The last mile is often the hardest, and that seemed the case for Tony Romeo and his Florida film crew. After 36 hours of driving cross-country from Miami to Moab, Utah, at times through drenching rain, icy roads and swirling snowstorms while hauling a prefab wooden cabin, film gear and a van full of props, the crew of 10 were exhausted and then—a tire blowout.
“We had driven through pretty much every climate on the way—sun, rain, snow, the wind sometimes whipping the trailer around and our Sprinter van only had summer tires—so to get that blowout just an hour from our drive up to the mesa top, wow,” said Romeo, who earned a bachelor’s degree in motion pictures production in 2025 and is now pursuing a motion pictures M.F.A. from the University of Miami School of Communication.
Romeo put on the trailer’s spare by the side of the road and, after a quick stop at their Airbnb, the crew began heading up the rocky mountain road to the mesa. Yet by now, the last rays of sunlight were fading, and their vehicles lurched up the road as night descended. A distance that should have taken 20 minutes took an hour. The stars were twinkling overhead in the vast Western sky by the time the crew arrived at the site to unload the cabin panels.
They returned early the next morning to reconstruct the prefab cabin and begin five days of filming for Romeo’s short film “Dead in the Trespasses,” which premiered in September at the Bill Cosford Cinema as part of a University of Miami Industry Showcase.
The showcase for the film was the first event organized by Origami Raptor Productions, the production company Romeo launched together with Can Gumusgerdan, an alumnus of the cinematic arts program, and Jake McCreary, his producer and longtime friend.
The cross-country trek was arduous, but the opportunity to film a Western movie—and to film at a location just over the ridge from Monument Valley, where John Wayne shot many of his most iconic films—was a dream come true for Romeo.
“My mom, a Cuban immigrant born in 1957, came here when she was young and, like so many Hispanics, lived for the American dream and was big into Westerns. Our family nights were almost always watching Westerns together on TV—I saw all those John Wayne movies, that was a big part of my childhood,” Romeo said.
Romeo is an ambitious filmmaker who seeks a demanding physical experience to inspire his work. For his first film, shot on Elliot Key, the largest island in Biscayne National Park off Miami, Romeo and friends camped out in tents for four days to get the shots they needed. For his second film, shot in a Central Florida forest, his crew hiked back and forth for half an hour each day, schlepping a generator and equipment between the campsite and their filming location.
“When we have the entire world as our studio, I want to do everything I can to make every aspect of my film as real as possible. For this third film, I felt I had to really level it up and decided, ‘We’re going to road-trip out to Moab, Utah, and shoot a Western,’” he said.
The real spark for the film happened earlier, though. After driving nearly nonstop from Miami to attend a lens production expo in Los Angeles in 2025, Romeo and his girlfriend decided to take a slower, more scenic route back home. His sister encouraged him to stop in Moab, Utah, a town known for off-roading and popular for its filming sites.
“We went horseback riding through the mountains and desert, and I just fell in love with the landscape. It was just so magnificent. You can’t go anywhere in Florida that comes close to replicating how grand and isolated the landscape is,” said Romeo. “I thought: ‘I’ve got to write something about this.’”
Romeo explained that the landscape is a major element in conveying his vision of an old-school, John Wayne-style Western that portrays the more positive images of the Old West: heroes, horses and grand open nature. The narrative—and the concept of “trespasses”—is in part inspired by changes in his religious beliefs.
“I’ve been through a lot of changes over the past year, and the film has been an outlet for me to express my faith in a different light. I’ve been reading a lot of Christian literature, stories that take place in isolation in nature, and so the setting is pure, unfiltered, raw nature—that was the main thing,” he said.
For finding the location site and securing permission from the mesa landowner, Romeo was aided in large part by Bega Metzner, film commission director for the Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission. Working with a limited budget, Romeo paid only the actors in Utah. His infant niece enjoyed her first film role as the baby in the film, while the rest of the crew donated their time and talents to the extraordinary adventure.
“We all really came together as a family, and I’m so grateful to the whole crew. Some of them had never been out of the state, had never seen snow, so to be there shooting and looking at the sunset over the mountains was so amazing.
“Having seen some of these places on film growing up as a kid and then to go out there and shoot something in that landscape was just the biggest satisfaction,” Romeo said.
Romeo is hoping his 16-minute short is picked up by film festivals, and he’s planning to begin writing on a feature film version.
“That’s the plan. So, I might have to buckle down and make the trek back out to Utah again,” he said.
