We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jill Morley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jill below.
Jill , appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
Learning a craft as a creative is something I know a little about because I had to learn so many, including boxing.
I started as an actress and majored in theater in college. When I moved to New York, I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse because I heard that was the best place to study acting. Even with all the books I read, plays I had been in, and things I have studied, it was like starting at square one. It forced me to think about acting in a different way and it informed the rest of my creative life since it was about being present and truthful under imaginary circumstances. That applies to everything I do from making documentary films to writing screenplays to boxing.
When I was acting, I found myself telling stories about other people and then playing them myself in a one-woman show, “True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl.” Yes, the title is what it was. Being a crappy waitress who was fired three times, I needed to figure out something else to do to earn money. Once I entered this world, I found a goldmine of material. Performing it was amazing, but after a few years, I wanted to do something else. I wanted the women to tell their own stories so I started making a documentary about them. Only now, do I know the cahones and naiveté it took! I knew nothing about filmmaking, but I was so eager to show an audience these interesting women, I figured it out as I went – which is obvious when you watch the film!
Over the years I got better at it by doing. I made doc shorts and another feature. That one, “Fight Like a Girl” was about women who used boxing to fight their inner demons. During that time, I learned the craft of boxing, which was no easy feat. Suffering from PTSD, I had panic attacks in the ring during sparring. I was so determined to learn it I went back to the gym every day until I had a breakdown. That forced me to take a slower more nurturing approach, which is how I teach it today. I worked with different coaches, studied different styles and researched boxers on YouTube from the 1920’s to today. It became an obsession – like acting was. Like writing was. Like learning how to make a documentary. Like how I’m currently learning screenwriting. I finally made a breakthrough and was able to fight and then years later win the National Golden Gloves in the masters division. This was a seminal event because it taught me that I could suck hard at something hard and get good at it by sheer will and hard work!
Each feature documentary I made took seven years. While I love docs and still make short ones, I wanted to figure out a way to tell stories in my head on screen. Screenwriting was always intimidating. It required a knowledge of structure and a certain kind of intellect I didn’t think I had. Instead, I wrote prose, short stories, monologues and was fortunate enough to have been published in all of those things. Finally, at a ripe age, some would say over-ripe, I took up screenwriting and started from square one again. But, it wasn’t square one because I had the foundation of acting and writing and storytelling. Becoming obsessed with whatever craft you want to pursue and consuming it in every way possible seems to be the way to go.
Do I wish I started with screenwriting? In a way, yes. I believe I’m gifted as a writer, but not gifted as an actress. However, I wasn’t ready before. I needed to go through everything I went through to have enough faith that I could learn. The skills I learned from character work as an actress inform the characters in each of my screenplays. I”m fortunate that my first screenplay is in the process of being made into a feature in Canada, I recently got a manager and feel like I am on a good trajectory with my work.
In the meantime, I teach the craft of boxing and try to tailor it to how each individual learns. Some are more tactile and need to do it first, some are more visual, others are auditory and need to hear a rhythm. Everyone I taught that has stuck with it has become a good boxer, won at least one of their fights and accumulated belts. After jumping around with all my crafts over the years, my intention is to stay with screenwriting and boxing with the occasional documentary short for good measure.
Jill , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
BIO
Jill is an award winning screenwriter and a documentary filmmaker who focuses on gritty character driven material and exposing the truth in compelling unexpected ways. Her screenwriting has received accolades from the Austin Film Festival, the Writer’s Lab, the Athena List, Unique Voices, Screencraft, the Almanack Writer’s Lab and Final Draft’s Big Break competition. ”See Jane Fight” was one of three feature screenplays selected for the prestigious Middlebury Script Lab and is in the top 3% on Coverfly. “Bloody Burlesque” was selected for Meg Lefauve’s Screenwriting Retreat at Hedgebrook and won Best Original Screenplay in “The Hollywood Blood Horror Competition.”
Jill’s recent doc short “Squirrel Wars” received rave reviews when it premiered at Aspen Shorts and Hot Docs, won Best Short Documentary at Hamilton NY Film Festival. It’s continuing its festival run.
Her feature doc, “Fight Like A Girl,” is about women using boxing to fight their demons and empower themselves. It played at several festivals, winning “Best Documentary” at The American Documentary Film Festival, the Artemis Film Festival and the Other Venice Film Festival. Jill was presented with an award from the World Boxing Council and from the Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame.
Jill’s critically acclaimed documentary film, “Stripped” won awards at festivals, ran theatrically in New York and LA, sold internationally and ran on the Sundance Channel. Other shorts she directed and shot, played festivals such as Hot Docs, Aspen Shorts, Newport Beach, AFI, Santa Barbara Film Festival, The Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival and the International San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Jill was a producer and host on Vice’s “Cris Cyborg: On Fighting Like a Girl” and also produced a spot for Playboy’s “Journalista.” She worked as a researcher on Davis Guggenheim’s “The Dream Is Now” about immigration reform.
Morley wrote and performed the critically acclaimed play, “True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl,” which was published in “The Best Women’s Plays of 1998,” ran Off Broadway for several years, was performed across the country, including the San Francisco’s “Solo Mio Festival;” and was made into a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
A contributing writer to several periodicals including; “The Village Voice,” “Bust Magazine,” and “The New York Press,” she was a producer/correspondent with Michael Moore for “The Awful Truth.” Jill also produced radio documentaries for NPR’s “This American Life” and “The World.” Her short stories and monologues are published in several anthologies, including “True Tales of Lust and Love,” “Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong,” “Ho’s Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys,” and “Honey On a Razor,” Jill is honored to have her monologues published in several monologue collections by Gerald Lee Ratliff along with Arthur Miller, Steve Martin, David Hare,and Wendy Wasserstein.
In 2015, she won the National Golden Gloves in the Masters Division and she continues to teach women boxing and coach young girls.
Jill is currently developing five screenplays, a doc short and a limited doc series. She is a member of Film Fatales.
She continues to teach boxing through her business “FLAG Boxing.”
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I believe the sheer number of years I’ve lived life as a creative demonstrates my resilience. There have been times I have made an excellent living as a writer or filmmaker and there has been very lean times. It didn’t help that I kept exploring different crafts – acting, writing, filmmaking, shooting, editing, screenwriting. But, I was truly inspired to learn each one and for me, it takes a while to get good at them – good enough to earn a living from them. During those times, I would do other jobs which I would later write about. Go-Go dancer, Tennis Pro, wedding photographer, boxing coach, cater waiter, pedicab driver, etc.
Even though I’ve had my ups and downs financially as an artist, I never could give up. There’s something in me that needs to tell stories and express myself or I feel lost. At any given moment, I have a few projects going on. Some bear fruit and some do not, but I have faith that either they will or the process of learning will.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My goal has always been to give voice to the under-represented. Because I have done so many jobs that traversed many classes, races, and types, I’ve met a variety of people, many of whom I never got to hear their stories before. I’m always fascinated. Many times, people have the wrong idea about these “characters” and my goal has always been to bring their voices to light and expose their truths.
There is a universal truth to the way everyone lives their lives and it saddens me when anyone is “othered.” Pretty much everyone I write about exists in a subculture or in a world where they are misunderstood. I feel a strong sense of responsibility to bring them out of the shadows and into the light where they can be embraced.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jillmorley.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jillmorley/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jillmorleyboxer
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-morley-b15a84/
- Twitter: @jillmorley
- Youtube: @jillmorley
- Other: www.FLAGboxingLA.com
Image Credits
photos by Gary Lai Zora Ellis David Oh Cameron McIntire