In the gritty New York City of 1994, a stripper, desperate to become a serious journalist, investigates missing sex workers for an article. But when her best friend turns out to be the next victim, the story becomes personal.
Set in the gritty East Village of New York City in the 1990’s, this black drama explores themes of bias, classism and asks the question, “How much of yourself can you sell and still hold on to who you are?
ALPHABET CITY opens with a naked woman being chased by a massive man in the snow. She turns the corner and hides in a Community Garden. The man follows the blood trail and finds her. She takes off again. He catches up, stabs her in the neck with a needle and she falls unconscious. He drags her away. That is the teaser.
MITCH, 30, is the kind of girl who listens to Bikini Kill, Courtney Love and believes girl zines are forever. When the pilot begins, she's stripping to make ends meet with her friend, JASMINE, 27, artsy, earthy, with long black hair, and a nose ring. Jasmine is an artist and Mitch interns at the Village Voice, where she is determined to be a staffed journalist. However, her career keeps getting sidelined because of her risky behavior. She puts herself in danger to get a story and has paid the price by ending up in the hospital. While she is a good journalist, her editor is afraid of her self-destructive behavior.
When she learns sex workers are going missing, it triggers her violent past. As a child, she saw her mother get murdered by her father and was forced to keep it quiet. This drives her to be a journalist and have a voice. It’s also why she has a strong sense of guilt and is pursuing justice for these women.
Not only must our protagonist find her friend, but also overcome the senseless murder of her mother and… patriarchal power.
Jill is an award-winning screenwriter and a documentary filmmaker who focuses on gritty character-driven material and exposing the truth in a compelling unexpected way. Her screenplays have been finalists for the Athena Lab, The Big Apple Screenplay Competition, The Metropolitan Screenplay Competition, Unique Voices, semi-finalists for Final Draft's Big Break Competition, Stowe Story Labs and gotten her fellowships to Hedgebrook, the Middlebury Screenwriting Lab , "See Jane Fight is currently being developed in Canada. Her award-winning feature doc, “Fight Like a Girl” played several festivals and won a special award from the World Boxing Council. The also "Award-winning "Squirrel Wars" sold to Journeyman Features., Her feature Stripped”won awards at festivals, ran theatrically in New York and LA, sold internationally and ran on the Sundance Channel. Other films played festivals such as, Hot Docs, Newport Beach FF, Aspen FF ,AFI, Santa Barbara Film Festival, The Sebastopol Documentary FF and the International San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.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 was performed across the country, including the San Francisco’s “Solo Mio Fest
