Absurdist fiction is a genre of novels , plays , poems , films , or other media that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life , most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. In some cases, it may overlap with literary nonsense .
150-445: Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 American absurdist comedy-drama film written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert , who produced it with Anthony and Joe Russo and Jonathan Wang . The film incorporates elements from several genres and film media, including surreal comedy , science fiction , fantasy , martial arts films , immigrant narrative , and animation . Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Quan Wang ,
300-523: A BAFTA Award , and a record four SAG Awards (including Best Ensemble ). Evelyn Quan Wang is a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond. Two decades earlier, they eloped to the United States and had a daughter, Joy. In the present day, Evelyn is enduring multiple struggles: the laundromat is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); Waymond
450-550: A Chinese-American immigrant who, while audited by the IRS , discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse . The film also stars Stephanie Hsu , Ke Huy Quan , Jamie Lee Curtis , and James Hong . Kwan and Scheinert began work on the project in 2010. Production was announced in 2018, and principal photography ran from January to March 2020. The works of Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai , as well as
600-413: A MacGuffin : a doomsday device. If, in the first half of the movie, people think that the bagel is here to destroy the world, and in the second half you realize it's a depressed person trying to destroy themselves, it just takes everything about action movies and turns it into something more personal." The writer George Gillett argues that the movie is "a coming-of-age film for the internet generation", with
750-512: A weighted average , assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by PostTrak gave it an 89% positive score, with 77% saying that they would definitely recommend it. David Ehrlich of IndieWire called the film an "orgiastic work of slaphappy genius", praising the direction and performances, particularly Yeoh's, calling it the "greatest performance that Michelle Yeoh has ever given". The Hollywood Reporter ' s David Rooney called it
900-523: A "frenetically plotted serve of stoner heaven [that] is insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun", complimenting the cast and score but found the handling of the story's underlying theme underwhelming. In her review for RogerEbert.com , Marya E. Gates lauded Yeoh's performance, writing, "Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion, often just from
1050-427: A "going away from" a norm. There is also the case of the questioning of the validity of human reason, from which perceptions of the natural laws arise. The absurdist fiction also does not seek to appeal to the so-called collective unconscious as it is fiercely individualistic and almost exclusively focuses on exploring an individual's or a being's subjective feelings of its existence. The absurdist genre grew out of
1200-420: A Long Period of Time". Armond White of National Review wrote: "Unschooled Marvel addicts who never heard of Kafka , Buñuel , or Chuck Jones easily fall for the entropy farce. The Daniels refuse narrative convention in order to represent our culture's gradual decline into disorder.... The film's ultimate message: "Be Kind," spoken by two rocks. It's a childish palliative.... Yeoh brings adult stability to
1350-512: A comic futility that can be compared to slapstick comedy and cartoon characters such as the characters Tom and Jerry. The relationship between the two characters in Waiting for Godot (Vladimir and Estragon) is whimsical, interdependent yet irritable. Their nature, dialogue and interactions are reminiscent of familiar comical duos such as Laurel and Hardy and Tom and Jerry . Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service ( IRS )
1500-578: A courtroom via criminal prosecutions to curtail the activities of some of these groups, IRS can do by administrative action." By 1986, limited electronic filing of tax returns was possible. The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 ("RRA 98") changed the organization from geographically oriented to an organization based on four operating divisions. It added "10 deadly sins" that require immediate termination of IRS employees found to have committed certain misconduct. Enforcement activities declined. The IRS Oversight Board noted that
1650-412: A decline in the number of paper returns being processed each year. As a result, the IRS implemented a consolidation plan for its paper tax return processing centers, closing five of its ten processing centers between 2003 and 2011. The agency closed two more centers - one in 2019 and another in 2021 - as e-file use continued to expand. E-filed tax returns accounted for 90% of all returns submitted during
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#17328518032441800-750: A dramatic form inherently pushes theatre to the extreme, while posing questions about what both reality and unreality truly look like. Martin Esslin named the four defining playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd movement as Samuel Beckett , Arthur Adamov , Eugène Ionesco , and Jean Genet . In later editions of his essay he included a fifth playwright, Harold Pinter . Other writers that are also associated with this movement by Esslin and other critics are Tom Stoppard , Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Fernando Arrabal , Edward Albee , Boris Vian , and Jean Tardieu . The Theatre of
1950-650: A fifth of the Union's war expenses before being allowed to expire a decade later. In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, authorizing Congress to impose a tax on income and leading to the creation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue . In 1953, the agency was renamed the Internal Revenue Service, and in subsequent decades underwent numerous reforms and reorganizations, most significantly in
2100-406: A fragmented story, it increases "the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning statistical regularities". Franz Kafka , Jean-Paul Sartre , Samuel Beckett , Eugène Ionesco , Albert Camus , Saul Bellow , Donald Barthelme and Cormac McCarthy are considered to be the most well-known composers of absurdist fiction. Kafka (1883–1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist, and
2250-469: A glance or a reaction." Bramesco praised the Daniels for constructing a "large, elaborate, polished, and detailed expression of a vision," Amy Nicholson of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "Over its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, the movie's ambitions double, and double again, as though it's a petri dish teeming with Mr. Kwan and Mr. Scheinert's wildest ideas." Some reviewers called Yeoh's performance
2400-455: A government agency." Requard admitted that he saw the returns but denied that he leaked them. Reporter Jack White of The Providence Journal won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting about Nixon's tax returns. Nixon, with a salary of $ 200,000, paid $ 792.81 in federal income tax in 1970 and $ 878.03 in 1971, with deductions of $ 571,000 for donating "vice-presidential papers". This was one of
2550-493: A lack of casting opportunities. Kwan and Scheinert were inspired to cast Quan after seeing a meme of former New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang being shown as a grown-up version of Short Round , Quan's character from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). They were curious to learn what Quan had been doing, and learned that he was the right age to portray Waymond. Coincidentally, Quan had returned to acting, inspired by
2700-669: A limited theatrical release in the United States on March 25, before a wide release by A24 on April 8. Grossing $ 143.4 million worldwide on a $ 14.3–25 million production budget, it became A24's highest-grossing film and at the 95th Academy Awards , it won seven out of the eleven awards it was nominated for: Best Picture , Best Actress (Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Curtis), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Kwan and Scheinert, and Best Editing . The film also won two Golden Globe Awards , five Critics' Choice Awards (including Best Picture ),
