Smithtown filmmaker Tyler Thomas Taormina's boyhood inspires Long Island-centric  'Christmas Eve in Miller's Point'  

Watch closely during "Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point," a nostalgic comedy  inspired by the Smithtown boyhood of filmmaker Tyler Thomas Taormina, and you’ll see a little item that might conjure up your own warm memories: A porcelain cow’s head, for pouring cream.

"It's been in my family forever, and it's mine," says Taormina. "And it just always gets me."

Arriving in theaters Nov. 8, "Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point" may be the most Long Island movie to come out of Long Island since "The Brothers McMullen." Director Taormina wrote the screenplay with his longtime friend Eric Berger, also of Smithtown, and shot the film in their old stomping grounds in February and March of last year. They based the characters on family members and friends — they discreetly decline to say who’s who — and corralled several locals into the cast. To fill the screen with Christmas decorations and other tchotchkes, they asked the Smithtown community to donate or loan items.

"We lost my mom's precious tablecloth that she got from her grandmother," Berger confesses. "She has not let up on that."

Taormina and Berger, both 33, met as students at Smithtown Middle School, where they shared a science class and a playful sense of humor. Even while attending separate colleges — Taormina at Emerson in Boston, Berger at Binghamton University— they kept in touch. Taormina moved to Los Angeles to write scripts for children’s television, but instead found himself drawn to the movies. A visit from Berger, who’d been writing fiction, led to a collaboration on "Ham on Rye," an offbeat coming-of-age story released in 2019.

During another of Berger’s visits, an idea for a holiday-themed movie began to percolate. "It was a moment, being a little buzzed on wine and just walking around the neighborhoods in Los Angeles," Taormina says. "And we were just talking about Christmas and these early memories of our family members."

As a Jewish American, Berger says, "I'm sort of the outsider looking in on this subject matter. But thankfully, I don't think Christmas was so exclusive that I couldn't understand." Over the course of several years, he says, he and Taormina honed their idea and workshopped it at writer’s retreats. They ultimately set their story in the fictional town of Miller’s Point and centered it on three middle-aged siblings debating whether to sell their ailing mother’s home. (The time is the not-too-distant past; call it the flip-phone era.) Various spouses, kids and friends round out the bustling cast of characters.

Joining as a producer early on, Taormina says, was Michael Cera ("Arrested Development"), who had reached out after seeing "Ham on Rye." Cera also plays Officer Gibson, who patrols the quiet suburb with his partner, Sergeant Brooks (Gregg Turkington). Two other recognizable names — Francesca Scorsese, daughter of Martin Scorsese, and Sawyer Spielberg, son of Steven Spielberg — joined the cast in small roles.

But much of the main cast was found locally, according to Taormina. "That’s basically why all the Long Island accents are real," he says. "I didn't want anyone to be fake in that."

Taormina found two of his leads through yet another Smithtown-raised filmmaker: Calogera Carucci, a producer on the movie. The roles of the maternal Aunt Elyse and her hard-nosed brother Matthew went to a pair of real-life siblings: Carucci’s mother, Maria Carucci, and John Joseph Trischetti, Jr., both nonprofessional actors and longtime real-estate brokers.

Trischetti, 52, who lives in Scottsdale, Az., says he put his work on hold to fly out to Smithtown and join the six-week shoot. "I remember my last day of filming, I actually kind of got choked up," Trischetti says. "It just was a tremendous, tremendous experience. And I was like, I don't know if I'll ever get to experience this again."

His sister, Carucci, 57, who lives in Smithtown and has appeared in her son’s films, admits she always wanted to be an actor. "As a young girl, I would create shows in the neighborhood and we would sell tickets," she says. Acting alongside professionals such as Maria Dizzia ("Orange Is the New Black") and Ben Shenkman ("Royal Pains") was "truly and genuinely a childhood dream," Carucci says. "I’m very excited that this is going in theaters."

"Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and earned glowing reviews. The Hollywood Reporter praised its "kaleidoscopic view of Christmastime," while the Guardian called it "a very charming and rich movie, teeming with ambient detail." In early June, IFC Films, the distributor behind such art-house hits as "The Babadook" and the Oscar-winning "Boyhood," purchased North American rights to the movie.

"A lot of my work has been about reconciling the distance taken physically and otherwise from this place that I grew up," says Taormina. Filming a movie in the hometown that inspired it "warmed my heart," he adds. "It’s just a really beautiful thing to bring life in a full circle with."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman