The One That Got Away (thoughts on Adrienne Shelly)

I've talked about "murder shows" on my blog page.  And last night I binged some Forensic Files.  I mean, at least Forensic Files gets into the science of solving murder cases.  It's not just a show that's solely about people murdering one another.  Perhaps that's a rationalization; for I can't help but feel somehow guilty--perhaps complicit in the murder itself--by indulging in these shows that, let's face it; now actually glorify murder.  I mean, is Keith Morrison not the biggest ghoul on the airwaves?  Bill Hader really nailed it with this sketch:

But, full disclosure: I am often lured into the depths of deathly DATELINE depravity by the dulcet tones of Mr. Morrison.  That absurd folksiness of his delivery actually works.  I have found myself creeping to bed at 5 in the morning after having spent the wee hours with Crime Daddy Keith.  I'm not proud of it.
On a serious note...
So, after last night's murderthon; I got to thinking about my own experiences with murder.  Had I known anyone that had been murdered.  Had I known anyone that had murdered anyone?*  Did I know anyone that knew anyone that had been murdered? (Just for the record, I personally have not ​murdered anyone). The answer to all of these questions, was, unfortunately yes.  And in the case of the first question, it was someone famous.  I deplore name-dropping and at the risk of doing just that, I want to write about Adrienne Shelly.  I knew her.  We went to film school together.  We were in many of the same classes.  We weren't friends: in fact, barely acquaintances.  We were class-mates; no more, no less.  But my memories of her are quite vivid.

Adrienne was murdered in 2006 by a young man named Diego Pillco, in New York City.  He was a construction worker from Ecuador, working in the Greenwich Village building where Adrienne had an office.  I won't go into all the details (the crime is well documented on line); he confessed to it.  But he kept changing his story.  Initially, he said Adrienne had come to the room where he was working and demanded he stop making noise; the confrontation escalated and he snapped and killed her.  When I first heard this story, I remember it did not sit well with me.  I had nagging doubts about it.  Would this tiny woman really have gotten confrontational with a man when she was alone.  In New York City? I mean, she wasn't stupid.  It is far more likely that he targeted her and she fought back and then he snapped.  I guess we'll never know for sure what happened.

Adrienne was in my screenwriting class during my junior year at Boston University.  Her original name was Adrienne Levine. She was Jewish.  A lot of my classmates were Jewish.  I didn't know this until I matriculated there, that B.U. had a high ratio of Jewish students.  One of the school's nick-names was "Be Jew."  That's true (and I got that from other students, presumably the Jewish ones).  A lot of kids from Long Island and the New York area.  Adrienne was from Queens.  Of course, I didn't know all of this at the time.  All I knew is that this girl I had in some of my classes stood out.  Her appearance was ethereal .

Here's my yearbook picture from my college days.  I remember being miserable the day that was taken.  I had undiagnosed OCD (that's a whole other blog); and I may have been hung over.  Remember when you could be hung over and still take a good picture?  Ah, youth.

Adrienne was not in the yearbook.  This is how I remember it...
She had left at the end of the first semester of our junior year.  I vividly recall that too.  She sort of made an announcement in class that she wouldn't be back.  She was leaving school to go to New York City and pursue her dreams of becoming an actress.  People who knew her were rallying around her and wishing her well and so on and so forth.  Like I said, I barely knew her.  I'm not sure we ever even had a conversation when she came up to me at some point (maybe in the student lounge) and said good-bye to me personally.  She told me she was leaving. That's all I remember.  I'm sure I wished her luck.  What I do remember is her standing in front of me in such proximity.  Perhaps a foot away, directly in front of me, beaming up into my face (she was extremely petite).  Her look at that time was not the look she had in her movies.  She wore no make-up.  Her skin was so pale as to be translucent.  She often wore her hair piled haphazardly on her head with little wisps hanging down.  She was always in flowing, diaphanous outfits with super dangly earrings: an even more elfin and gamine sort of Edie Sedgwick, by way of New Yawhk.  She shone like some sort of otherworldly being.  She was unforgettable.  Clearly, as I have not forgotten.