2850-600: A lyric on their single WOKE UP . It won seven of its 11 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture , Best Director , Best Actress (Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Curtis), Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing including six above-the-line wins (picture, director, screenplay and acting), tying the record with 1944's Going My Way , and a record-tying three acting wins. The film received 10 BAFTA nominations (winning one), 13 Critics' Choice Movie Awards nominations (winning five), eight Independent Spirit Awards nominations (winning
3000-437: A meaningless universe." Describing Jobu Tupaki's modus operandi , Worthington notes "the living contradiction that is the everything bagel: if you put everything on a bagel, what more is left? And if you've experienced everything that the multiverse can offer, what's the point of any of it?" Kwan said that the everything bagel concept "did two things. It allowed us to talk about nihilism without being too eye roll-y. And it creates
3150-484: A messy tax season on several fronts. The email was sent by IRS Commissioner Koskinen to workers. Koskinen predicted the IRS would shut down operations for two days later that year which would result in unpaid furloughs for employees and service cuts for taxpayers . Koskinen also said delays to IT investments of more than $ 200 million may delay new taxpayer protections against identity theft . Also in January 2015,
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#17328518032443300-409: A new login and ID verification process for several of its online tools, including general account access, Identity Protection (IP) PIN setup, and payment plan applications. As part of the agency's Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) initiative, the process included the use of third-party facial recognition technologies to confirm taxpayer identities. The facial recognition requirement
3450-423: A nihilist; should there be dogma ? Should there be a book ? What should their practices be as a religion? The bagel stuck because it became such a useful, simple symbol that we could point to as filmmakers. And you don't have to explain it much beyond the joke." The script was written for Jackie Chan until Kwan and Scheinert reconceived the protagonist as a woman, feeling it would make the husband–wife dynamic in
3600-516: A notorious absurdist. Writers that influenced Kafka include Friedrich Nietzsche , Edgar Allan Poe , Charles Dickens and more. Kafka's most popular fictional stories include " The Judgment ", published in 1912; The Metamorphosis , published 1915; " In the Penal Colony ", published 1919; and " A Hunger Artist ", published 1922. The Trial , written between 1914 and 1915, is recognised as Kafka's most well-known fiction. In its "mythic symbolism of
3750-569: A philosophical movement is an extension of, or divergence from, Existentialism , which focuses on the pointlessness of mankind and specifically the emotional angst and anxiety present when the existence of purpose is challenged. Existentialist and agnostic perspectives are explored in absurdist novels and theatre in their expression of plot and characters. Major absurdist authors include Franz Kafka , Albert Camus , Samuel Beckett , and Eugène Ionesco . A great deal of absurdist fiction may be humorous or irrational in nature. The absurdist humor
3900-458: A picture of a real IRS agent he found online, which Curtis liked and wanted to emulate. Curtis wanted the character to be as "real" as possible and used her real belly for the film, as opposed to a prosthetic. Everything Everywhere All at Once incorporates elements from a number of genres and film mediums, including surreal comedy , science fiction , fantasy , martial arts films and animation . A. O. Scott of The New York Times described
4050-598: A portrayal of Yeoh, that Ke Huy Quan's experience as a stunt coordinator is used diegetically in Waymond's fight scenes, and that James Hong's transformation into "a more sinister, English-fluent, Machiavellian strategist" parallels his character Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China (1986). The musical score was composed by Son Lux , whose members are Ryan Lott , Ian Chang , and Rafiq Bhatia . Daniels asked them to approach
4200-417: A rather heady vehicle for confronting and negotiating Asian-pessimism", a term she uses in reference to Afro-pessimism . Consequence ' s Clint Worthington wrote that "for all its dadaist absurdism and blink-if-you-miss-it pace, Daniels weaves the chaotic possibilities into the multiverse into a cohesive story about the travails of the road not traveled, and the need to carve out your own meaning in
4350-402: A record-breaking four awards); the film became the 5th film to sweep all four top prizes from the major guilds (DGA, PGA, WGA, SAG), after American Beauty , No Country for Old Men , Slumdog Millionaire , and Argo (all 5 films ended up winning Best Picture at their respective Academy Awards). Everything Everywhere All at Once made Academy Awards history in several categories. Yeoh
4500-580: A record-breaking seven), and six Golden Globe Awards nominations (winning two). It was named one of the top 10 films of 2022 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute . The film also won top prizes from the Directors Guild of America Awards , Producers Guild of America Awards , Writers Guild of America Awards , and Screen Actors Guild Awards (the last of which it won
4650-465: A report critical of the lack of protection of privacy in TAS, and the project was abandoned in 1978. In 1995, the IRS began to use the public Internet for electronic filing. Since the introduction of e-filing , self-paced online tax services have flourished, augmenting the work of tax accountants, who were sometimes replaced. By 2002, more than a third of all tax returns were filed electronically. This led to
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4800-791: A result, the IRS now functions under four major operating divisions: The Large Business & International (LB&I) division was known as the Large and Mid-Size Business division prior to a name change on October 1, 2010. The IRS is headquartered in Washington, D.C. , and does most of its computer programming in Maryland. It processes paper tax returns sent by mail and e-filed tax returns at three IRS center locations: Austin, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Ogden, Utah. The IRS also operates computer centers in three locations: Detroit, Michigan; Martinsburg, West Virginia; and Memphis, Tennessee. The IRS
4950-454: A world gone berserk", Kafka's use of mythology, comedy, aphorism and surrealism epitomise the distinctive features of absurdist fiction. Franz Kafka's influence on absurdism was so great that he is referred to by some as the "King of the Absurd" and a leader of the absurd movement. Others argue that Kafka was predominantly a Surrealist , however Kafka clarifies his unique style as "the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to
5100-696: Is a dominating play central to the Theatre of the Absurd , its "dreamlike symphony of nonsensical speech and disjointed associations expose how hopeless human communication is". The "nonsensical speech" and "disjointed associations" are key elements of the Theatre of the Absurd. Most of the dialogue in Ionesco's play has little meaning and frequently there is outright gibberish in the actors' speeches. The satire and nonsensical discourse present throughout Ionesco's text serves his purpose in presenting how nonsensical mundane life can be. Ionesco's engagement with existentialism
5250-609: Is a reaction against the surge in Romanticism in Paris in the 1830s, the collapse of religious tradition in Germany, and the societal and philosophical revolution led by the expressions of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche . Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire , dark humor , incongruity, the abasement of reason , and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing". Absurdist fiction in play form
5400-403: Is also characteristic of absurdist theatre, and distinct in the utilisation of the seemingly ridiculous English language and society's unwillingness to communicate with each other. Ionesco's The Bald Soprano encompasses mankind's inability to engage in communication in a purposeless world, reiterating the influence of Existentialism on Absurdist Fiction and how this presents in texts within
5550-451: Is also prominently featured in the film, as the theme for Deirdre. The world premiere was at the South by Southwest film festival on March 11, 2022. Its limited release in theaters was on March 25, 2022, and its nationwide release was on April 8, in the United States by A24 . On March 30, 2022, the film was released in select IMAX theaters in the U.S. for one night only. Due to its popularity,
