Tyler Taormina is a film director based in Los Angeles whose latest film, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, starring Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Francesca Scorsese and more, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 2024 and is out now in theaters through IFC Films. His debut film, Ham on Rye, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and went on to receive critical acclaim, including Best Films of the Year from The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Slant Magazine and more. His follow up feature, Happer’s Comet, premiered at the 2022 Berlinale and won the Special Jury Prize at the BAFICI. His work explores vast ensemble casts and draws influence from 60s European art cinema and ’90s kids television. (Photo courtesy IFC Films.)
When I was 12 years old, I started a sketch comedy TV program called The Chronic Show with my cousin, who was 11, and my sister, who was nine. I’d edit half-hour episodes on Windows Movie Maker. The show was comprised of five- to seven-minute sketches interspersed with 20- to 30-second clips that we called “Random Moments.” The formula for our sketches was always the same: one to two minutes of introducing a setup and then a three- to four-minute montage to a song where a conflict would escalate and then be resolved in the last minute of the sketch. My biggest inspirations at the time were Chappelle’s Show and The Amanda Show. Episodes of The Chronic Show (or TCS) would play on public access television (Channel 20, I think it was) every Monday morning at 5:30 a.m., which was an OK time slot for an early, before-school breakfast. I think we made about four or five episodes. Some of the sketches are super funny and still kinda work today, but most of them are shit that a 12-year-old would make with this 11- and nine-year-old family members.
It’s funny, because to deliver an episode to public access in the early 2000s, you needed to give them a VHS tape of the material. I’ve always been pretty technically inept, and was especially so at 12 years old. I had to figure out a way to get the edited footage from Windows Movie Maker onto a VHS tape. This whole television ordeal of my youth might seem like an adult-supervised activity, but to demonstrate the complete lack of guidance, it should be stated that I would literally film my computer screen with my Hi8 camera — closing the door of my bedroom for good sound — and put the Hi8 tape into those VHS tapes I saw at Walgreens that included a slot for Hi8 tapes to slide in. That’s what I would deliver to the public access station … and they were beholden to play it.
I knew about public access because my uncle had a show called HOCKEY TOWN LONG ISLAND! that always amazed us when it aired. You’d know it was on when you’d hear: “PUT THAT REMOTE DOWN! It’s time for HOCKEY TOWN LONG ISLAND!” I don’t remember the details of that show too well, but I think it was game footage mixed with interviews of the intramural children’s hockey league that my uncle coached. Looking back on that, there are few things I can think of that are more beautiful.
Anyway, The Chronic Show was really the beginning of my journey as a filmmaker. I remember kids from middle school, and then into high school, would tell me that they watched it. And my first time being recognized in public was in the Waldbaum’s grocery store in Smithtown, New York, that’s now an LA Fitness. This was probably when our time slot elevated to 9 p.m. on Monday nights — not bad!
What I love so much about thinking of the Chronic Show days is the fact that we would edit the films in camera, never ever do a second take, and oftentimes I’d give the camera to my grandmother to film us when we all had to be in a shot together. It was don’t-think-don’t-give-a-fuck filmmaking and it’s a tradition that I managed to keep with me as I got older, when I discovered shit-posting on YouTube.
In the first week of their freshman year of college, some of my friends made a video called IT JUST TASTES GOOD. I posted it on my YouTube page and seven or eight years later, it went viral and gained almost a million views (in the aggregate of other channels who had also posted it or posted commentary videos about it).
Off the success of IT JUST TASTES GOOD, a video in which I had no involvement, I became inspired to create shitpost videos of my own. They proved to bring such immediate gratification in comparison with the projects I was involved in at that time. For example, my feature Ham on Rye was written when I was 25, shot when I was 26, edited when I was 27, rejected from festivals when I was 28, played in festivals when I was 29, and released in theaters when I was 30. But shitposting meant shooting in an hour or so, editing in one or two hours and posting a second later for hundreds, if not thousands, of people to watch immediately.
I even garnered some fans in this space. I’ll never forget one instance, after Ham on Rye’s release. One of my first fan letters came from an aspiring cineaste saying: “I love your work; Ham on Rye, Wild Flies and Joggerella are all great.” A movie that took the better part of my twenties was being put alongside Joggerella, a video I made with my cousins in an afternoon one summer. Not to mention, I was certain that Joggerella and the rest of my videos couldn’t be traced to my name!
In the years that followed, I’ve made a bunch of these videos and I’m super proud of them. They’re the antithesis of career-bent filmmaking, where every project means setting one’s life on fire. I hope you enjoy them.
