Adrienne

Andy, thank you for sharing Adrienne with us. Your documentary shows us more about Adrienne than we knew. She was such a talented, beautiful and smart woman. I throughly enjoyed her work and fortunately I can watch her films to my heart's content. Of course I wish she was still here. Waitress is a film I've seen at least a half dozen times. Her writing was so on point and the characters were developed perfectly. It was a natural process for you to make a documentary about her since you're in the business. You're expression of love for Adrienne comes through in every scene. I wish for you and your daughter a happy life.

Director Andy Ostroy made this tribute about his late wife, Adrienne Shelley, the actress, writer and director who was murdered by an Ecuadorian immigrant who was looking for money to pay his debt to the coyote who brought him to the US. To add insult to injury, the NY police initially refused to look past the circumstances of her death and called it a suicide. Only after his arguments did they reopen the investigation and call it a murder.

Senseless.

The movie is Ostroy's gift to his their daughter Sophie, who looks much like her mother. Even fourteen years after Adrienne's death, Their pain is still palpable.

What Ostroy wants us to know is how much Adrienne had to offer the world, how much it hurts that she is gone, and how much more she might have done. He interviews friends and coworkers, and gives the viewer glimpses of her last project,

The documentary is sad and unfocused, but what would you expect from something so intimate?

I just finished watching this moments ago and I'm still recovering, the tears haven't stopped welling up. This movie came up in the HBO options to stream and I knew nothing else about it. Oddly about a month ago I had the luxury of seeing Rufus Wainwright and Sara Bareilles, two of my favorite singers, perform the song "She Used to be Mine" from the play version of Waitress that felt overly emotional even though I didn't know the song or what it was about or from. I of course had seen and loved the movie, but had no clue it had ever become a musical/play. Cut to today when HBO recommends this documentary, I have no idea it's about the woman who wrote and directed such a lovely memorable movie. The unfairness of it all was not lost on me. She was murdered at the age of 40, oddly the same age her father was when he passed and left her behind to fear an early death. Yet her voice lives on and her project did what she wanted and she was able to find her happiness before going, which somehow feels like the only justice you'll get for watching this devastating doc. It's true you can never know a person from seeing them on tv or in interviews or through stories about them. This still made me care nearly as much about her loss as her closest supporters. What happened to her could happen to anyone and it's a travesty. This was really well put together and had a lot of funny and tender moments as well, not just sadness. It definitely made me want to go back and watch Waitress again to better appreciate her magnum opus. Hopefully her daughter can watch this many times when she's missing her as I wish I could with my aunt/mother figure who passed too soon.

While I thought Adrienne was fairly well done, it also felt self-indulgent.

What happened to her was, of course, tragic. But, how many people experience the same or worse (e.g., genocide of an entire family... loss of a child to drive-by shooting, etc.) that never get to celebrate their loss via a film, much less, feel justice was served--closure, that Andy has. Not only was the perpetrator caught, and immediately, and is set to spend 25 years in prison, even then, Andy feels it's not enough.

It is the lack of gratefulness, all things considered, that is irritating. He doesn't have to endure years of sleepless nights wondering how his loved one met their fate. He doesn't have to feel angst over the lack of justice. And, he doesn't have to walk through life on his own, as someone who lost their entire family does. He has many reasons to feel gratitude and to move from victim to forgiveness. And yet, he practices and models non-forgiveness to their daughter, and stays in a victim role--15 years later.

Even those whose entire families were brutally slaughtered in African nations, find a way to forgive those who senselessly took everything they held dear. Even those wrongly imprisoned for decades, find a way to move past victim/bitterness. And others, whose refusal to let their losses define them, go beyond forgiveness to show compassion. They are the ones who are free. Andy is imprisoned.

Lastly, I felt it irresponsible that Andy essentially imposed the gravity of his sense of losing a mother, for a daughter, onto their daughter. Sophie 'would have' felt her own loss, had she been allowed to find it on her own.

Sad and shocked to learn about Shelly's fate all these years later.

I'm not rating this because there's not really anything special about the doco. Technically it's a simple presentation. I see it more as something for fans of Shelly to find out what happened to her. I felt I needed to learn what happened, as I liked her work from the 90s. It doesn't feel right to give it a score out of 10.

Trust is such a classic. Shelly owns her role in that movie. This doco is a fitting tribute, it shows home footage of Adrienne's life, her work and friends. Shelly's daughter seems to have similar voice characteristics to her mother, that crystal clear tone.

For human life to be violently taken that way, is a great shame of society. We have a long way to go. When it's someone like Shelly who is taken, it makes it more important to do something positive in response. I think this doco and the other work in memory of Shelly is that positive response.