Omnes is Back! LI Doc Seeking Dancers, Locals with Interesting Jobs

Local director-made-good Tyler Thomas Taormina and his award-winning collective are seeking those who dare to dream—that dream, being the willingness to show off their dance moves and worklife on screen.

Filmmaker Reintroduction

​After studying collegiately at Emerson and professionally developing at Nickelodeon, Taormina (Smithtown High School West – Class of 2009) first broke into the arthouse indieverse with his surreal John Hughes riff, “Ham on Rye” – a crowdfunded Los Angeles production released to acclaim in 2019.

​His essentially budgetless follow-up, “Happer’s Comet” (2022), signaled a poetic return home. Taormina took to the same streets that raised him during a time when barely anyone, anywhere was filming—peak COVID quarantine.

With nothing but a single cameraman and a rotating ensemble composed of favor fever-struck family and friends and self-tape-signed journeymen, Taormina captured despair and existential longing with a cinematic lens that was uniquely him – neither bleak nor grim; rather, something spiritual. Something trippy. Something new.

​In the witching hours, malcontent nobodies became somebody thanks to possession by way of roller skates and a “Field of Dreams”–esque—albeit, not audibly uttered—call to action that even culminates in an impressively sourced nearby cornfield. Naturally, kudos came before the cavalry on this shoe-stringed exercise described as “experimentally adventurous” by The New York Times.

​By the time this slice of regular life gone quasi-apocalyptically askew was touring the international circuit, Omnes Films’ QB1 had already begun charging downfield — he and his teammates poised to barrel their largest-scale creative undertaking yet smack through the endzone.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point

​From a script Taormina penned with his best friend, fellow Smithtown ‘09 alum and “Ham on Rye” co-scribe Eric Berger, “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” (2024) — heavily marketed by The South Shore Press upon release — was firstly, and everlastingly pitched as “Home Alone” meets “Dazed and Confused.”

Throw in some “Parenthood,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” “Hey Arnold’s Christmas,” and Brill Building doo-wop goodfellas would stir their sauce to for ample measure, and the nostalgia machine peddling one diner tabletop juke-bop after another now exists as exactly that in popular holiday hangout film lore.

Variety, Deadline, and The Guardian all sang the IFC-acquired film’s early praises. The New Yorker critic Richard Brody notably ranked it No. 2 on his yearly “Top 10” list.

Wielding landscapes likened to “something out of a Norman Rockwell” by The Hollywood Reporter, the film tapped touchstone storefronts, seasonally-lit residences, and high-character wooded wonderlands all along Smithtown Main Street and across Selden and Holbrook to provide such uncanny scenery.

Those with boots on 631 area-coded ground, especially, were beaming with pride. Poll them and they shall declare having proudly clocked their locale’s iconography long before accredited motion picture cameras started rolling in the Spring of 2023 on some of the foremost staples of their memory banks.

​24-hour bagel spots, time-bending Dairy Barns, and firetruck parade celebrations featuring Santa himself were once a foreign concept. CUT TO: the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France, May 2024. Moviegoers from around the globe were invited to bask in our New York Italian-accented glory for an hour-forty tour de force premiere, powered and sponsored by Gorp.

“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” did not just bring star power like Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Ben Shenkman, Maria Dizzia, Gregg Turkington, Francesca Scorsese, and Sawyer Spielberg sleigh-riding into town. Hundreds of locals — in scripted roles, as extras, as vintage art and picture car donors, and as rally LIRR conductor cap supporters — were recruited to a launchpad rocketing a little number called their silver-screen ascension.

And now, they too, are streaming on Hulu.

​As he prepares some bigger-swing ventures in the aftermath of “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’s” merrily-earned successes, Taormina aims to first expand upon themes he previously introduced in “Happer’s Comet” with a more flexible plunge into docufiction.

Dancer from the Dance

​For his Yeats-inspired “Dancer from the Dance,” Taormina and his small crew will follow real-life Long Islanders throughout their 9-to-5 workflow. The mission: to portray the beauty in blue-collar, explore the repression in daytime suspension, and magnify the unifying healing agent that is nightly expression.

“This movie will be a poetic rumination on the bittersweetness of modern American living,” said Taormina. “The sweetness will take the form of honoring the local actors, capturing what is so unique and special of their specific essences.”

​Spoilers abound: a cathartic group-dance serves as the exclamatory crescendo, at last placing the production’s segmented subjects together to leap forward in concert.

The result: not so much “The Office’s” ‘Threat Level Midnight’ hilarity as it is the idyllic suburbia bookends of David Lynch’s otherwise haunting “Blue Velvet,” meets the randie musical episode of “That 70’s Show” where they can’t stop dancing (and we can’t stop, either).

We Want YOU to Get Up and Dance

Hello, Long Island! Interested parties need not be remotely close to the next coming of Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers, because who could ever be? In fact, all degrees of talent are more than welcome.

What is most preferred? Total fearlessness. An apt for abandon. And a lust for life.

​Whether you can positively get down, flaunt a modest modicum of rhythm, have a knack for feigning smoothness like it’s no one’s business, or are utterly move-less, confidence doesn’t just prove key – it’s currency here.

And what the film most intends to expose in closing: it’s currency everywhere.

For Taormina, the film is a “true culmination” of every cinematic idea that has mattered to him; with ‘Dancer,’ he seeks to encapsulate the divine hiding behind the mundane, and juxtapose it with the “surreal, group rituals, suburban ennui, dance, sprawling ensembles, hypnotic editing and grappling with the feeling of living in the aftermath” elements ripe within his filmography.

​All John and Yoko were saying, was “give peace a chance.”

What Tyler is professing: is to get up and dance.

​The grand final sequence shoots on Saturday, Oct. 17 and Sunday, Oct. 25 at Katie’s of Smithtown.

“We're looking for anyone who likes to dance,” the production reiterates. “No experience required—just passion.”

Additionally, they are seeking anyone with an interesting job who would like to see their work, and themselves, featured in the movie.

​Contact Mike Reistetter (michaeljreistetter@gmail.com) or Josh Silva (jsanjaysilva@gmail.com) for more information on how to become involved with “Dancer from the Dance.”

Gorp is the fictional brew consumed by Omnes Films characters and the storytellers privileged to bring their tales to life. No acid reflux, purely vibes.”