I Love Filmmaker Adrienne Shelly & She Should Still Be Here
A heartfelt personal essay on her enduring presence in my life
Today filmmaker Adrienne Shelly would have turned 59 had she not been murdered in her own office in November of 2006 before she got to see the release of her third feature, the brilliantly charming Waitress (2007).
I saw Waitress opening weekend at The State Theater in Ann Arbor, MI with my good friend, Lauren, who was visiting for the day. I remember crying intensely at the end and Lauren responding warmly, “wow you really loved that movie, huh” (she liked it just fine). I kept talking about it all day and Lauren would sort of laugh at me, lovingly amused by how specifically worked up I was. (This is a uniquely special friendship that has thrived on 20+ years of deep admiration for each others rarely overlapping quirks and passions. I wish this kind of adoration on everyone.)
Adrienne Shelly understood the conflicting nuances of life deeper than most. She knew that pain, beauty, and humor could all exist at the same time and she deftly translated that complexity to film. At that point in my young life, I often saw people and experiences in black and white terms. I could barely grasp how complicated the human experience is, nor had I seen it explored artistically in such an approachable, poppy manner. With Waitress, Shelly magically crafted the best pick-me-up movie that is somehow hilarious and sexy while concurently portraying a realistic abusive relationship that never verges on melodrama or manipulative tragedy.
Lauren went back to Ohio at the end of our lovely day and I went to the indie video store down the street to rent Adrienne Shelly’s other films. I fell head over heels with her too honest writing, funny performances, and warm oddball vision. I thought about her all the time for awhile. I bought Waitress on DVD when it got released and I played it over and over. A feeling of home washed over me when I watched it - a considerable comfort I desperately needed when I felt far from my literal home and the home of comfortable loving companionship. Favorite films take on diverse personal roles in people’s lives. For me, films become favorites when the future feels bleak and I can rely on them to keep my head above water when nothing else sticks. Within a few months Waitress joined the ranks of Now and Then (1995), Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997), The Wedding Singer (1998), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Ghost World (2001) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006). It became a movie I needed to survive.
A few months before I saw Waitress for the first time, I moved to Ann Arbor from my beloved college town to take a retail management job out of confused desperation. I left Bowling Green, Ohio after being fired in a dramatic and unjust manner (I still stand by this assesment) from my first serious career experience, a dream job for 22 year old me. I was miserably adrift. I missed my tight knit circle of friends and the pseudo adult life we had built together at BGSU. My college boyfriend took a job in Wyoming and despite how deeply I loved him, I had declined to follow him. We kept a long distance relationship going for a few months with letters, gifts, printed photographs, and daily phonecalls, but after living together for two years this facsimile of a partnership left me feeling lonely and lifeless.
One of the weirdest and dumbest ways my loneliness manifested was due to a truly unhinged football rivalry between Ohio and Michigan. Any time I’d go out to get a drink, the bouncers who’d i.d. me would sincerely harass me even though the Ohio address on my DL clearly belonged to a different college than that of Michigan’s rivals. In parking lots men would yell or throw things at me if they saw me getting out of my car with Ohio plates. Terrifying lunacy! I began limiting my trips out. To keep myself going I watched a lot of films and fucked the wrong person every weekend because he was infatuated with the idea of me and it felt nicer than being alone in an apartment I couldn’t manage to unpack when every scrap of it reminded me of my full college life and none if it looked right in Michigan. For months everything was in boxes except my dishes and movie collection. The essentials.
2007 was pure sadness. During the day I disassociated at work and dreamed of working in the entertainment industry and making films like Shelly. At night I went to the library (I didn’t have my own computer) to research graduate film programs in NYC and LA. I thought getting into a program could be my way out of the midwest. I wrote short stories and screenplay scenes but my depression persisted and I couldn’t see how I could ever turn my ideas into anything bigger.
It was later in 2007 (I can’t remember if it was on a library trip or a video store trip) when I discovered Adrienne Shelly had been murdered before Waitress had even been released. I had spent months dreaming of working with a woman who was dead before I even knew she existed. I remember how crushed I felt then because the feeling has never gone away - it envelops me now as I write this.
In college I learned how to watch and critique film with a feminist lens. Often I’d shoehorn the work of men like Waters, Zwigoff, Lynch, Cronenberg, and Tarantino into a feminist narrative. The Y2k times provided so few fun films to watch starring dimensional, complicated women (there’s only so many papers you can write on Clueless). So when I discovered Shelly, her work opened a new world of possibility for me. I had finally found a writer/actress/filmmaker I could see myself in…and she had been murdered. At 40. Right after making the best work of her life so far. Her life was just getting started. It has never stopped feeling so unfair.
Change is painfully slow, yet time feels like it’s speeding by illegally. 18 years after the release of Waitress there are still so few female filmmakers with the mainstream artistic caché of the men I listed above (Miranda July to an extent), but I barely know the girl I was in 2007. I eventually scraped my way to LA in 2012. I've written/directed/produced a webseries, a music video, and two short films. I’ve produced close to a dozen shorts and webseries created by my collaborators. I have just finished my first feature script and I can actually see a creative path forward for myself. I don’t come from money. I didn't go to graduate school. I don’t know anyone with much power in the industry. Since I saw Waitress, I’ve just aggressively worked on building a creative life for myself, one that I’ve never stopped dreaming of even when abusive jobs, bad luck, and rotten romances slowed me down.
Adrienne Shelly and her work occupy a unique mythical presence in my life. I struggle to explain it as clearly as I can feel it. While I don’t identify as woo woo, I do feel Adrienne talking to me through her work. I hear her voice so clearly. She feels alive in me when I work. An absurd assertion if you haven’t had such an experience, but if you’ve lost anyone who holds meaning in your life I’d wager you communicate with them in ways that may appear odd to an outsider.
I recommend diving into her fascinating life and career via the deeply moving documentary her husband made about her in 2021, Adrienne. I want you to watch it because I want more people to witnesses to her life and work. Artsy Millenials and Gen Xers may be familiar with her, but other generations could live their entire lives without Shelly. Other than the (fairly banal) musical based on Waitress, her work is harder to find. But Trust me when I say it’s worth looking for. Especially if you’re having a hard time and are in need a sweet, sincere story to escape into.
The right film can change the way you look at the world - the way you look at your own life. That’s a gift Adrienne Shelly gave to me and I’ll love her forever for it.