5700-462: Is an absurdist fiction text which emphasises in depth the notion of mankind's inability to communicate with each other. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and a Latin and Greek egg scholar who also yielded profound inspiration in Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. Nietzsche is another primary influencer on the philosophy and ideology behind
5850-415: Is another absurdist fiction novelist. Kafka's novel The Trial was published in 1925 after Kafka's death in 1924. Kafka's novel encompasses mankind's inability to engage in communication in a purposeless world. Examples of absurdist fiction writers include: Individual absurdist works include: Examples of notable absurdist filmmakers include: Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) extracts from
6000-457: Is attempting to serve her with divorce papers in an effort to spark a discussion about their marriage; her rigorous father (referred to as Gong Gong , Cantonese for "grandfather)" is visiting for her Chinese New Year party; and she has a strained relationship with Joy, who is battling depression and has a non-Chinese girlfriend, Becky, whom Evelyn is reluctant to accept. At a tense meeting with IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Waymond's body
6150-470: Is blamed for $ 4 billion worth of fraudulent 2012 tax refunds by the IRS. Fraudulent claims were made with the use of stolen taxpayer identification and Social Security numbers, with returns sent to addresses both in the US and internationally. Following the release of the findings, the IRS stated that it resolved most of the identity theft cases of 2013 within 120 days, while the average time to resolve cases from
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6300-447: Is currently led by Daniel Werfel , who became Commissioner of Internal Revenue on March 13, 2023. He succeeded Douglas O'Donnell , who served as Acting Commissioner of Internal Revenue after Charles P. Rettig 's term as Commissioner ended on November 12, 2022. There have been 50 commissioners of Internal Revenue and 28 acting commissioners since the agency's creation in 1862. From May 22, 2013, to December 23, 2013, senior official at
6450-441: Is described as a manner of comedy that relies on non-sequiturs , violation of causality , and unpredictable juxtapositions . However, the hallmark of the genre is neither comedy nor nonsense , but rather, the study of human behavior under circumstances (whether realistic or fantastical) that appear to be purposeless and philosophically absurd . Absurdist fiction posits little judgment about characters or their actions; that task
6600-436: Is known as Absurdist Theatre . Both genres are characterised by a focus on the experience of the characters, centred on the idea that life is incongruous, irreconcilable and meaningless. The integral characteristic of absurdist fiction involves the experience of the struggle to find an intrinsic purpose in life, depicted by characters in their display of meaningless actions in the futile events they take part in. Absurdism as
6750-508: Is left to the reader. Also, the "moral" of the story is generally not explicit, and the themes or characters' realizations — if any — are often ambiguous in nature. Additionally, unlike many other forms of fiction, absurdist works will not necessarily have a traditional plot structure (i.e., rising action, climax, falling action, etc.). The conventional elements of fiction such as plot, characterization, and development tend to be absent. Some scholars explain that this fiction entails
6900-406: Is rendered by Absurdist techniques; an unchanging landscape, characters subjected to random and whimsical acts of violence with cyclical discourse. Beckett captures the sense of perpetual anticipation for meaning in humanity in the portrayal of the relationship between ‘Gogo’ and ‘Didi’, a strong interdependence mixed with irritability. The tragicomedy element to Beckett's absurdist fiction play adds
7050-535: Is taken over by Alpha-Waymond, a version of Waymond from the "Alphaverse." Alpha-Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist (the " multiverse ") because every life choice creates a new alternative universe. In the Alphaverse, the now-deceased Alpha-Evelyn developed "verse-jumping" technology, which enables people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel selves by performing bizarre actions that are statistically unlikely. The multiverse
7200-685: Is the revenue service for the United States federal government , which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code , the main body of the federal statutory tax law. It is an agency of the Department of the Treasury and led by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue , who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The duties of
7350-444: Is threatened by Jobu Tupaki (Alpha-Joy), whose mind was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to verse-jump beyond her endurance. Jobu experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will. Jobu has created a black hole -like " Everything Bagel " that forms a toroid singularity that could destroy the multiverse. Evelyn is provided verse-jumping technology to fight Jobu's minions, who are converging on
7500-611: Is to embrace all the love and beauty surrounding us, if only we're present enough to see it." This nihilism is also incorporated into the film's exploration of Asian American identity. Anne Anlin Cheng wrote in The Washington Post , "It's not only that the multiverse acts as a metaphor for the immigrant Asian experience, or a convenient parable for the dislocations and personality splits suffered by hyphenated (that is, 'Asian-American') citizens, including LGBT culture . It also becomes
7650-536: The American Civil War , President Abraham Lincoln and Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1862 , creating the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacting a temporary income tax to pay war expenses. The Revenue Act of 1862 was passed as an emergency and temporary war-time tax. It copied a relatively new British system of income taxation, instead of trade and property taxation. The first income tax
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#17328518032447800-455: The Latin "absurdus", meaning "contrary to reason" or "inharmonious". The term elaborates on the concept of the modern word corresponding to the identification of the irrational and incongruous nature of everyday life. The ideology and philosophy behind the absurdist fiction genre stems from nihilism and existentialism extracted from the 20th-century world. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), known as
7950-605: The Office of Management and Budget Daniel Werfel was acting Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Werfel, who attended law school at the University of North Carolina and attained a master's degree from Duke University , prepared the government for a potential shutdown in 2011 by determining which services that would remain in existence. No IRS commissioner has served more than five years and one month since Guy Helvering, who served 10 years until 1943. The most recent commissioner to serve
8100-709: The Supreme Court declared the Income Tax of 1894 unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. , a decision that contradicted Hylton v. United States . The federal government scrambled to raise money. In 1906, with the election of President Theodore Roosevelt , and later his successor William Howard Taft , the United States saw a populist movement for tax reform. This movement culminated during then-candidate Woodrow Wilson 's election of 1912 and in February 1913,
8250-461: The Theatre of the Absurd literary genre. Samuel Beckett 's Waiting for Godot (1953), an originally French text, is an absurdist theatre drama that is described as one of the most important plays of the 20th century despite its early reception. The play was first performed on January 5, 1953, at Theatre de babylone in Paris. The reception of the play in the 1950s can be interpreted by critics reviews. Literary critic Vivian Mercer claimed that
8400-588: The modernist literature of the late 19th and early 20th century in direct opposition to the Victorian literature which was prominent just prior to this period. It was largely influenced by the existentialist and nihilist movements in philosophy , and the Dada and surrealist movements in art. Existential and nihilistic philosophical influences on absurdist fiction were resultant of the post-war disillusionment. Absurdist fiction novelists and composers demanded freedom from
