Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.
Find all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.
Eephus (Carson Lund, 2024).
Founded in 2011 by a group of college friends in Boston, Omnes Films is a production company that’s quietly created some of the most unique American movies of the last half-decade. Now based in Los Angeles, Omnes came to prominence in 2019 with Ham on Rye, a magical-realist coming-of-age fable set in suburban Long Island that solidified the collective’s four main players: director Tyler Taormina, cinematographer Carson Lund, producer Michael Basta, and music supervisor Jonathan Davies—all of whom have subsequently directed their own films under the Omnes banner.
Omnes’s two latest projects, Eephus and Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (both 2024), directed by Lund and Taormina, respectively, both premiered in Cannes as part of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight—a programming decision further confirming the section’s renewed interest in American cinema following the inclusion of The Sweet East, Riddle of Fire, and The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed in last year’s selection. Indeed, during the press conference announcing this year’s slate, the program’s artistic director, Julien Rejl, noted that "the presence of these two films is a choice by the committee to highlight the relevance and boldness of an American independent cinema that is giving itself new rules.”
Even by Omnes standards, Eephus is an odd proposition: a quasi-real-time baseball movie influenced by Robert Altman and Richard Linklater as much as Tsai Ming-liang, it’s a work that blends high and low culture through the universal lens of nostalgia. Cast with mostly unknown actors and named after an obscure off-speed pitch, Lund’s proudly out-of-step first feature depicts the final game between two New England rec-league teams before the field is demolished to make way for an elementary school. Events unfold in a way that foregrounds anthropological detail: an aging scorekeeper arrives, followed by the players, umpires, and a meager few spectators. Batters stretch; pitchers warm up. Some characters crack jokes; others commiserate. It’s the end of an era. Across nine fitful innings, the narrative crisscrosses between sequences of routine gameplay, mundane moments set in each team’s dugout, and occasional bits of on- and off-field levity. Still, it’s a largely elegiac affair—a feeling reinforced by the voice of 94-year-old documentarian Frederick Wiseman, who narrates alongside radio ads from local businesses. As daylight fades and a few of the players are forced to leave, a core contingent carries on into the night. It’s here, under cover of darkness, that a movie about an otherwise unremarkable game between old acquaintances becomes a lament not only for the marginalization of a once-beloved pastime, but also for an entire way of being in the world.
Taormina, too, does his best work by night, and Miller’s Point, his third feature, is a wholly nocturnal narrative set on Christmas Eve in a fictional version of the director’s hometown. Shot by Lund, produced by Michael Cera (who plays a small role), and co-written by Taormina’s regular collaborator Eric Berger, the film, like Ham on Rye, returns to a formative moment in the filmmaker’s upbringing, in this case a last gathering at the family home. At once familiar and surreal, this is a vision of the holidays conjured from the cinematic unconscious—think Fanny and Alexander (1982) by way of Home Alone (1990)—with dozens of characters and an equal number of plot strands all converging over the course of one extended evening. Accompanied by an infectious mix of Yuletide standards and Golden Oldies, the film’s fleet first half maps out a mosaic of multigenerational angst and disillusionment—mostly centered around the adult siblings and their ailing mother—that sets the stage for a more introspective odyssey as the cloistered drama of the early scenes gives way to a wintery personal pilgrimage in the second half.
As much as, if not more than, any filmmaker of his generation, Taormina remains preoccupied with adolescence and certain rites of passage that presage adulthood. In Ham on Rye, it was a mating ritual among schoolmates at a local deli; here, it’s a snap decision by Emily (Matilda Fleming), one of the family’s teenage daughters, to escape the festivities and meet up with a crush at a late-night bagel shop. Similar templates notwithstanding, Miller’s Point marks a significant step forward for Taormina, not an expansion so much as a deepening of his formal and thematic preoccupations—which, as he explains in the below conversation, are intimately linked. In a year that’s set to be a breakthrough for Omnes, it’s a work that could quickly prove to be a calling card for both the company and its creators.
