Published at: Nov. 7, 2006, 7:17 a.m. CST by Moriarty
First, let me say that my thoughts and prayers go out to the husband and friends of Adrienne Shelly at an inconceivably awful moment.
I’ve gotten many letters the last few days asking why we haven’t posted an obituary for her yet. All I can say is I personally didn’t want to write it. I find suicide painfully sad, and it’s hard to remember her pitch-perfect work in TRUST when (A) it’s not available on DVD at the moment and (B) you’re faced with such an awful last image of someone. Now it appears that her death may have been murder, disguised to look like suicide, and the story just keeps getting sadder.
Shelly was one of the earliest pin-up girls of the indie scene, morose and hilarious and quirky hot, defined largely at first by her work with Hal Hartley. In recent years, though, she’s focused on her own filmmaking, and she’s got a film called WAITRESS that is most likely going to make its debut at Sundance this year. It’s tragic that she’s been taken so young, but it might help redress that tragedy a bit if the people who own all her films work to get them out on DVD, a way of reintroducing her to audiences and keeping her body of work alive.
Right now, I’ve got a DVD in my region-free player that’s been sitting there since just before Halloween. I haven’t had a chance to get to it, but when I do, I’m sure my thoughts will be primarily on writer Nigel Kneale, one of the great names in SF. His QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT is a classic of the genre, and I was sent the recent live-TV version of the story to watch. I’ve always loved QUATERMASS, and what I’ve seen of the rest of Kneale’s work, I respect and enjoy.
Mark Gatiss said it much better than I can.
Sorry it took a few days to post these, but it always makes me sad, and these in particular struck me as I put this quick remembrance together.