Arresting as she was; I never thought she was a great beauty.  Her features were huge.  But often, people with exaggerated features that you wouldn't first construe as "beauty" have that thing that a movie camera loves.  Adrienne had it.  Once she committed to a hair color and put cosmetics on that skin...kaboom!
We had a mutual friend; Amy.  Amy and I partnered up for a final film project in one of our classes.  We both moved out to Los Angeles around the same time and kept in touch for a while.  One day we were talking and she said, "Did you hear about Adrienne Shelly?"  "No," I replied, "what about her?"  "She's a movie star!  Well, indies, anyways.  She's in Hal Hartley's movies!"  I had no idea who Hal Hartley was.  "They're saying she's like, "The New Brigitte Bardot" of America!"

"Really?" I asked.
"Really!!!" Amy exclaimed, with three exclamation points.  I was surprised; but I wasn't.  What I was surprised about was that she went and did it.  She said, "I'm going to go be an actress in New York..." and she did just that.  Son of a bitch she did it.  And a rising movie star no less.  She'd beaten the odds.  That odd looking girl from my film class who inexplicably came up to me and said farewell.

At the time, I was working in a video store in Silver Lake.  It was called "Videoactive" (like "Radioactive"? Get it?).  It was the "hip" video store.  I must've been "hip" because they hired me.  Videoactive catered to film geeks.  One whole wall was the "Directors" section.  Hal Hartley must've been pretty hip, too; because he had his own niche.  There were only like two movies in it.  So, after I heard Adrienne was in these movies, I played one in the store.  I recall thinking Adrienne looked great and had that certain je ne sais qua...but I also recall the movie being stultifyingly boring, despite her presence. It was deliberately arch, dry, slow, dead-pan to the point of dead.  I guess that's "mumblecore."  So, Adrienne was one of the pioneers of the genre.  Just looking at that trailer though, you can tell she's wasted in that kind of story.  She literally jumps off the screen.  She needed to be in an Indiana Jones movie or like a quirky Bond girl.
So, she makes this splash and then sort of disappears.  I'm guessing to raise a family.  But then, she returns on the other side of the camera as the writer/director of a little movie called Waitress.  

Waitress was released a year after Adrienne was killed.  It cost 1.5 million to make and it grossed 22 million at the box office.  I'm pretty sure, creative accounting aside, that qualifies it as a "hit."  I went to see it with my husband.  He loved it.  I admired it.  Being cleared eyed and looking at the movie from a business angle; I could see that Adrienne (who both wrote and directed the film) was going for something solid and commercial.  You might say "safe."  But that's not necessarily not a good thing.  She was trying to establish herself as a viably commercial filmmaker and she certainly achieved that with flying colors.  In all honesty, I thought that it was a little derivative.  Kind of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore meets Mildred Pierce (without the murder stuff).  Hey, if you're going to derive, derive from the best! 

Don't get me wrong.  I enjoyed and admired the movie.  But I could see that Adrienne had a lot more promise.  I could tell that she had a whole bunch of stuff up her sleeve when it came to filmed entertainment.  Her days in the halls of B.U.'s College of Communication were ones well spent.  And she didn't even complete the course yet!  But then, FATE intervened. That is, if you believe in FATE.  I do, to a certain degree.  But I also think some things are random.  And then, I think some things are a bit of both.
In Adrienne's case, I hope that it was fate.  I hope that it was God calling her back for some reason.  Because if it's not, then what's the point?  What's the point of being born and dropped on this planet?  A husband lost a wife.  A child lost her mother.  The world lost a talented artist.  All because someone wanted the money in Adrienne's purse.  How much could have been in there?  Not a lot, I'm guessing.
​Here's Adrienne's daughter:

Clearly, Adrienne lives on in her beautiful child.  That's some comfort.

But still, I wonder.  Why did Adrienne say good-bye to me personally, all those years ago?  Maybe it was to cement herself in my mind.  Because perhaps the stars are aligned; for better or worse.  And it would lead me to write this blog, that someone who didn't know about Adrienne might read and then they might create some Art about Adrienne and that would lead to something else.  Something that made sense.  Something that brought some good into the world.

*I do not directly know a murderer (as far as I know); but I do have loved ones who know both a murderer and his victim.

​CFR 3/9/22