I spoke with Taormina and Lund in the lead-up to Cannes about the history of Omnes and how their unique approach to collaboration resulted in a pair of strangely complementary films.
Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (Tyler Taormina, 2024).
NOTEBOOK: Can you tell me a little about how you two met and how Omnes started?
CARSON LUND: In 2011, me and a group of friends at Emerson College made a short called Omnes, which has since been buried on the internet. Mike Basta, who was going to MassArt, was working with us around this time, and we really enjoyed collaborating, so we thought, “Let’s stamp this name on our future films.” I think we called it Omnes Productions. But it was never terribly serious. We didn’t have high-falutin’ ambitions for it; it was just easy to give everything a name.
Tyler, you were around us at the time, but would it be fair to say you were more invested in music in that period?
TYLER TAORMINA: Yeah. I think we met because Carson and Jon Davies [director of Topology of Sirens, 2021] were roommates. You guys were in a band together, right?
LUND: Yeah.
TAORMINA: And then I came into the picture and Jon quit the band to join a band with me. A drone duo. [Laughs.]
LUND: Yeah, I only really knew Tyler at the time as the guy who would wander into our dorm room and make loud drone music with Jon for hours on end. We’d be in the common room drinking, and they’d be making their racket. [Laughs.]
It was only in 2015 that Tyler and I reconnected after we had both moved to LA. Shortly after I moved here you reached out and wanted to connect, just to get to know each other in a way we hadn’t before. It was around the time we made Ham on Rye that we started to get a little more serious about making Omnes into something. We attached the name to that film and as it started to find success we started to think, “Well, maybe there’s an opportunity here, since we all want to make films and we’re already all working together. Why don’t we stick to this name? It’s been seen at festivals.” I think it was at that point that we changed it to Omnes Films, because we weren’t interested in being some sort of commercial production company, but rather an entity that makes films.
Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (Tyler Taormina, 2024).
NOTEBOOK: Tyler, is it true that Michael Cera contacted you out of the blue after seeing Ham on Rye?
TAORMINA: Not out of the blue, exactly. When Carson and I went to the Maryland Film Festival with Ham on Rye, that was the first time the film had a huge impact on a crowd. Actually, I shouldn’t say huge; it was the first time it had an impact on a crowd—a positive one. Before that it had been the most-walked-out-of film at every festival. But this time it had met an audience that was really into it, which was very surreal and amazing. A lot of that audience was New York people, and a friend of Michael’s was there and saw it, and they shared it with him. And then Michael reached out to me.
NOTEBOOK: How did the collaboration with Michael evolve from that initial conversation? You two are writing something together, right?
TAORMINA: Yeah, we’ve written a script and hopefully we can get that financed soon. But at first it was just like, “Hey, I love your movie.” Simple as that. And that was really shocking and flattering. But then, like a week later, he calls me again and says, “I actually want to write a movie, would you want to write it with me?” And I’m thinking, “Ehh, I don’t know how to write studio comedies. Like, what am I going to do? That’s not what I can do at all.” [Laughs.] But I thought, “OK, let’s talk about it.” And once he started to pitch his movie idea to me, it became clear why he reached out in the first place and why he connected with Ham on Rye. We just have a very similar creative intuition. Our taste and what makes us laugh and feel provoked is incredibly similar, so we started a partnership. We wrote that script together and we have other projects we’re talking about making, so we’ll see.
Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina, 2019).
NOTEBOOK: Carson, what makes shooting a Tyler film unique compared to other directors? Did you take anything from the two features you’ve worked on together into Eephus?
LUND: As much as I do think we have similar creative brains, Tyler, our brains are different. The way you write scripts in particular just spoke to me right away. The way you construct scenes and narratives, with the digressions that you include, it all hit me on a gut level. Sometimes it seems counterintuitive, in a great way—the way you choose to put scenes together. It kind of frees me up to be inspired by those ideas and think visually, without having to worry about all the wonderful characterization work that you’ve done.
