An indie feature film that was shot in Naperville last year
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will make its world premiere next week at the Naples International Film Festival in Naples, Florida.The movie, called “Line Cooks,” was written, produced and edited by 24-year-old Naperville native Mary Jane Deer. It is the first feature film that Deer had ever worked on and was shot entirely in an empty restaurant space in downtown Naperville on a budget of about $175,000.
“I was just over the moon,” Deer said. “I cannot be more proud of this team and all the hard work they’ve put into making this a reality.”
“Line Cooks” will have two showings at the Naples film festival, one on Friday, Oct. 23 and another on Saturday, Oct. 24.
It is not the only film festival that “Line Cooks” was accepted to. In November, the movie will make an appearance at the Coronado Island Film Festival in Coronado, California. Tickets for that screening are already sold out, according to the festival’s website.
“There are so many great film festivals, and it is so unbelievably competitive to get in,” said Ann Deer, a producer for the film and Mary Jane’s mother. “There are just so many good films out there that we’re really honored to have gotten in to two, and we’ve applied to more and we’re waiting to hear (back).”
“Line Cooks” follows Callie, a sheltered, recent high school graduate student, as she takes a minimum-wage job as a line cook at a fictional Korean-taco fusion restaurant called Kimchi-Rito. Callie and her co-workers, who include ex-cons and cartel members, experience the trials and tribulations of working in the restaurant industry as they prepare for a health inspector’s visit at the end of the summer.
Nearly the entire cast and crew that worked on the film was local to the Chicago area.
That includes Chicago actor David Pasquesi, who is best known as the vice president’s ex-husband in “Veep” and as the majordomo in “The Book of Boba Fett.” In “Line Cooks,” he plays the health inspector. The film’s director, John Mossman, co-founded The Artistic Home in Chicago and directed 2022’s “Good Guy with a Gun,” which can be seen on Amazon Prime.
Even students from North Central College and local down syndrome advocate Gigi Gianni make appearances in the film.
Much of “Line Cooks” was inspired by Mary Jane Deer’s own experience working in the food industry, including a summer where she worked at a Korean taco restaurant.
“There is a scene in the film where the air conditioning in the restaurant goes out, and it prompts a secret trade,” she said.
“This is kind of a back rooms restaurant thing … but people between restaurants will bargain and swap food. So our taco place, when the (air conditioning) went out, we got a call from a gelato shop down the street, and we secretly swapped ice cream for tacos.”
She wasn’t the only one on set with that kind of experience. Other cast members previously told the Naperville Sun about their own experiences working dead-end jobs in restaurants and how those experiences, though miserable at times, helped them in their roles. One actor said he used to regularly clean the grease trap at a Potbelly because he was the only one who could stand the smell.
“(The movie) was just kind of a love letter to all these crappy jobs that we’ve done and the connections we make with them, and I think as a very small film set that was (also) a very scrappy film set, I think that energy blended really well into the film itself,” Deer said.
The team spent 15 days in August of last year filming in the space where pizza shop Bonci is currently located. At the time, no restaurant was occupying the space.
“Literally August 1, we picked up the keys and we started painting and filling it,” said Ann Deer. “It was empty. There was a counter. That was it, and so we filled it with all of the restaurant equipment and the tables and painted … and then we started filming.”
The movie was shot entirely in one location to make it easier to pull off, but at the same time, filming in one location came with its own challenges.
“I think a lot of the hard work was going into, like practically, ‘How do we pull off certain shots? How do we get the equipment where we need to go? How do we get all these actors and crew in the same space and get through some pretty complicated takes?’” Deer said. “I think that was the biggest challenge.”
She attributes the film’s completion and success to the hard work of her entire team, who she said were always ready to adapt and roll with the punches.
Beyond film festivals, Mary Jane and Ann Deer hope to release “Line Cooks” for distribution. They are currently in the early stages of that process and are assessing all of their options.
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As for future projects, Mary Jane Deer said she is working on her next screenplay, which she said will be a romantic comedy set in Chicago.
“I have never been a huge rom-com fan, but in the past year, I’ve really wanted to challenge myself and try to write a new genre, and it’s been really fun so far,” she said.
She also spent the past summer editing videos for the White Sox as part of her full-time job at video production company Journeywork Entertainment.
Her mother is also working on her own project, which will be a Christmas comedy. “Line Cooks” actor and producer Jennifer Jelsema is working on it with her. She anticipates that parts of it, if not the whole film, will also be shot in Naperville.