8550-520: The principle of taxation generally. In recent years, the agency has struggled with budget cuts, under-staffed workforce, outdated technology and reduced morale, all of which collectively result in the inappropriate enforcement of tax laws against high earners and large corporations , reduced tax collection, rising deficits , lower spending on important priorities, or further tax increases on compliant taxpayers to compensate for lost revenue . Research shows that IRS audits raise revenue, both through
8700-495: The "10 Best Action Movies of the 2020s So Far," with Robert Lee III writing that the film "has become such an iconic and immediately beloved modern-day action movie classic thanks in part to its highly creative and inventive display of action. Being able to combine highly choreographed kung fu with a high-concept sci-fi story and a great deal of quirky comedy makes for a perfect combination that deeply resonates with modern-day audiences. Even more than its excellent filmmaking techniques,
8850-423: The "Best Movie of the 2020s (So Far)," calling it the "best, most exciting movie" on the subject matter of the multiverse and a "turning point after the box-office-slumping COVID-19 pandemic and superhero-centric 2010s." The site also included it on its list of films from the decade that are "Destined To Become Classics," calling it "both a massively entertaining sci-fi actioner and a deeply affecting family drama." It
9000-400: The "elusive feeling of absurdity" and endure it to the best of our abilities. Franz Kafka's The Trial (1925) follows the tale of Josef K., a man who is arrested and prosecuted by an authority that is remote and inaccessible; both him and the reader are not told the nature of his crime or why he was prosecuted. Kafka uses restrained prose throughout the novel to add dramatic irony as well as
9150-512: The "father of existentialism", was a prolific Danish writer who opposed conventional boundaries of philosophy , psychology , theology , fiction and literary criticism . Kierkegaard's philosophy contends with the plausibility of Christendom , and inherently disputes the sense of purpose it prompts in personal life. The concept of the absurd was used by Kierkegaard to term the point in which faith becomes indefensible, yet valid for those who employ it, and it alone. Kierkegaard heavily influenced
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#17328518032449300-481: The 1990s. Since its establishment, the IRS has been largely responsible for collecting the revenue needed to fund the United States federal government, with the rest being funded either through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (collecting duties and tariffs ) or the Federal Reserve (purchasing U.S. treasuries ). The IRS faces periodic controversy and opposition over its methods, constitutionality, and
9450-456: The 2011/2012 tax period was 312 days. In September 2014, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen expressed concern over the organization's ability to handle Obamacare and administer premium tax credits that help people pay for health plans from the health law's insurance exchanges. It will also enforce the law's individual mandate , which requires most Americans to hold health insurance. In January 2015, Fox News obtained an email which predicted
9600-455: The 2021 filing season. In 2003, the IRS struck a deal with tax software vendors: The IRS would not develop online filing software and, in return, software vendors would provide free e-filing to most Americans. In 2009, 70% of filers qualified for free electronic filing of federal returns. According to an inspector general's report, released in November 2013, identity theft in the United States
9750-459: The 2023 fiscal year, the agency processed more than 271.4 million tax returns including more than 163.1 million individual income tax returns. For FY 2023, the IRS collected approximately $ 4.7 trillion, which is approximately 96 percent of the operational funding for the federal government; funding widely throughout to different aspects of American society , from education and healthcare to national defense and infrastructure. In July 1862, during
9900-495: The Absurd subverts conventional theatrical form audiences have come to expect when viewing a play. Movement of the plot is arbitrary ; characters of absurdist theatre are mostly unfamiliar and strangely motivated, scenery is often unrecognizable and sometimes unchanging or desolate, and dialogue appears to be nonsense. To absurdist playwrights, chaos and irrationality represent reality better than rationality and order. Plays can be both tragic and comic in nature, characteristic of
10050-553: The Alphaverse. As Jobu confronts Evelyn in her universe, Evelyn's mind begins to splinter, causing her to collapse. Evelyn uncontrollably verse-jumps alongside Jobu across bizarre and diverse universes. Jobu discloses she does not intend to fight, but that instead, she has been searching for an Evelyn who can see, as she does, that nothing matters. She teleports Evelyn to the Everything Bagel, divulging that she wants to use it to allow herself and Evelyn to truly die. Upon looking into
10200-622: The Bagel, Evelyn is initially persuaded, and behaves cruelly and nihilistically in her other universes, hurting those around her. Just as Evelyn enters the Bagel with Jobu, she pauses to listen to Waymond's pleas in her universe for everybody to stop fighting and to instead practice kindness, even when life is senseless. Evelyn has an existentialist epiphany and decides to follow Waymond's absurdist and humanitarian advice, utilizing her multiverse powers to fight with empathy and bring happiness to those around her. In doing so, she repairs her damage in
10350-415: The Daniels never lose sight of the frayed emotions that are still tying the three main characters together, which in turn kept the metaphysical machinations feeling clear and easy to follow." IndieWire ranked it at number 8 on its list of the "50 Best Action Movies of the 21st Century" and number 5 on its list of the "62 Best Science Fiction Films of the 21st Century." It topped Collider ' s list of
10500-698: The Dog Mom, a laundromat customer. Harry Shum Jr. plays Chad, a teppanyaki chef working alongside an alternative Evelyn in another universe. Tallie Medel appears as Becky Sregor, Joy's girlfriend; Biff Wiff appears as Rick, a laundromat customer; Sunita Mani and Aaron Lazar appear as actors in a musical film Evelyn watches; Audrey Wasilewski and Peter Banifaz appear as Alpha RV Officers; Andy Le and Brian Le appear as Alpha Trophy Jumpers; Li Jing appears as Evelyn's kung-fu teacher, and Michiko Nishiwaki appears as Evelyn's kung-fu opponent and co-star. Randy Newman , who has scored nine Disney – Pixar films, appears as
10650-449: The Greek fable of a man forced to continuously roll a rock up a mountain only for it to roll back down the mountain due to its own weight, a dilemma that lasts for eternity . Camus elucidates his own symbolism as a representation of the human condition in a world where we face the universal difficulty of making sense of events; however instead of turning to suicide that we must reconcile with
10800-755: The IRS building. She uncovers other universes in which she made different choices and flourished, such as becoming a kung fu master and film star. She also learns that Waymond intends to file for divorce. Alpha-Waymond believes that Evelyn, as the greatest "failure" of all Evelyns in the multiverse, possesses the untapped potential needed to defeat Jobu. Gong Gong is taken over by Alpha-Gong Gong, who instructs Evelyn to kill Joy to prevent Jobu from using her to access Evelyn's universe. Evelyn refuses and decides to face Jobu by acquiring powers through repeated verse-jumping. Alpha-Gong Gong, convinced that Evelyn's mind has been compromised like Jobu's, sends soldiers after Evelyn. While they fight, Jobu locates and kills Alpha-Waymond in
10950-477: The IRS include providing tax assistance to taxpayers; pursuing and resolving instances of erroneous or fraudulent tax filings; and overseeing various benefits programs, including the Affordable Care Act . The IRS originates from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue , a federal office created in 1862 to assess the nation's first income tax to fund the American Civil War . The temporary measure funded over
11100-479: The IRS was tasked with enforcement of laws relating to prohibition of alcohol sales and manufacture ; this was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice in 1930. After repeal in 1933, the IRS resumed collection of taxes on beverage alcohol. The alcohol, tobacco and firearms activities of the bureau were segregated into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 1972. A new tax act
