Tom Ropelewski Launches Kickstarter for Jill Sobule Documentary

Filmmaker Tom Ropelewski has unveiled Jill Sobule: She’s Gonna Sing! You’re Gonna Listen! (Working Title), a new musical documentary that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the late singer-songwriter Jill Sobule.

What began as a collaboration to spotlight her next artistic era, Ropelewski and Sobule spent the last several years filming. From New York rehearsals for her one-woman-with-a-band autobiographical show, F*CK 7th GRADE, to the Nashville recording of its cast album, to candid tour footage across the U.S.

While actively involved in the production, Sobule died unexpectedly in May 2025. The film has now become a vivid, joyful, and definitive portrait, a film Ropelewski says is “not a memorial, but a vital and intimate portrait of a once-in-a-generation artist whose voice only grows larger.”

The documentary also features friends and music collaborators, including Richard Barone (The Bongos), Nini Camps (Antigone Rising), comedian/actor Margaret Cho, John Doe (X), Kristin Ellis-Henderson (Antigone Rising), jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, Matt Groening (Creator of The Simpsons), Kay Hanley (Letters To Cleo), Michelle Lewis (singer/songwriter/composer, SONA co-founder), author David Hajdu, comedian/ host Stephanie Miller, and Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine).

To support the film’s completion, Ropelewski has launched a Kickstarter campaign, giving Sobule’s fans and community the chance to help share in her story. “She’s so lively and funny in the footage,” says Ropelewski. “When people see this film, they’ll understand why everyone who knew her wanted to hang out with her.” The campaign will remain open until January 16, 2026 — Jill’s birthday.

A crowdfunding trailblazer, Sobule’s relationship with fan-powered funding began before online crowdfunding existed. In 2009, before Kickstarter launched, she created her own DIY system, inviting fans to directly support the making of her groundbreaking album, California Years, pioneering a model that looked remarkably similar to what Kickstarter would eventually become. When she launched her first official Kickstarter campaign for an album in 2018, she was already considered a crowdsourcing innovator by its founders.

About Jill Sobule

Over three decades and a dozen albums, the Denver-born singer-songwriter-guitarist tackled such topics as the death penalty, anorexia nervosa, shoplifting, reproduction, the French Resistance, adolescent malaise, LGBTQ issues, and the Christian Right. Her hits included “I Kissed A Girl”—the first openly gay-themed song ever to crack the Billboard Top 20—and the alt-rock anthem “Supermodel” featured in the film Clueless. Her theater credits include a musical adaptation of Yentl, Prozak and the Platypus, Times Square, and the autobiographical musical F*ck 7th Grade. 

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez