When Jill Murphy Long was growing up in suburban Pennsylvania, a partial meltdown devastated the nuclear reactor 12 miles away at Three Mile Island. That was back in 1979. Over the years, friends and family started falling ill. A high school boyfriend died of leukemia. Her younger brother was diagnosed with three different kinds of cancer. And then, in 2012, Long herself found out she had a brain tumor. The now-recovered writer, director, and producer hopes to tell her own story in Meltdown, her first full-length film.
I want to make at least 12 movies before I kick off. I tell these young guns: ‘You don’t know how long you have. Make your movie now.’
“Making a feature film,” says the member of Portland’s WeWork Custom House, “is like running a marathon.” She started the project in January, rewriting her script more than 25 times. She’s in the process of raising funds and pitching the idea to big-name talent. If everything goes well, she hopes to start filming next year. In the meantime, the 53-year-old auteur is hitting the festival circuit (she directed Space Within, an official selection at the New York’s Director’s Chair Film Festival) and doing post-production on others (she produced Feeding Fate and Call Harry, slated for release later this year). “Working on these other projects really energizes me,” she says. “It gives me clearer eyes when I go back to my own movie.”
Photos: Tom Bender