11250-472: The Netherlands ($ 1.1 million). The film garnered widespread critical acclaim. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 93% of 410 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Led by an outstanding Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once lives up to its title with an expertly calibrated assault on the senses." Metacritic , which uses
11400-413: The United States and Canada and $ 66.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $ 143.4 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $ 32 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues. In the United States and Canada, the film earned $ 509,600 from ten venues in its opening weekend. Its debut had a theater average of $ 50,965, the second-best since
11550-408: The absurd. His interest in nihilism, in particular his views on Christianity and God , alludes to the traditions of the Western world in their reliance on religion as a "moral compass" and source of meaning. Nietzsche claimed that this dependence is now unviable, appearing in his novel The Gay Science , published 1882, translated in 1974. The writings of Nietzsche influenced absurdist fiction in
11700-449: The absurdity of theatre (Dickson, Andrew, 2017). Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian French playwright, one of the foremost composers of French avant-garde theatre and a leader of absurdism . Ionesco's The Chairs (1952) was branded as a "tragic farce" by Ionesco himself in its experimentation of absurdist motifs, existentialism and nonsensical verse, of which elaborates on incommunicability in our human lives. The term "absurd" has roots in
11850-433: The adjective 'Kafkaesque'". Samuel Beckett was also an early absurdist; an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. Beckett's well-known Waiting for Godot , premiered in 1953, is classified within absurdist theatre using techniques of tragicomedy. The characteristics introduced by Beckett included bitter humour and despair, and a vivid and spontaneous improvisation on
12000-467: The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic for a platform release (behind Licorice Pizza ) and the then-best opening theater average in 2022. In its second weekend, the film grossed $ 1.1 million from 38 theaters, finishing ninth at the box office. It received a wide expansion in its third weekend, going from 38 to 1,250 theaters. It made $ 6.1 million, finishing sixth at the box office. Playing in 2,220 theaters
12150-446: The best of her career. In her review for Vanity Fair , Maureen Ryan said, "Yeoh imbues Evelyn with moving shades of melancholy, regret, resolve, and growing curiosity" adding that she "makes her embrace of lead-character energy positively gripping." Adam Nayman of The Ringer referred to the film as "a love letter to Yeoh [and] extremely poignant, giving its 59-year-old star a chance to flex unexpected acting muscles while revisiting
12300-504: The blackout-skit chaos and cast of "stupid human" clowns. But the Daniels reduce life to "just a statistical inevitability, it's nothing special."" Bertin Huynh wrote in The Guardian that the film "distils east Asian philosophies like no other before it" and that "its heart of Buddhist and Daoist thought is what makes Everything Everywhere truly great"; he further criticised Western reviews of
12450-643: The box office top ten until its sixteenth weekend, which ended on July 10. The film crossed the $ 100 million mark worldwide on July 31, making it the first independent film released during the pandemic (and in A24's history) to achieve this distinction. Outside of the United States, other top-earning territories as of July 31 were the United Kingdom ($ 6.2 million), Canada ($ 5.1 million), Australia ($ 4.5 million), Russia ($ 2.4 million), Taiwan ($ 2.3 million), Mexico ($ 2 million), Hong Kong ($ 1.7 million), Germany ($ 1.5 million), and
12600-465: The change to the Constitution. It was further ratified by six more states by March. Of the 48 states at the time, 42 ratified it. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah rejected the amendment; Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida did not take up the issue. Though the constitutional amendment to allow the federal government to collect income taxes was proposed by President Taft in 1909, the 16th Amendment
12750-416: The character Michelle. "Evelyn deserves her own story to be told. This is a very ordinary mother [and] housewife who is trying her best to be a good mother to her daughter, a good daughter to her father, a wife that's trying to keep the family together [...] I don't like to integrate me, Michelle Yeoh, into the characters that I play, because they all deserve their own journey and their stories to be told". It
12900-745: The children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and the video game Everything , served as inspiration for several scenes. Also inspired by contemporary scholars such as philosopher Mary-Jane Rubenstein , the film explores philosophical themes such as existentialism , nihilism , surrealism , and absurdism , as well as themes such as neurodivergence , depression , generational trauma , and Asian American identity. Its soundtrack features compositions by Son Lux , and collaborations with Mitski , David Byrne , André 3000 , John Hampson , and Randy Newman . Everything Everywhere All at Once premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2022, and began
13050-546: The concept of modal realism in the Ross McElwee documentary Sherman's March (1986). Kwan described the release of the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which also deals with a multiversal concept, as "a little upsetting because we were like, 'Oh shit, everyone's going to beat us to this thing we've been working on. ' " He also stated "Watching the second season of Rick and Morty (2013–present)
13200-658: The conventions prevalent in the 1940 philosophical movement in France. Other historical events that impacted the literary movement's style and philosophy include the atomic bomb and the Cold War. Psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of British Columbia published a report in 2009 showing that reading absurdist tales improved test subjects' ability to find patterns. Their findings summarized that, when people have to work to find consistency and meaning in
13350-439: The credits. It was re-released again in U.S. theaters on January 27, 2023, on 1,400 screens to celebrate its Oscar nominations. The movie release had different titles depending on locale. Chinese audiences approved of a Taiwanese title with a double meaning, 妈的多重宇宙 which translates alternatively to either 'Mother’s Multiverse' or 'Fucking Multiverse' , with the tagline 比媽佛更媽佛 (Even More Marvel than Marvel) . In mainland China,
13500-562: The decline in enforcement activities has "rais[ed] questions about tax compliance and fairness to the vast majority of citizens who pay all their taxes". In June 2012, the IRS Oversight Board recommended to Treasury a fiscal year 2014 budget of $ 13.074 billion for the Internal Revenue Service. On December 20, 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 . It was signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017. In
13650-409: The editorial board of The New York Times called the IRS budget cuts penny-wise-and-pound-foolish, where for every dollar of cuts in the budget, six were lost in tax revenue. A 2020 Treasury Department audit found the IRS had improved its identity verification system offerings for taxpayers, but was still behind in fully meeting digital identity requirements. The following year, the IRS announced
13800-664: The filing deadline was moved from March 15 to April 15. The Tax Reform Act of 1969 created the Alternative Minimum Tax . In 1969, Richard Nixon directed the IRS to audit his political opponents, as well as opponents of US involvement in the Vietnam War . The IRS's Activist Organizations Committee, later renamed the Special Services Staff, created a target list of more than 1,000 organizations and 4,000 individuals. A White House memo said that "What we cannot do in
13950-413: The film also has a surprisingly effective emotional core, able to conjure up powerful emotions with its deeply interpersonal story and characters." The A.V. Club included the character of Evelyn Wang on its list of the "15 Best movie moms of all time," with Cindy White writing that the character's "...love for her daughter crosses universes and spans realities. It's so strong, you can feel it coming through
14100-526: The film as a "swirl of genre anarchy", explaining that "while the hectic action sequences and flights of science-fiction mumbo-jumbo are a big part of the fun (and the marketing), they aren't really the point. [It is] a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love". Laura Zornosa from The New York Times elaborates its addressing of intergenerational trauma through healing relationships. Additionally, Emily St. James wrote on Vox that
