Naperville native Mary Jane Deer is telling stories on the big screen. Her film “Line Cooks” debuted at the Naples International Film Festival on Oct. 23, in one of two sold-out showings.
“I’ve always loved storytelling,” Mary Jane Deer said. “I love how it can connect people and how we can learn more about ourselves through it.”
Paying homage to the service industry
The nearly 90-minute comedy features a cast of unexpected characters, paying homage, Mary Jane Deer said, to the sometimes chaotic nature of the service industry.
“Think if John Hughes, ‘The Office,’ and The Food Network got all smashed together,” Mary Jane Deer said. “So it is about a college kid who’s trying to get a letter of recommendation and needs a quote-unquote real job. So she takes a job as a line cook at a restaurant run by ex-cartel members and cons, and it’s basically their whole antics and shenanigans trying to survive the summer and service. “
Mary Jane Deer said her real-life experiences helped inspire the script.
“It is very, very loosely based on my first job as a line cook, and I’ve worked a couple of other service industry jobs,” said the filmmaker. “And through it, you meet such incredibly interesting people from all different walks of life.”
A mother-daughter collaboration
“Line Cooks” is Mary Jane Deer’s first feature-length film and was also a special collaboration with her mom, Ann Deer, who took on the role of executive producer.
“You’re your kid’s biggest champion,” she said. “And she’s just an amazing writer, and I thought it’d be really fun.”
Ann Deer is no stranger to the industry, getting her start in filmmaking as an executive producer on the movie “Spare Room,” released in 2018.
“I literally just fell in love with being on set and the whole creative process. Seeing 50 people working together to make someone’s words come to life is just really cool,” she said.
Ann Deer said working with her daughter was an experience she wouldn’t trade for anything.
“It was really great to kind of work as a pair, a team. And I can’t do what she can do. I can’t write like that,” she said. “But I have some of the organizational skills and the networking and the ability to raise some money. And so we really had a blast, and it was just a really fun thing to do together. And we’re still having a great time with it.”
A team effort
The team created the film on a budget of $175,000, raised through a Seed&Spark campaign. It was shot over the course of three weeks at a then-vacant restaurant space in downtown Naperville, now home to Bonci Pizza.
“We really speed-ran it,” Mary Jane Deer said. “We got so close, and it was just fun.”
A majority of the cast and crew are from the Chicagoland area, something Mary Jane Deer said made the project extra special.
“We really wanted to celebrate Chicago filmmaking, indie filmmaking. And there’s just so much incredible talent in the city and in the suburbs here that we just kind of wanted to see what we could do with the people we knew,” Mary Jane Deer said.
The team’s hard work is now paying off, as “Line Cooks” lead actress Emma Knott won the Rising Star award during the team’s trip to Naples.
Connecting with audiences
Mary Jane Deer said seeing her work on the big screen and watching audiences respond positively to her work is a feeling she won’t forget.
“I think it’s now less about celebrating something I’ve done and celebrating this kind of collective work of a lot of people I really love and admire,” Mary Jane Deer said. “So seeing their hard work appreciated, seeing our hard work appreciated when someone laughs or connects with the film or asks thoughtful questions, it’s really humbling, and it’s really fun.”
The cast and crew will now travel to California for two more sold-out screenings at the Coronado Island Film Festival, Nov. 6 and 7.
Featured image courtesy: Mary Jane Deer
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