When Naperville native and burgeoning film screenwriter Mary Jane Deer’s screenplay proved too expensive to produce as it would require flying a cast and crew to the Caribbean, her mother encouraged her to write a different story.
Consider something that could be a low-budget indie film, her mother said, something that could be shot in one location.
“She literally wrote (her second effort) in a month and then her bosses (at Journeywork Entertainment) read it and said, ‘This is amazing,’ and they need a table read,” said Ann Deer, who also works in the film industry.
Now, the 23-year-old’s mockumentary screenplay is being made into a full-length movie that’s being shot in her hometown and directed by John Mossman, cofounder of The Artistic Home in Chicago and director of 2022’s “Good Guy with a Gun,” which can be seen on Amazon Prime. In addition to writing the movie, Mary Jane Deer is also a producer and editor.
“Line Cooks” follows Callie, a straight-A college 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 coworkers, who includes 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.
Among its stars is Chicago actor, David Pasquesi, as the health inspector. He’s best known as the vice president’s ex-husband in “Veep” and as the majordomo in the “The Book of Boba Fett.”
This past week they’ve been shooting in downtown Naperville, using the former Effin Egg restaurant on Chicago Avenue as the Kimchi-Rito set. The place is plastered with fake health certificates, menus and even a colorful mural sporting the Kimchi-Rito logo.
Mary Jane Deer, a 2024 graduate of Indiana University with a degree in film, television and digital production and a Naperville Central High School alum, said being able to shoot the film in the town where she grew up has been special, as has being able to work with her mother on the project, she said.
“Doing it with my mom (who serves as executive producer) — I mean, talk about your biggest advocate being there for you in all the fun and all the crazy,” Deer said. “It’s very funny because we just pulled neighbors and relatives and people we meet just to be extras. … So living in Naperville is really fun. You never know who you’re gonna run into.”
While the script draws partly on Deer’s experiences from the summer she spent working at a Korean-taco restaurant and interviews with people who work in the service industry, the subject matter was something with which cast members could also relate.
David Stobbe, who plays restaurant manager named Kevin in the film, worked at a Potbelly in Chicago’s Wicker Park when he was in college.
“I was constantly having to clean the grease trap because I was the only one that could bear the smell,” said Stobbe, a Joliet native who has been in nearly two dozen plays in the Chicago area, including to at Aurora’s Paramount Theatre. “I don’t know if you’ve ever cleaned a grease trap. It’s the worst thing on the planet.”
Years of that kind of work helped him embody his role, he said.
“It allows me to make it really hard for the teenagers in this cast, right? Because now I know like, ‘Yeah, let this team clean the grease trap. Let them experience what it really means to get your hands dirty,’” he said.
Pasquesi said he also worked in a restaurant in the mid-1980s. While he’s never been a health inspector, he recalls very clearly what it was like when they showed up.
“I remember them coming in, and the feeling when they’re there. It’s not pleasant,” he said. “So it must be weird for them because nobody’s happy to see you.”
Turning the restaurant into a movie set took more than menus and logos, Deer said. Every few days, the team has to buy a new batch of kimchi, Deer said. And they do a fair amount of cooking at home and then transport it food to the set, Ann Deer added.
“I think the other thing was just how much stuff is in a kitchen, an industrial kitchen, that I didn’t think of,” Ann Deer said. “We got some of it on Facebook marketplace, (from) restaurants going out of business, so it’s all dinged up, and then it’s perfect for us. We were able to rent restaurant equipment that was damaged and no longer functioning, which was perfect.”
When the $140,000 film is complete, Mary Jane Deer hopes to showcase “Line Cooks” in a few film festivals with the goal of getting it picked up by a streaming service.
“It is truly a team effort,” she said, reflecting on the film-making process. “Everyone is putting their all into this film, and you just get to see how talented and varied people’s skills are. It’s hard work and enthusiasm that gets a dream team, small production like this to the finish line, so I am truly so overwhelmingly grateful to every person on this set.”
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