoon carcass into an animatronic device with machinery inside
It was easier said than done to make it camera-ready. “You’ve got to think about the challenges of, you’ve got an actor and we’ve got to mount it to his head,” he said. “Are we going to do puppet arms? Are we going to make it animatronic?”
Hamer has been nominated at the Emmy Awards for his work in makeup and effects on the hit HBO series Westworld. So to create something that purposely looked shoddily put together, Hamer had to control his artistic impulses.
“It’s going not as far as you would like to go, is basically what it is,” he said. “It’s taking less time to blend the hair, or painting on the fur.”
