A soft-spoken, lanky, young man, Tom Myers grew up in Toledo, a product of Ottawa Hills Elementary School and St Francis deSales High School, graduating in 2008. Myers then traveled to Los Angeles to enroll in film school at Loyola Marymount. Meyers recently wrapped filming of his first feature length film, set at the historic Toledo Club.
Meyers has been interested in filming since he was 10 years old and he gained some hands-on experience while participating in a film club in high school. After graduating from Loyola Marymount, he worked at a film development company where he contributed to ideas and concepting to entice actors and directors into ideas to create film opportunities. Although his work at the development company didn’t result in a film being made, he learned quite a bit about the creation of a film while attempting to put together a film based on Errol Flynn‘s Zorro character. (It still may happen, but just not yet.)
Impetus for The Toast
Meyers began writing The Toast in 2023. The impetus for the story, he explains, was that, at 33 years old, it seemed that everyone he knew was talking about getting married. Attending eight weddings in the space of one single year, Meyers felt that a wedding setting would be a great environment for a farce.
Meyers wrote the script in about 2 1/2 months and admits that he continued to tweak the storyline until filming was completed. The decision to film in Toledo was bolstered by his ability to access resources here. By that he means the chance to recruit the 60 extras that are in the film (all of whom Meyers knows personally) and the ability to really rely on them. The extras that worked were all known by Meyers from his time growing up here including his mom and his Aunt Karen (Karen Crotte, who actually has a speaking role in the film). Meyers made sure that many of the faces of the extras were seen and can be identified in the movie.
Setting in Toledo
Meyers sees Toledo as a “very universal city,” representative of many places across the country.
Although Toledo, specifically, is not mentioned in the film, there are references to Northwest Ohio. Tax incentives in Ohio are, per Meyers, “pretty good.” The Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit provides a refundable, tax credit of 30 percent on production cast and crew wages, plus other eligible in-state spending.
Other members of The Toast cast and crew are not area residents and traveled to Toledo to work on the project. Meyers and his group took over a local motel, arranging rooms for the cast and crew out-of-towners. Myers recalls that as being “a lot of fun, kind of like summer camp.”
The filming took place over three weeks in August with an additional week of rehearsal prior to filming. The rehearsals were staged at St. Francis High School; the school was very accommodating for their alumni, Meyers. Will Garvey, a classmate of Meyers, currently tasked with alumni relations for St. Francis, was extremely helpful and accommodating.
Toledo Club “the perfect venue”
Filming at the Toledo Club was arranged as Meyers found the Club “just beautiful and very appropriate for the film.“ Myers looked at all the country clubs in the area as possible filming locations, but really wanted to film at The Toledo Club due to its historical significance and architectural Integrity. “The Toledo Club is the perfect venue for this film,” Meyers explained.
Myers received approval to film at the Toledo Club just a few weeks before the annual Club summer Renaissance, when the facility is closed for cleaning and renovation projects each year for two weeks. With that arrangement and the Club maintenance being done during non-filming time, almost every room on the first three floors were used and, as well, the fourth floor of the historic structure was used for storage, meetings and other task ancillary to the film. The Founders Dining Room, the Centennial Room, the Red Room, and the third floor lobby are featured prominently in the film. An interesting sidenote, due to copyright issues many of the paintings, hanging throughout the Club, were obscured or not filmed directly to avoid claims for a payment for use of copyrighted work. Some rooms were dressed up with flowers while some paintings were replaced with copies of prints that were in the public domain. Other than that, there was much done to ready the Toledo Club for filming.
The filming went pretty smoothly, according to Meyers, and was completed during the required timeframe. Editing the film is now an ongoing project. With approximately 20 hours of film, a guess by Meyers as to the total length of film available, it took an editor a full week to watch all of it. Now that editor has the task of reducing 20 hours to approximately one and 1/4 hours or 75 minutes for the completed film. The Toast is currently working on becoming “a locked picture’, with all the scenes in the right place and in the right order by the end of the year. Meyers will hire a sound mixer and a colorist to make sure that everything is just right and a score will be written by a classmate of Myers from Loyola Marymount, to be integrated into the film.
Release expected in 2025
Myers expects to release the film at film festivals or in theaters as well as on streaming platforms. Stars in the film include Jon Lovitz from Saturday Night Live fame. Myers had access to the phone number for Lovitz’s manager and contacted him, explaining that he had written a role that would be perfect for Lovitz.
Meyers was offered the chance to send the script to Lovitz; he liked it and was in Toledo for seven days in August this past summer. Myers regards him as an impressive actor who learned his lines including a long monologue (The Toast). Meyers explains that Lovitz and the cast did 25 takes to get it right. Lovitz’ patience was tested and proved worthy. Myers developed a quick and good relationship with Lovitz and they worked well together. Other noteworthy actors in the film are Jessica Van from Netflix, Zack, Tinker, an Emmy nominee from Days of Our Lives and Michele Ortiz from This Fool and other projects.
The filming of The Toast was surrounded by wedding vibes. A number of the film’s cast has been married since the filming, with four or five of the actors to be married within the next six months. The bride in the film, Bea, played by Rachel Rosenstein, was married just prior to this interview. Meyers attended her wedding and explains, “She felt close to Toledo. She really bonded with Toledo”. The cast and crew had a party at Hannon’s Block downtown to celebrate the completion of the filming and, as well, as distractions from the grueling filming schedule, they took a trip to Put in Bay and to the Glass Pavilion, along with other local sites.
Myers describes the entire experience as a “great one’, and says that he wants to keep filming in Toledo. With huge benefits from his personal connections in the area, filming in Toledo was “a fun time and a great experience.”
Stay tuned as Myers plans a premiere of the film here in Northwest Ohio in early 2025. The Toast is something that will be met with great anticipation, and Toledo pride.
