I knew her because she was Sassy‘s favourite writing, directing actor.
I’ve never seen anything she’s done, save an apperance in annoying Rosanna Arquette’s otherwise dope documentary about women in the movie business, Searching for Debra Winger.
She was one of Hal Hartley‘s discoveries.
She wrote and directed five films — the latest, Waitress, stars Keri Russell and has been submitted to the Sundance Film Festival where it will undoubtedly play now that Adrienne Shelly has been murdered.
It’s a bizarre story. On November 1, Shelly’s husband found her dead in the shower of her Manhattan office. There was no suicide note. Stories shot through the internet about her disappointment with her career and Hollywood in general, and that she’d said in the past that she didn’t expect to live long.
Yesterday a man confessed to her murder. He is a construction worker to whom Shelly made a noise complaint in the lobby. He punched her in the face. She died. He dragged her body back up to her office and used a sheet to hang her in the shower to make it look like suicide.
Now she will be a cult icon for a different reason.
Hartley’s Shelly-starring debut An Unbelievable Truth is available for rent at Video Difference.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2006.