I would also say that we share a lot of similar visual reference points. I come at it with a little bit more of a technical background, so I’m able to translate a lot of what you’re asking for. But there’s a nice symbiosis where I’m able to bring a lot of ideas, too. We construct shot lists together—it’s really fluid. We speak the same language, because we’ve both seen a lot of films from across world cinema.
As for being influenced by working on Tyler’s films, I would say that Tyler’s directing influenced Eephus. There are certain scenes, like when we digress from the main action—for example, those scenes with the skateboarders, the stoner guys, that stuff is pulled straight from Ham on Rye. It’s kind of in the interest of having this expanded Omnes universe. We find that a little bit amusing—to have characters that feel like spirits that flow between the different films. But, honestly, the creative side of Eephus was tapping more into my very close partnership with Mike that I’ve had forever. It really felt like we were making films back home again. I grew up making little shorts with him, and we have a similar—actually, I’d say identical—sense of humor. So as much as watching Tyler was inspiring as he worked with big ensembles on the different films—which probably did help me figure out a few methods for directing such a big cast—Eephus really felt like tapping back into that old well with Mike in terms of how we want to construct stories and tell jokes. And Tyler was, of course, along for the ride to help make that happen as a producer, which was awesome.
NOTEBOOK: Speaking of the Omnes expanded universe, I did notice the Monty’s Deli sign in Eephus. And some of the locations in Miller’s Point feel like they could be just down the street from places in Ham on Rye.
LUND: Yeah, the bagel shop in Miller’s Point is like this film’s version of Monty’s. With Eephus, I really wanted to create this extra-diegetic world through the advertisements you see on the walls, and hear through the radio. I find that amusing. The fake businesses that we came up with for those are based on memories of businesses that were in my hometown growing up. But I thought, “Let’s just put a Monty’s sign there. Half these businesses are fake anyway.” That was a way for us to solidify that shared language.
Eephus (Carson Lund, 2024).
NOTEBOOK: Carson, were you always planning on directing yourself, and why a baseball movie for your first feature? One could say it’s not the most fashionable of subjects.
LUND: I have always wanted to direct a feature. But unlike Tyler, who’s a machine in terms of screenwriting—you generate ideas so much—I’m more of a location and atmosphere kind of person. I see a beautiful location and I think, “I can shoot it this way and this way.” But there’s no story structure there. So I always told myself I would start as a DP and find my way into some sort of subject matter that intrigues me. I didn’t want to force anything, and finally it came to me. I grew up playing baseball. I played in travel leagues; it was basically my whole life. But in high school I abandoned it because of the culture and the competitive nature of it, the feeling that everyone measured their success by whatever college they got into. I got tired of it. Which is one of the reasons I was drawn to Richard Linklater. He had a similar trajectory in his life. And then maybe a decade later I join a rec league in LA and everything feels different about it. It feels less stressful; people are there for the leisure of it; everyone enjoys it as a hobby. There’s no stress or pressure. It’s a place where people can have easy interactions every week. Easy relationships develop. But they’re under this very specific context, which is a competitive context, and while you kind of get to know each other, half the time you’re talking about the game, and maybe there’s small talk sprinkled in.
I felt this relationship evolving between me and my teammates to be very peculiar, relative to other relationships in my life. I thought it was special in the modern world to have that kind of relationship, where you’re all doing something that has no profit motive—you’re just kind of running around doing it and having fun outside. It dawned on me that this was a story I could tell and that I intimately understand. And like I said, I’ve always been drawn to location, and films that take place in one location, that have a sort of compressed timeline. I like the realism of that. So I thought, “Let’s just commit to making a film on a baseball field.”
