Zoom-in Online

For many years, Adrienne Shelly was my best friend. She was the one I turned to when my love life went awry--which was often--and I played the same role for her. We emailed and talked pretty much every day and saw each other every weekend, for F&B hot dogs and a movie at the Chelsea Cineplex. Our relationship was never romantic, though. Even though I had a big crush on her when I saw her in THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH and TRUST, it was different when I met the actual person. She wasn't for me and I wasn't for her. I quickly settled into playing the role of heterosexual gay best friend in her life, and as we all know from the movies, the gay best friend knows things that lovers never do.

I was with her when her previous film, I'LL TAKE YOU THERE, played festivals. People loved it so much, they laughed and gave it standing ovations. It won a prize at the HBO Comedy Festival and got into Telluride, among other festivals. But it never sold, and ended up going straight to video. Adrienne was devastated by the experience. She knew that people would have a good time watching the film if they only had a chance.When my short film, TIGER: HIS FALL & RISE, which starred her and Thomas Jay Ryan (FAY GRIM), didn't get into Sundance, she was supportive as usual. "They don't get us," she said. "They don't get silly." I didn't have any issues with TIGER not getting into Sundance. The problem with TIGER wasn't that it was silly; the problem with TIGER was that it was awful. TIGER not getting into Sundance only increased my respect and confidence for the good taste of the Sundance programmers. But of course, Adrienne was hilarious in it, and the film will stand the test of time as a documentary on her poor eating habits. Many people were disgusted by the way she ate, but I'm a big slob myself and the way she nudged the food onto her fork with her finger just made me feel more comfortable. The truth is that I loved the way Adrienne ate so much that I had her eat all the way through TIGER: Chinese food, sub sandwiches, hamburgers, meat loaf, you name it. And the cool thing was that she was very pregnant with Sophie at the time, so she even looked fat!

Her eating did have some peculiar meaning in the narrative, but the truth is it gave me boundless joy to see her talking with her mouth full. I loved Adrienne a lot, but I can't remember loving her more than when she had a giant burger in her trap. Choose your bliss; that was mine. I will be paying off that damned film for the rest of my life, but I'm extremely proud I had the opportunity to record her eating that burger for posterity. This is my contribution to film history.

Actually, the whole debacle of TIGER was pretty much her fault. Once she was at a party at my house and I showed her this plastic frog I bought on Canal Street. The frog danced and sang merrily (to the tune of "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain") "Ootie Yop Yop Yootie Yootie Yoo; Ootie Yop Yop Yootie Yootie Yoo, etc.." I drove all my girlfriends crazy with this horrible little guy, but Adrienne was completely charmed. Having gotten her attention, I told her I was working on a feature screenplay as a vehicle for the plastic frog. He was going to become an overnight success and then become really decadent, a disgusting, drug-addicted, womanizing, spoiled-rotten frog. He betrayed his best friend so much that the best friend tried to kill him but the frog just wouldn't die. It was a completely preposterous idea and I was just trying to make her laugh. But Adrienne thought it would make a wonderful movie. She immediately started inventing scenes. And her scenes were hilarious. It was fun, but that was the end of that, as far as I was concerned.

In 2003, when I wanted to make a short, I wrote what I thought was a very good script. It had three characters and three locations. It was practical to do and it would have been very moving. I had my actors and my locations. But it was based on a Sam Shepard story, which I guess was kind of crazy. I took a story about the highway and adapted it for the NY subway. I had spent time with Shepard during the shooting of Michael Almereyda's HAMLET and had friends who knew him well, but after a while I realized I would never get the rights and it would be folly to make a film that could never be shown.

I was pretty down and in need of consolation and so I went out to dinner with my friend Susan (who later moved into the apartment Adrienne used as her office). Susan said I needed to write a new script. I told her about the frog and she said that was a great idea. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I wrote a short to star my singing and dancing frog. I emailed it to my friends and they all thought it was great, particularly Adrienne.

Ultimately this really stupid idea ended up being over-produced beyond belief. Adrienne and Thomas Jay Ryan (HENRY FOOL) agreed to star in it. It was a comic film noir musical, set in the forties. It was shot in b&w in Super 16. There were 26 costumes created for the film by designer Michael Bevins. We built sets in a warehouse in Vinegar Hill. I had a bunch of frog puppets specially built for the movie. There were singing frogs, stunt frogs, close-up frogs, etc. I wrote Tiger's big hit song and got a really great jazz singer, Thos Shipley, to record it. Whatever you can say about the film, everyone loved that damned song. When it played at a festival, I would get emails from people saying that they couldn't get the song out of their heads and asking me to please send them the complete lyrics. I felt a certain satisfaction that the annoyance I had been able to provide to my girlfriends with the original frog, was now spreading to the mass audiences of literally dozens who saw TIGER.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm writing all this, but I guess I don't really know whether I should write anything about Adrienne, and if I should, what it should be. Maybe it's enough to say that she was the kind of person who could make you feel that making a film about a singing frog was a good idea. I have never really been able to explain to people why I thought I should make a film about a singing frog, but maybe it's enough to say that Adrienne Shelly thought making a film about a singing frog was a magnificent idea, and Adrienne Shelly was never wrong. Well...maybe she was wrong in this particular case, but she was a very assertive woman. It was hard to argue with her--you'd generally lose. Okay, you'd always lose.

Adrienne never really wanted to be an actress. She was ambivalent about her success in that arena, to say the least. When THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH played Sundance and she was the mega-hot toast of the festival, she hid in her hotel room and read a book. Those two Hartley films could have launched a very successful Hollywood career, but she chose to do out-of-the-way theatre and more low-budget independent films. She didn't want to be an actress, she was determined to write and direct (and act in) her own films. Aside from the incredible love she shared with her family and friends, she that was her single-minded goal: she wanted people to sit in a theatre and have a good time watching her movies. And so, yes, she was focused on Sundance. That was where she felt her life-long dream would come true. I say would come true, not could come true. Adrienne was not a woman who hoped; Adrienne was a woman who knew. All she needed was for the programmers to open the gates and let her in.

A few days ago, everything went down exactly as Adrienne knew it would.. Her movie WAITRESS played to a very appreciative audience at the Eccles. I was there, and sitting next to me was Adrienne's TIGER co-star, Tom Ryan. The film sold right away to Fox Searchlight and I am confident that they will do their usual brilliant job. Adrienne's pride and joy is safe and secure in their hands as it is with producer Michael Roiff. I don't see anything bittersweet about this: I am overjoyed. I've been in this business a long time, and WAITRESS could have come to the festival, gotten a standing ovation and remained unsold. But Michael Roiff and I are sure that Adrienne can still hear the laughter somehow and is happy. As someone said at her memorial service, Adrienne's life may have been cut short, but she sure left her mark.