Never seen the film, but Adrienne Shelly was recently murdered in her home. Below is a link to a story giving the basic details of both her murder, and the capture of her killer. Horrible story.... Very sad.
http://gothamist.com/2006/11/07/shellys_murder.php
(edited to fix dead link)
loved this film, truth and the others that she worked with Hal Hartley on.
Its hard to believe i saw them so long ago - well over a decade and a half and fell for unique Shelly's beauty as well as loving her and everyone elses performance in these films.
Infact i'm a great fan of Hartleys films, and i cant believe i was telling someone about this great actress, who was working on some indie movies, just recently, without realising that this tragedy had happened.
:(
Its a shame we lost such a great actor and director. She is an inspiration for women in the field.
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She had just finished writing, producing and directing Waitress. It was about to be released and she had a new born baby.
The killer also got away with it because the police blew it off as suicide. When everything hit the fan in outrage they took another look and immediaetly found the killer who admitted it.
He was an illegal construction worker working on an apartment in the same building. I will probably get someone complaining about saying he was here illegally but that was why he strangled her. He was making so much noise and refused to stop when she was trying to get the baby to sleep, that she said she said she was going to complain.
I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else
No, I'm afraid that the story of the 'noise complaint' is just an urban legend. It's been going around for years now, but like many things you read on the net, it's a total fabrication. The official cause of Adrienne's death is that she was accidently killed when Diego Pillco - a 19-year contruction worker - broke in looking for money. However, this is the result of a plea-bargain that saw Pillco jailed for Manslaughter One after the DA dropped the murder charge due to lack of evidence.
The truth is that Pillco was stalking Adrienne. He waited until she dropped her daughter Sophie off at pre-school, took his lunch break and broke in. When he finished with her, he took the bedsheet and fashioned it into a noose. Adrienne was then dragged into the bathroom and hanged - alive and conscious - from the shower-rail. Pillco then covered his tracks and went downstairs to finish his shift, clocking out with the rest of his crew.
When he was arrested a week later, the detectives asked him what was going through his mind as he watched Adrienne strangle slowly to death. He calmly replied "It reminded me of stringing up pigs back on the farm."
Pillco didn't even know who she was. He was stalking her as a woman and not as a celebrity.
As far as he knew the woman he raped and murdered was just an anonymous housewife!
damn, I came here in imdb cos I just finished the movie and thought she was quite cute and then I read this!? :-( RIP
shareI saw 'The Unbelievable Truth' when it first came out in the UK. I was a college freshman at the time, and I was staggered by Adrienne's breathtaking talent and incredible beauty. I was not alone in my conviction that she would become a huge star over the course of the 1990's. After her follow up film 'Trust' was released she was spoken of in the same breath as Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman and Meg Ryan. The hugely influencial Forbes magazine called Adrienne Shelly 'one to watch' and 'American cinema's next big thing'. I fell head-over-heels for Adrienne, and looked forward to watching her reputation and career grow over the next few years.
Sadly, it was not to be, and by the end of they decade they were calling her 'American cinema's best-kept secret'. She was an Indie-Queen but never a Hollywood star. Adrienne finally won mainstream recognition with her last movie 'Waitress', which she also wrote and drected, but she was murdered before she received the letter of acceptance from the Sundance Festival. If you check out the cast of 'Waitress' you will discover that almost everyone in it is now a major figue in the industry, but I'm sorry to say that Adrienne herself has now been largely forgotten except by a few die-hard fans.
It is as though George Lucas had been killed in a car wreck a month before 'American Graffiti' opened. He would have given birth to giants, but he himself would have remained an obsure figure, known by movie buffs for 'THX-1138' but not for 'Star Wars' and Lucasfilms. It's so very sad.
If you want to see Adrienne's best work on the big and small-screen respectively, then check out 'Sleeping With Strangers' and 'A Many Splendored Thing', both from 1994. The last is an episode of 'Homicide: Life On The Street' in which she played Tanya Quinn, a bondage and spanking fetishist and leading figure in the Baltimore kink community. This was 20 years before 'Fifty Shades of Gray' was filmed and in a era when women like Tanya were officially classed as 'mentally ill' by the American Institute Of Pychoanalysts. Adrienne may have been a committed Feminist - but she was hadly a conventional one!
I hope that you join us on Adrienne's message board. I am sure that you have a lot to contribute.
I first saw her while watching movies written and directed by Hal Hartley, He made several small films using the same actors like her, Karen Sillas, and Tate Donovan.
One thing I remember about her killer was he was sharing a dump with others like him. It was filled with empty bottles and porn that they sat around and watched.
If all he got was manslaughter he will be back out on the streets, Even if deported he will back again.
I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else
Diego Pillco was also a big fan of Spanish-language horror movies, and he killed Adrienne on the Day of the Dead. This should, in itself, ring warning bells - but that isn't the end of it by a LONG chalk!
On Pillco's Facebook page (yes, he has one), he lists his favourite movie star as Sly Stallone. In 2002 Sly made a piss-poor horror movie called 'D-Tox', about a hard-drinking cop hunting a serial killer who fakes his victim's deaths as suicides.
In the first 10 minutes, Stallone comes come to find his beautiful wife, the flame-haired, blue-eyed Dina Meyer, has been murdered by the man he is tracking. Dina has been hanged by the neck - and she is naked from the waist down!
Why do I get the feeling that this is not a coincidence...?
I come here, and this is the first f--king thing I see?!?!?!
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