Baseball is at a precarious point in its history. It’s been pronounced dead as many times as cinema has. It’s always going through some sort of crisis of identity. I thought it would be an interesting time to make a movie about that, because I wanted this film to be on a broader level about changes—dealing with change, aging, environments changing. I thought baseball would be a great site for that because of this broader transformation, or metamorphosis, within culture. And I wanted to make my own version of Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)—you know, baseball’s dying, cinema’s dying. Let’s do it on a baseball field and make an end-of-baseball movie.
Eephus (Carson Lund, 2024).
NOTEBOOK: Carson, you briefly touched on this, but one commonality between Omnes films is a sense of time passing and things ending. What do you think draws you both to these moments of change or closure?
LUND: One of the things that jumps to mind is that we’re both people who have a very strong attachment, both positively and negatively, towards where we’re from. And yet we both moved across the country away from it. So there’s this detachment from our roots, and this sort of melancholy, wistful remembrance of friends back home, and family that we’re not attached to as much. It’s also just the time we live in. It’s such a transitional period. Everyone seems so confused about what’s happening and where the course of history is going in this late stage of capitalism where no one can afford a house and we’re all in debt and they’re telling us art is dying in America and there’s no funding for films. It’s always felt like there’s been this precarity forced down our throats. So that combined with the geographical displacement is part of it for me.
TAORMINA: Yeah, the attachment theory, the kind of cutting of the umbilical cord as we crossed the country—that’s definitely marked me forever and has a lot to do with my suburban fixation, I think. But also these days I’ve become obsessed with how our culture has been so hollowed out—intelligence, just the general sense of community, it’s so deteriorated in the US. I’m pretty often thinking about why that is and how we’ve all been so deeply affected in the past twenty, thirty years by the economic decisions made in the country. The spirit and heart of the country is in such a terrible place. Where to go? I don’t know.
LUND: But I’m also invested in thinking about if that’s even true, or just a product of nostalgia.
TAORMINA: I’ve come to feel that it is. This race-to-the-bottom economics—like, this shirt, it’s from a thrift store. Nothing is made to last. Truly, the films, the music, everything—it’s all made with the most cynical profit motive.
NOTEBOOK: Carson, can you tell me how Eephus developed from a conceptual standpoint? When I first heard about the film it was described to me as a real-time baseball film, but you can’t really do that in any kind of commercial way.
LUND: Yeah, it definitely evolved. Originally I think I had this almost structuralist idea of what the film would be—sort of an anthropological study, or a landscape film where the camera is detached and we’re just incidentally capturing these players milling about. It would be an almost Benning-esque exploration of this one field and the people passing through it. And I still love the idea of that. Maybe I’ll try to make that one day. But that would have been the three-hour version, very noncommercial. I was thinking at one point, if we only get a little money for this, then I can make it in more of a documentary mode, where I visit a rec league repeatedly and try to simulate one day passing through a documentary observation of it with a fixed camera. You can probably imagine what that film would be like. And you’d probably like it! I would. But then the logistical side of things grew and we finally found investors, and the script writing process was just becoming so enjoyable with Mike and Nate [Fisher]—we were laughing and coming up with scenes and characters that we fell in love with. That was the first step. But even when we got to set I think there was still a shred of that clinical idea, and as we started shooting I started to fall more and more in love with these characters. I ultimately felt there was a great ensemble character study in there, and it was a disservice to subject them to that kind of distanced point of view.
Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (Tyler Taormina, 2024).
NOTEBOOK: Tyler, how much of Miller’s Point is based on your youth? I couldn’t help but think at times that I was watching a version of your childhood during the holidays.
TAORMINA: You certainly were. It’s super personal. In fact, the genesis of the movie was my inability to watch home videos of my childhood. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And I don’t know if that’s normal. I’m not sure if everyone has that emotional incapability of watching their parents and siblings when they were younger. There’s something in me that feels totally duped by time when I watch those. I think the creation of this movie was a really amazing way to wrestle with that experience of lost time, and the foolishness of hindsight. It’s really a memory piece, but I can’t say it’s my autobiography because I wrote it with Eric Berger, and his family members are in there, too. Our friends were the same at the time and they’re reanimated in the film. So it’s maybe like a joint autobiography, even though he’s Jewish. [Laughs.]
