Adrienne
Directed by Andy Ostroy
Written by Documentary
Starring Adrienne Shelly, Sara Bareilles, Robert John Burke, Nathan Fillion
Release Date December 1st, 2021
One of the darkest days of my career happened on November 1st, 2006 and I didn’t even know it at the time. That was the day that actress turned director Adrienne Shelly was murdered in her office in New York City. I was aware of Adrienne Shelly but I had not yet seen her masterpiece, Waitress. Once I saw Shelly’s extraordinary film, and named it among my favorite movies of 2007, I was both deeply moved and desperately distraught over her loss and the loss of the incredible works of art she undoubtedly would have created in the future. The new documentary, Adrienne, was a cathartic experience for me as an admirer of Adrienne Shelly the artist and the human being.
Adrienne Shelly bubbled under mainstream success for several years from the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. She got her start with visionary weirdo Hal Hartley and eventually graduated to more mainstream roles in Hollywood features. But, Shelly's greatest successes came in independent film where her status as an It-Girl of the future helped her work get noticed while allowing Shelly to continue to flex her artistic muscles outside of the shackles of mainstream Hollywood feature films.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.