Adrienne Shelley

Adrienne Shelley - The Unbelievable Truth

I worked for Adrienne Shelley years ago, doing sound for a film she directed for the Seattle International Film Festival. I knew of her. I had seen her in "Trust" and "The Unbelievable Truth," the two Hal Hartley films that she was most known for. Now she was branching out--directing her own films, this first foray being a short called "The Shadows of Bob and Zelda" where a warring couple dispose of their troubles by locking their squabbling shadows in a closet. It starred an actor I was friendly with, Mike Shapiro, and it was quite a clever piece. We had basically 10 hours to do the complete post-production on it, and I went to Rocket Films to meet Ms. Shelley and prepare ideas and sounds for what would be a marathon session.

Meeting her, she was impossibly tiny. A wraith with strawberry blond hair, and blazing, intense eyes that bore right into you. She was focused on editing, and so didn't really give me a very good idea of what to expect. I think she expected to just "wing it" that day. Given the tight deadline we had (one day for everything), that probably wasn't a good idea. But she seemed assured. I did some preparation, had some things ready, given what I knew of the script and left it at that.

It was a long day, but a successful day. We met the deadline and Adrienne seemed satisfied with the final product. Probably she was glad to get it over. I do remember one tough situation. She wanted to give voices to the shadows, but didn't really know what to do with it. I had pulled some sound effects and music to convey some ominous quality when they were on-screen, but Adrienne thought it was too subtle, and wanted something with more "punch." "Let's do this!" she said, and marched into the studio with her producer. While we recorded, they made nonsense syllables in a guttural stream. It sounded ridiculous, but she wanted to try it with the picture. She was disappointed with the result. We discussed. We tried it again, this time with the other engineer working on the project. That was better, but not "it."

Finally, I said "let me try." So I marched behind Adrienne into the studio. "Okay," she said. "What ever I do, you do the same..."
"Okay. You sure?"
"Yeah, but you gotta be right on top of me..."
"Okay."
"Roll it."
She started to yammer at me in a squeal. I yammered right back. A long string. I repeated it--fast. A short little yelp. I yelped, but right at her, in her face. I had to bend down to do it. And really concentrate, because she'd turn on a dime. Absolute jibberish poured out of her and I matched her, jib for jab. She must have liked what we were doing, because her eyes were getting wider, and she was working hard to suppress a smile, then she started to experiment, and test me. I stayed with it, matching her screech to screech and with the same intensity. We must have done this for ten minutes. And at the end, we burst out laughing like little kids. It was fun play-acting with her. It was intense, but fun. And we used our screaming-meemie voices for the sounds of the shadows.
And Adrienne want on to direct feature-films, which was her goal. The independent film circuit which was so good to her as an actress, was being equally welcoming with her own projects. She'd just finished filming "Waitress" with Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion, neither marquee names, but both with their cult followings (Russell starred in "Felicity," Fillion was the captain on "Firefly").
Then I'd read she was dead. Hanged herself was the story, but I thought, "With a film coming out yet, why would she kill herself?" It didn't make any sense. And spending the day with her, I never got the sense of someone who would consider suicide.
Turns out she was murdered, and her killer faked it as suicide. You can google the story if you want to get the whole timeline, the coverage by some of the New York papers was lurid and sensationalist...and a bit in error.
Another Unbelievable Truth. And a very sad one.