NOTEBOOK: That’s interesting to think about considering the scene in the film where the parents watch their home videos.
TAORMINA: It’s funny, I forced them to do what I can’t do! They’re watching their real home videos in that scene, in many cases for the first time. I filmed them reacting to their real videos from 30 years prior.
NOTEBOOK: What is it about two-part structures that interests you?
TAORMINA: One of the ways that the audience can see me is through this sort of formal decision. I think maybe it’s something I’m satisfied [with] exploring for now. It may be something I continue, but to really elaborate on it would actually oddly be very personal. But I’ll just say it has to do with reckoning with having high-highs and low-lows. Something I realized the last time I saw Fanny and Alexander was how much it inspired Ham on Rye. [Ingmar] Bergman does this a lot in his movies: he shows you the peak joys of existence, and then he shows you the exact opposite. And we have to wrestle with both of those realities in our lives. And this is something that really confronts me very deeply, and I think the way in which I respond to that is through this formal intuition to have an audience deal with this sort of bifurcation that typically occurs on, like, page ten or fifteen of a script. But I think it’s so much more emotional—and I’ve really enjoyed exploring those possibilities more—when you put it towards the middle of the script.
LUND: Eephus actually has a similar structure. I wasn’t consciously thinking of doing a bifurcation thing. But I think if you break it down in screenwriting terms then the inciting incident is when the pitcher, Ed (Keith William Richards), has to leave the game. We think of him as the protagonist, and then he’s gone, and from that point on it’s just a sequence of different people leaving, or balls disappearing, or light fading—just this gradual dissolution. So maybe in Eephus it’s a little more gradual, with no hard stop in the middle, but I think you still can kind of separate it between this very boisterous, fun first half and a more melancholic second half. It may all just go back to what you asked before, about why these films are so preoccupied with endings, or transitional moments in time.
Eephus (Carson Lund, 2024).
NOTEBOOK: Do you think there’s something about the unique Americanness of the films that specifically appeals to European programming and critical sensibilities?
LUND: These narratives don’t have traditional catharsis. They don’t follow one character. They don’t have one takeaway that’s hitting you over the head. They have this kaleidoscope of different feelings. I’m not sure if American viewers always know what to do with that.
TAORMINA: I feel like we’re inspired largely by European films. Actually, I should say world cinema. Asian cinema is also very much at the forefront of our minds.
LUND: I think we’re intrigued by the idea of merging hard art cinema from around the world with the vulgarity of American culture, and just finding a fun mix. Tyler and I were both really bummed and unsure about where the films were headed after getting a few rejections from North American festivals. It led to a lot of—at least for me, it’s my first feature, so there were some crisis moments. You know, I think the film is working, what do I have to do? That led to some of the edits and hard decisions about, like, if I shorten the film, am I really changing it, or am I finding the essence of it? That’s kind of where I landed. It’s still the same thing. It’s still communicating the same idea. It’s maybe just a little more accessible to a wider range of people.
NOTEBOOK: One of the things I enjoy about both films is how the relatively more recognizable actors and personalities (Michael Cera in Miller’s Point; Wayne Diamond in Eephus) have the smallest roles, which seems counterintuitive but at the same time allows for a certain authenticity and relatability to those people playing the main characters.
TAORMINA: I remember watching Eephus for the first time and thinking, “I like every person in this movie.” [Laughs.] I really wasn’t sure what to expect in that regard, Carson.
LUND: I don’t think there’s an unlikeable character in either film. Everybody’s warm, flawed, and lovable in a way. We’re making films about very specific suburban communities, and we want everyone in it to feel very right for the community.
