Private Project

The Man of Her Dreams

Kyle Kyleson is looking for love. Over the course of one whirlwind night, four women will vie for his affection and the chance to marry him. However, things spiral out of control as Kyle's standards become impossible to meet.

  • Emily Tomasi
    Director
  • Emily Tomasi
    Writer
  • Sam Shapiro
    Producer
  • Jesse Townes
    Key Cast
    "Kyle"
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Comedy, Horror
  • Runtime:
    17 minutes 59 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 4, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Emily Tomasi

Emily Tomasi is a writer and director who loves nothing more than uncomfortable laughter. As someone with a lifelong fascination with the darker side of American society and culture, her films often use humor to make pointed observations on the absurdity of modern social norms. She graduated from Bard College with a degree in Film and Electronic Arts and currently resides in the Hudson Valley.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Reality TV is ridiculous; this is something that both fans and critics of the genre can agree on, but why do we all tune in? Reality TV, specifically dating shows, boils the modern expectation of a romantic relationship down to concentrate. Producers mulling through thousands of photos and deciding who meets our narrow beauty standards the best, editors twisting kind people into a villains, rich inner lives reduced to "desirable" and "undesirable" traits, a man subject to national ridicule for wanting to date a woman longer than a few months before proposing in the finale the 18th season of The Bachelor. The result is a complete bastardization of human connection packaged and sold as the ideal. Many people believe in this ideal and search their whole lives for it like hungry ghosts.

I started writing The Man of Her Dreams after casually watching a dating show with some friends, laughing at the contestants' misguided notion of love, but I started to think about why I was laughing. As someone who is gender non-confroming, I always viewed this version of love as an outsider looking in; I have the luxury of not feeling bound to these expectations and began to think what it would take to truly want something like that. The result is, hopefully, a film that strips the glossy veneer off of what these shows are trying to tell us, that true American love is about social acceptability, whiteness, and the subservience of women.