Mix a pair of down-on-their-luck sisters with a miracle cake recipe, salivating investors, an overzealous reporter, a couple of wise guys from The Sopranos, and a rambunctious Golden Retriever with a sweet tooth, and you have the ingredients for a curious caper.
Layer them onto Greater Morristown with a sprinkling of familiar faces, and Voila! You have Cocoa, a feel-good comedy on Amazon Prime that’s sure to tickle local fancies.
“I couldn’t have found a better place to do the movie, to be honest with you,” said Jody Mortara, a Los Angeles-based actress who wrote, co-produced, co-directed and co-starred in Cocoa, shot largely in Morristown and Morris Township in the fall of 2021.
A matinee screening is scheduled for the Chatham Hickory Cinema on Feb. 25, 2023. Seating is limited; email here with ticket requests.
Video trailer for Cocoa:
Mortara wanted “a kind of Disneyland-ish” setting for Cocoa, where “the colors were beautiful, the scenery was beautiful, the people were nice.” Her location manager, Gene Hale III, hails from this area and quickly made the right connections.
Local viewers will recognize, among other places, the Morristown Green, the town Historic District, Headquarters Plaza, the now-departed Kilwin’s ice cream shop, and the Masonic Lodge. (Look closely there for a cameo by Mary Dougherty, the spouse of Mayor Tim Dougherty.)
Other backdrops include the Morris Township police station, Convent Station and, prominently, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.
That’s where Mortara and co-director Joe Gawalis found a willing extra in the Rev. Anne Thatcher. Recruited at the last minute, the church rector plays “Mrs. Chapman,” wife of a prospective investor in a chocolate cake that makes you lose weight.
“It’s just a wonderful moment of surprise and joy and wonder,” Thatcher said, when asked how it felt to see herself onscreen, in her first movie role and paid acting gig.
She appeared in school and community dramas and musicals, often as a chorus dancer, back in Salem, ORE, and Walla Walla, WA. But making a feature film, she has discovered, is more painstaking.
Thatcher estimates she spent about 30 hours in several locations for what amounted to roughly two minutes of screen time in Cocoa. One tricky scene involved “Cocoa” –portrayed by a trained golden retriever named James– who lands in a suitcase after devouring the delicious cake.
“It took us hours and hours to do that scene,” recounted Thatcher, who also contributed some priestly wardrobe advice.
Brian Mandel, a Freemason from Morris Township, was recruited to play “Pastor Bob.” Thatcher knew sharp-eyed Episcopalians would titter at his choir robe. So she suggested a stole, to make him look “more clergy-like.”
Mandel, a retired Wall Street trader, said an acquaintance has ribbed him that his Jewish parents must be spinning in their graves.
His wife Debbie, seen for a nanosecond in Cocoa helping some “Bingo ladies” thrash a suspicious character, joked that her husband fears “being typecast as a religious figure.”
Mandel said he enjoyed the $150 gig. But next time, he informed the directors, “I want to be cast as an action hero.”
SURPRISING SOPRANOS
Cocoa’s cast includes some bona fide screen actors. In addition to Mortara, whose credits include Octaroon and the reality show Needs to Bake, there is Tony Cucci. Sopranos fans may remember him as Fat Dom Gamiello. In Cocoa, he plays fictional mob boss Carmine Frangiolini, who wants his slice of the cake.
In real life, Cucci is “one of the nicest people around, a gem,” Mortara said. “He only plays drama, you know, a serious mob kind of guy. So he loved being in a comedy.”
Carmine’s Cocoa sidekick Guido is played by the marvelously deadpan Artie Pasquale, a.k.a. Burt Gervasi on The Sopranos. Another Sopranos alumnus, John Bianco — Gerardo “Gerry the Hairdo” Torciano in season six–stays behind the camera as director of photography.
A reviewer on the movie site Rotten Tomatoes said Cocoa would be right at home on the Hallmark Channel or the Great American Family network, as “one of those films you’d put on when your traditional American family comes over and wants to watch something silly and safe.”
Mortara said that’s she was aiming for with her first screenplay, a project that took almost four years to complete amidst the pandemic.
“Cocoa is something that was really happy, fun, uplifting, at a time especially when the world was looking so dark. And that’s kind of why I pushed to do the movie when I did,” Mortara said.
It got funded, literally, by accident.
Injured in a car accident while acting in another film, Mortara went to a chiropractor in L.A. She casually mentioned her script. “I know a family you need to call,’” she quoted the chiropractor as saying.
Mortara followed through. She said the family, whose identity she won’t reveal, agreed to bankroll the movie while allowing her total artistic control.
“I just was in the right place at the right time, and they liked my script. People really are resonating with movies where you don’t have to close your eyes or bury your child under the seat because you don’t want them to see something or hear something or whatever.
“They’re just trying to find something where they can watch it and not feel affronted in some way. Just laugh and have fun,” Mortara said.
Cocoa was so much fun for the Rev. Anne, she said she can hardly wait for another acting opportunity. It could come.
St. Peter’s, with its gothic splendor, has become something of a magnet for movie and TV types. Patrick Dempsey shot scenes for a pilot episode there; Matthew Broderick gave holiday readings when his sister was rector.
Thatcher will be ready. She has taken a Zoom class on film acting with New York’s renowned HB Studio, and created her own page on the IMDB movie site. And if her acting prayers go unanswered, the minister may have another showbiz option — as an agent.
Inspired by James the Golden Retriever’s performance as “Cocoa,” Thatcher sees possibilities for Laszlo, her Irish doodle.
“Laszlo would make a very good movie dog, because he’s very photogenic and he loves everybody and he’s super smart. So maybe Laszlo’s got a future career. Who knows?”