14250-420: The film is part of a rising subgenre of "millennial parental apology fantasy", imagining worlds in which parents and children reconcile. According to Charles Bramesco of The Guardian , "The bagel of doom and its tightening grip on Evelyn's daughter lend themselves to the climactic declaration that there's nothing worse than submitting to the nihilism so trendy with the next generation. Our lone hope of recourse
14400-495: The film returned to select IMAX theaters for one week starting on April 29, 2022. The film was not released in most parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait , due to censorship of LGBT issues in those countries. The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2022. The film was re-released in U.S. theaters on July 29, 2022, unchanged but adding an introduction by Daniels and eight minutes of outtakes after
14550-665: The film used 瞬息全宇宙 (In an Instant, the Entire Universe) , while in Hong Kong it used 奇異女俠玩救宇宙 (Weird Woman Warrior Fucks Around and Saves the Universe) . Taiwanese audiences disapproved of subtitles during the release for "over-translating" the movie. The film was released on digital streaming platforms on June 7, 2022, and was released on Blu-ray , DVD , and Ultra HD Blu-ray on July 5, 2022, by Lionsgate Home Entertainment . Everything Everywhere All at Once grossed $ 77.2 million in
14700-444: The film was done in-house, after the Daniels' negative experience with a dedicated post-production studio for their previous film Swiss Army Man . Instead, the filmmakers assembled a small team of five artists headed by Zak Stoltz, who produced all visual effects using Adobe After Effects , Adobe Premiere Pro , and used Resilio Sync to share the large amounts of data once the pandemic hit. For Deirdre's appearance, Kwan discovered
14850-432: The film was shot overcranked at a very high frame rate to accommodate extensive time remapping in post production. The Daniels said the kung-fu fight scenes were shot unusually quickly; for example, the fanny-pack fight was shot in a day and a half. Filming wrapped in early March 2020, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States . The first cut ran around 170 minutes. Visual effects post-production for
15000-518: The film, it's a breather the audience and characters both desperately need, and the emotions are so heightened that just the sight of rock-Joy and rock-Evelyn sharing a companionable laugh is remarkably heartening and hilarious." Dissenting reviews include that of Richard Brody for The New Yorker , who dismissed it as a "sickly cynical feature-length directorial pitch reel for a Marvel movie", and that of Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian who described it as "a formless splurge of Nothing Nowhere Over
15150-527: The film, stating that the message of the film was "often missed by a western audience", and "wholly emblematic of Hollywood’s dismissiveness of Asian achievements and stories". The New York Times named the character Jobu Tupaki, played by Hsu, one of the 93 Most Stylish "People" of 2022. The film has been regarded as a groundbreaking achievement in the medium of independent cinema for its production values, themes, story and positive on-screen representation of Asian Americans. In 2023, Screen Rant ranked it as
15300-551: The film. Around this time, Kwan and Schneirt were invited by Marvel Studios to discuss the possibility of them developing the first season of the Disney+ series Loki , which also deals with a storyline involving the multiverse, but the duo, already not really interested in the project, declined as they were about to start shooting their own movie about the same concept. Shooting took 38 days, mostly in Simi Valley, California . Much of
15450-485: The first Oscar of her career for Best Supporting Actress, helping the film win three out of four acting categories. It is also the first science-fiction film to win Best Picture, and the first science-fiction film to win five of the top six Academy Awards . While no film has ever won in all four acting categories, it was the third to win three out of four, after A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Network (1976), and
15600-528: The first to also win Best Picture. It is the first film since 2013's Gravity to win seven Academy Awards, and the most awarded Best Picture winner since 2008's Slumdog Millionaire . The reaction to the film's Best Picture win was not without criticism, including Justin Chang lamenting in the Los Angeles Times that the academy "chose the wrong best picture," and compared its win to that of CODA at
15750-566: The following weekend, it earned $ 6.2 million, finishing fourth. In its sixth weekend, it added $ 5.5 million, part of which was attributed to a wider IMAX release following its successful box office run until then. It added $ 3.5 million in its seventh weekend, and another $ 3.3 million in its eighth. By May 21, it had made over $ 51 million, surpassing Uncut Gems ($ 50 million) as A24's highest-grossing film domestically. By June 9, it had made over $ 80 million, surpassing Hereditary ($ 79 million) as A24's highest-grossing film of all time. It remained in
15900-428: The form and the IRS checked the form for accuracy. The IRS's workload jumped by ten-fold, triggering a massive restructuring. Professional tax collectors began to replace a system of "patronage" appointments. The IRS doubled its staff but was still processing 1917 returns in 1919. Income tax raised much of the money required to finance the war effort; in 1918 a new Revenue Act established a top tax rate of 77%. In 1919
16050-488: The high-flying fight choreography that made her a global icon back in the 1990s". In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times , Jake Coyle wrote that although it "can verge on overload, it's this liberating sense of limitless possibility that the movie leaves you filled with, both in its freewheeling anything-goes playfulness and in its surprisingly tender portrait of existential despair ". Tasha Robinson of Polygon named
16200-452: The illogical and inconsistent line of events of the arrest and court case of Joseph K. Kafka's novel can be perceived to imply a gap in the rational world as a result of hyper-rationalization consuming society, an example highlighted by Kafka being the judiciary . Kafka employs erroneous alliteration and literary manipulation to compose a nonsensical, existentialist novel that exemplifies the inhumanity, alienation and absurdity persisting in
16350-508: The influence on Sartre and Albert Camus. Particularly, Camus' understanding of nihilism was heavily motivated by the conception that Nietzsche put forth of life and death and the nihilistic perspectives of such. French writer Albert Camus is the novelist that most literary critics date the concept of absurdist fiction to, with Camus' most famous novel, L'Étranger ( The Stranger , 1942), and his philosophical essay " The Myth of Sisyphus " (1942). The Bohemian , German-speaking, Franz Kafka
16500-420: The initial audit and indirectly by deterring future tax cheating. According to a 2024 study, "an additional $ 1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th income percentile yields more than $ 12 in revenue, while audits of below-median income taxpayers yield $ 5." As of 2018, it saw a 15 percent reduction in its workforce , including a decline of more than 25 percent of its enforcement staff. Nevertheless, during
16650-634: The longest term was Doug Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush and served for five years. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue is assisted by two deputy commissioners. The Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support reports directly to the Commissioner and oversees the IRS's integrated support functions, working to facilitate economy of scale efficiencies and better business practices. The Deputy also administers and provides executive leadership for customer service, processing, tax law enforcement and financial management operations. Additionally,
16800-417: The modern world alongside the impacts of totalitarianism , injustice and bureaucracy as a whole. The Theatre of the Absurd is termed as a post- World War One designation for absurdist fiction plays, specifically those written by primarily European playwrights in the late twentieth century, also as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Martin Esslin , a literary critic, coined
