Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Adrienne Shelly 1996-2006





Adrienne Shelly in Trust (Hal Hartley, 1990)

The Artswipe has been in deep grief since Adrienne Shelly died. Earlier this month Adrienne Shelly - who cemented her indie-fame as the lead in Hal Hartley's first two features The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and the amazing Trust (1990) - was found dead in her New York office. Initially believed to be a suicide as she was found hanging from a bedsheet, it was later revealed that a 19-year-old construction worker from Ecuador had accidentally killed her and later made it look like a suicide, all because she complained about the noise. Adrienne was in post-production on her film Waitress, her third feature as writer/director.

One of Artswipe's all time favourite movies is Hal Hartley's Trust and the best scenes are when Maria (Shelly) shooshes Matthew (Martin Donovan) because she thinks she can hear bombs dropping from afar. Maria and Matthew are meant to be together because he walks around clutching an undetonated hand grenade. They don't like noise. And then there's those fabulous scenes featuring an almost unrecognisable pre-Sopranos Edie Falco as Maria's scene-stealing-white-trash-with-pink-ski-jacket sister.

If only we could all go around killing people because we don't like the fucking noise complaints! Shame on you construction worker man.

Read an Adrienne Shelly obituary
here.


2 comments:

Skanky Jane said...

I noticed a book title recently on my Uni homepage: Nigel Starck's "Life After Death - The Art of the Obituary". Thought it might interest you.

SJ xx

Anonymous said...

Adrienne Shelly was not "accidentally" killed by a construction worker.
She was murdered by an illegal immigrant who thought she was going to call the police and he would be deported. He killed her to keep her quiet and tried to make it look like a suicide.