Hal Hartley only made two movies with Adrienne Shelly, both of them, "The Unbelievable Truth" (1989) and "Trust" (1990), set on Long Island, where both had grown up. But they were enough to establish Hartley as The piece in which this phrase appeared was an obituary for Shelly, who was murdered last fall in her Manhattan office, allegedly by a 19-year-old construction worker with whom Shelly had an argument over excessive noise. The 40- year-old Shelly left behind her husband, marketing executive Andy Ostroy "Waitress," Shelly's third feature as a writer-director, opens today in Manhattan and other selected U.
S. cities. It premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it had been accepted just days after her murder, central character Jenna (Keri Russell), a waitress in a Carolina diner.
Rolling Stone's Peter Travers said the film was a "personal triumph" for Shelly, who Hartley, who grew up in Lindenhurst, says he sees in "Waitress" evidence of Shelly's continued growth as an artist. "When you look at 'Waitress,' you see the best of her in her writing," he said in an interview at the Sundance festival in January. "That's where she was making leaps and bounds.
She was always smart, and she had that feeling for dialogue. when she was 22. She immediately caught on to the rhythm and the irony in my movies.
And she always appreciated that once she began her own writing," Shelly, who was born Adrienne Levine in Queens and grew up in Jericho, wrote "Waitress" while she was pregnant with Sophie. She thought of the film as a kind of love letter to her daughter. The film includes a healthy dose of homespun touches, among them the diner's irascible-but-good-hearted owner, played by Andy Griffith, and the between-shifts banter between Russell's character and "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" Cheryl Hines as a tart-tongued, But there are also dark edges and bittersweet drollery, reminiscent of those early Hartley movies with their edgy, irony-heavy spin on kitchen-sink family melodrama.
Jenna is trapped in a marriage with an abusive lout named Earl (Jeremy Sisto), whose baby she finds herself reluctantly having. This prompts her to whip up pies with names like "Kick in the Pants Pie," "I Hate My Husband Pie" and "Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie." It's this seemingly incongruous, yet oddly satisfying blend of moods that's led those who've seen the movie, Hartley included, to believe Shelly was moving toward "Some of the stuff that Keri's reading in the narration, those letters to her unborn child," Hartley says.
"I mean, there's an ambivalence there that will make most people think, 'How dare an expectant mother say those things!' But that was how brave Adrienne was. She wasn't afraid to look down the barrel "I was looking forward to working with her again as we got older," he says, Death deprived Shelly of the chance to evolve as a filmmaker.
But the Adrienne Shelly Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Ostroy, intends scholarships. Hartley and Russell are among those on the foundation's advisory board, which also includes producer Ted Hope, actor-producer Fisher Stevens and actors Paul Rudd, Rosanna Arquette and Emily Deschanel. possess the drive, vision and passion that Adrienne was known for in her own career," Ostroy says.
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