16950-477: The more traditional a best picture winner it seems. Beneath its veneer of impish, form-busting radicalism, it’s as epically self-important, broadly sentimental and thematically unambiguous a movie as any the academy has so honored." Absurdist fiction The absurdist genre of literature arose in the 1950s and 1960s, first predominantly in France and Germany , prompted by post-war disillusionment. Absurdist fiction
17100-425: The multiverse resembling virtual environments which viewers increasingly exist within. The philosophical themes of the film, and particularly Waymond's worldview, have been viewed as an expression of the central ideas of humanism —in particular, his belief that people should 'be kind, especially when we don't know what's going on'. Other authors have linked the themes to those of Mahayana Buddhism and Daoism , with
17250-411: The multiverse, she will always want to be with Joy. Evelyn and the others save Jobu from the Bagel, and Evelyn and Joy embrace. Sometime later, with the family's relationships improved, they return to the IRS building to refile their taxes. As Deirdre talks, Evelyn's attention is momentarily drawn to her alternative selves, before she grounds herself back in her home universe. Jenny Slate plays Debbie
17400-514: The other universes and neutralizes Alpha-Gong Gong and Jobu's fighters. In her home universe, Evelyn reconciles with Waymond, accepts Joy and Becky's relationship and divulges it to Gong Gong, while Waymond convinces Deirdre to let them redo their taxes. Jobu decides to enter the Bagel alone as, simultaneously in Evelyn's universe, Joy pleads Evelyn to let her go. Evelyn tells Joy that even when nothing makes sense and even though she could be anywhere else in
17550-401: The play was "a play in which nothing happens, twice", alluding to the two acts that take a cyclical form. Alfonso Sastre , another literary critic reviewing Beckett's text, described the play as "a death certificate for hope"; he continues, "what is so fascinating about waiting for Godot; [is] that nothing happens. It is a lucid testimony of nothingness." Beckett’s desolate universe in his play
17700-559: The previous ceremony: "Against the unceasing din of the multiverse, what chance was there for the subtler glories of the best picture race — the haunting ambiguities of Tár , the lyrical epiphanies of The Fabelmans , the intensely pointed debates of Women Talking or, hell, even the exploding mortar shells of All Quiet on the Western Front , which are indeed quiet by comparison? The more I’ve thought about “Everything Everywhere,” for all its undeniable representational significance,
17850-418: The project, Kwan learned that he had undiagnosed ADHD. Scenes in which Evelyn trains in martial arts and becomes an action film star were visually and contextually inspired by the films of Wong Kar-wai . Chris Lee of Vulture writes that they "conjur[e] a mood of exquisite romantic yearning that will be instantly recognizable ... as touchstones" of Wong's works. The universe in which Evelyn and Joy are rocks
18000-448: The public. His tax advisor, Edward L. Morgan, became the fourth law-enforcement official to be charged with a crime during Watergate . John Requard Jr., accused of leaking the Nixon tax returns, collected delinquent taxes in the slums of Washington. In his words: "We went after people for nickels and dimes, many of them poor and in many cases illiterate people who didn't know how to deal with
18150-516: The ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution : The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. This granted Congress the specific power to impose an income tax without regard to apportionment among the states by population. By February 1913, 36 states had ratified
18300-635: The reasons for his famous statement: "Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." So controversial was this leak, that most later US presidents released their tax returns (though sometimes only partially). These returns can be found online at the Tax History Project. By the end of the Second World War, the IRS was handling sixty million tax returns each year, using a combination of mechanical desk calculators, accounting machines , and pencil and paper forms. In 1948 punch card equipment
18450-430: The recurring images of the bagel and the googly eyes described as "a surprisingly apt and humorous take on yin and yang", contraposing a "smorgasbord of meaningless nothingness" against "value where you want to create it and meaning where you choose to see it". The film engages textually and metatextually with the "real world" of the viewer. Critics have noted that one version of Evelyn—a famous martial arts movie star—is
18600-400: The result of all communication thus breaking down. Logical construction and argument within absurdist theatre gave way to characteristics of irrational and illogical speech and the ultimate conclusion of silence. The Theatre of the Absurd involves a fascination with absurdity in a range of forms; the existential , philosophical , emotional and dramaturgical . The Theatre of the Absurd as
18750-402: The scene of Evelyn and Joy Wang as rocks with their dialogue appearing as on-screen subtitles, all while trying to find common ground, as one of the best movie scenes of 2022, saying "...it's a perfect moment. Like so many EEAAO sequences, it turns between emotions on a dime. But the quiet of the moment is essential. Out of context, it's just an odd moment between rocks. But within the context of
18900-415: The score individually, and not as a band. Lott said, "I think that the complete picture of not only who we are as a band, but also who we are as individuals and what we have accomplished and the places we've gone creatively individually, meant for them that there was a possibility that many of these universes of sound could be within reach with this particular trio." Son Lux took two to three years to compose
19050-447: The score, which includes more than a hundred musical cues. The soundtrack album consists of 49 tracks and runs for more than two hours. It features several prominent musicians, including Mitski , David Byrne , a flute-playing André 3000 , Randy Newman , Moses Sumney , Hajnal Pivnick, and yMusic . Two songs—"This Is a Life" featuring Mitski and Byrne and "Fence" featuring Sumney—were released as singles on March 4 and 14, 2022. The album
19200-527: The screen, even when the two of them are rocks." The film has been referenced in popular culture since its release, including an easter egg during a scene in the animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), in which a billboard featuring a bagel with a parody of the film's title "All of it always all over the place" appears in the background; a lyrical reference in an Aesop Rock song titled "Aggressive Steven" from his 2023 album Integrated Tech Solutions , and girl group XG references it in
19350-426: The story more relatable. The new script's lead character was initially named Michelle Wang, after the film's lead actress Michelle Yeoh, who said, "If you ask the Daniels, when they started on this draft, they focused on, 'Well, we are doing this for Michelle Yeoh.'" The character's name was eventually changed to Evelyn. With her resemblance to the version of Evelyn as a martial artist and film star, Yeoh opposed naming
19500-524: The success of Crazy Rich Asians (2018), soon before he was approached for the role. This is a result of a domino effect where the director Jon M. Chu was inspired to create Crazy Rich Asians because of #StarringJohnCho , a movement about Asian representation in leading roles in Hollywood. Jeff Cohen , Quan's former co-star from The Goonies (1985), was his attorney to negotiate his contract. Kwan talked about whitewashing with studios, "The casting
19650-401: The term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his 1960 essay Theatre of the Absurd . Esslin related these selected plays based on the broad theme of the absurd , similar to the way Camus used the term in his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus . The ideology of the Theatre of the Absurd is drawn from existentialism and expresses the result of human existence becoming deprived of meaning or purpose and
19800-420: The three decades since 1991, the IRS had a substantial decrease in the number of employees per million residents, decreasing from 451 (in 1991) to 237 (in 2021). A decrease of 47.5 percent. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the IRS began using technology such as microfilm to keep and organize records. Access to this information proved controversial, when President Richard Nixon's tax returns were leaked to
19950-655: The tragicomedy genre in theatre. Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) is a memorable absurdist theatre play. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953) is an absurdist theatre play with two acts using dramatic techniques. Other examples include Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit (1944), Max Frisch's play The Firebugs (1953) and Ezio D'Errico's play The Anthill and Time of the Locusts (1954). Thornton Wilder's The Long Christmas Dinner (1931) and Jean Tardieu's Underground Lovers (1934) are earlier examples. Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco 's The Bald Soprano (1950)
20100-500: The voice of Raccacoonie, a reference to the Pixar-animated film Ratatouille (2007); he is credited as a featured artist on the soundtrack "Now We're Cookin ' ". Cameos include Scheinert as District Manager, and Kwan uncredited as a man sucked into the bagel and as a mugger. Co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert , known as the Daniels, began researching the concept of the multiverse as early as 2010, after being exposed to
20250-548: The work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus . Existentialism as a philosophical approach or theory emphasises the single individual's existence and the concept of an individual as a free agent in determining their own meaning or purpose in life. On the other hand, nihilism is the recognition that life has no intrinsic meaning. Absurdist fiction in relation to existentialism expresses what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose, therefore all communication breaks down. Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950)
20400-540: Was announced in August 2018 that Yeoh and Awkwafina had been cast to star in what was described as an "interdimensional action film" from Kwan and Scheinert, with Anthony and Joe Russo attached to produce. Awkwafina left the project in January 2020 due to scheduling conflicts, and was replaced with Stephanie Hsu. James Hong, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis joined the cast. It marked Quan's return to film acting, from which he had retired after Second Time Around (2002) due to
20550-474: Was dropped in 2022, however, following privacy concerns from government officials and the public. Alternative ID verification options have since been introduced with the goal of making IRS online tools accessible to more people. As early as the year 1918, the Bureau of Internal Revenue began using the name "Internal Revenue Service" on at least one tax form. In 1953, the name change to the "Internal Revenue Service"
20700-581: Was formalized in Treasury Decision 6038. The 1980s saw a reorganization of the IRS. A bipartisan commission was created with several mandates, among them to increase customer service and improve collections. Congress later enacted the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 , which mandated that the agency replace its geographic regional divisions with units that serve particular categories of taxpayers. As
20850-456: Was influenced by the children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969) and the video game Everything (2017). Kwan has said the idea of the everything bagel "started as just a throwaway joke ", a play on a type of American bagel called an " everything bagel ", which is baked with a large variety of toppings. Scheinert said they spent time attempting to develop the religion of bagel followers, but encountered complications: "Jobu Tupaki's
21000-521: Was not ratified until 1913, just before the start of the First World War . That same year, the first edition of the 1040 form was introduced. A copy of the 1913 form can be viewed online and shows that only those with annual incomes of at least $ 3,000 (equivalent to $ 92,500 in 2023) were instructed to file an income tax return. In the first year after the ratification of the 16th Amendment, no taxes were collected. Instead, taxpayers simply completed
21150-561: Was passed in 1862: By the end of the war, 10% of Union households had paid some form of income tax, and the Union raised 21% of its war revenue through income taxes. After the Civil War, Reconstruction , railroads, and transforming the North and South war machines towards peacetime required public funding. However, in 1872, seven years after the war, lawmakers allowed the temporary Civil War income tax to expire. Income taxes evolved, but in 1894
21300-457: Was passed in 1942 as the United States entered the Second World War . This act included a special wartime surcharge. The number of American citizens who paid income tax increased from about four million in 1939 to more than forty-two million by 1945. In 1952, after a series of politically damaging incidents of tax evasion and bribery among its own employees, the Bureau of Internal Revenue
21450-495: Was phased out. Information processing in the IRS systems of the late 1960s was in batch mode; microfilm records were updated weekly and distributed to regional centers for handling tax inquiries. A project to implement an interactive, realtime system, the "Tax Administration System", was launched, that would provide thousands of local interactive terminals at IRS offices. However, the General Accounting Office prepared
21600-557: Was probably one of the hardest things of the whole process. They're like, 'Oh, should we try a white actor?'...or 'Should we find other types of people that might actually bring in the money?'" He continued, "We had to have some really hard conversations with people to basically put our foot down and say, 'No, this was written for a Chinese family.'" Scheinert said that while it took a little longer, they ultimately ended up with an ideal cast. Principal photography began in January 2020, with A24 announcing that it would finance and distribute
21750-878: Was ranked number 2 on MovieWeb ' s list of the "Best LGBTQ+ Movies of the 2020s (So Far)" and number 13 on its list of "20 Movies That Require Your Full Attention From Start to Finish." For the latter list, Taryn Flaherty wrote, "...there is not a second of this 139-minute eccentric film that does not demand your dedicated attention. With the multiverse driving the story's narrative forward, it should come as no surprise that every detail of this film will require its viewer to remain focused." Marie Claire included it on its list of "The 100 Best Movies of All Time." On January 1, 2024, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 49 on its inaugural list of "The 150 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time," writing "As characters leap from universe to universe (including one where humanity evolved to have... hot dog fingers?), and borrow skills from their counterparts,
21900-407: Was really painful. I was like, 'They've already done all the ideas we thought were original!' It was a really frustrating experience. So I stopped watching Rick and Morty while we were writing this project". In early drafts of the screenplay, the directors planned for the main character to be a professor and have undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); through his research for
22050-402: Was released on March 25 to positive critical response. The film features several instances, both in audio and in dialogue, of the 2000 Nine Days song " Absolutely (Story of a Girl) ". When Daniels contacted Nine Days vocalist John Hampson about using the song, Hampson enthusiastically agreed to record three alternate versions of the song for use in the film. Claude Debussy 's " Clair de Lune "
22200-408: Was reorganized under a plan put forward by President Truman , with the approval of Congress. The reorganization decentralized many functions to new district offices which replaced the collector's offices. Civil service directors were appointed to replace the politically appointed collectors of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Not long after, the bureau was renamed the Internal Revenue Service. In 1954
22350-532: Was the first Asian Best Actress, the second woman of color after Halle Berry in 2002, and the first Malaysian to win any Academy Award. Stephanie Hsu 's nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category, alongside Hong Chau 's nomination for The Whale , marked the first time two actresses of Asian ethnicity were nominated in that category in the same year. Ke Huy Quan is the first Vietnam-born actor to win an Academy Award. Jamie Lee Curtis also got
22500-480: Was used. The first trial of a computer system for income tax processing was in 1955, when an IBM 650 installed at Kansas City processed 1.1 million returns. The IRS was authorized to proceed with computerization in 1959 and purchased IBM 1401 and IBM 7070 systems for local and regional data processing centers. The Social Security number was used for taxpayer identification starting in 1965. By 1967, all returns were processed by computer and punched card data entry
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