[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[unintelligible chatter]
- Grandma. Grandma.
[chatter continues]
- Hey, Soph.
Sophie. Over here.
- What? - Hi.
- [laughs] - Hi.
- Sophie's favorite is definitely "Twist and Shout."
- Every horrible day in history
has a much happier day before it.
- Wow.
[laughter]
- This was ours.
Halloween, 2006.
- Go on, Soph. - It's okay.
[people cheer]
[dramatic music]
[unintelligible chatter, laughter]
- I went to bed that night the luckiest guy alive.
By the next night, I was living
the worst nightmare imaginable.
- Police in Manhattan tonight are investigating
the mysterious death of a 40-year-old actress.
Adrienne Shelly was found dead
in her West Village office last night.
It was Shelly's husband, Andy Ostroy, who found her.
- The actress, found hanging in a bathroom
of her Manhattan office, likely committed suicide.
Shelly leaves behind a three-year-old daughter.
- Oh, my God. Look at you.
You look drunk. Did you drink?
- There was no way Adrienne killed herself.
- [gasps] Daddy!
- Suicide simply wasn't possible.
She was the happiest I'd ever seen her.
[Sara Bareilles' "Soft Place to Land"]
I set out on a journey to find out
what really happened that day
and to make sure Adrienne would never be forgotten,
especially for Sophie.
- Sometimes I still see her
My mother, the dreamer
She'd say, "Nothing's impossible
Child"
- Cut! [laughter]
- And know that you need them
When your breaking point's all that you have
A dream is a soft place
To land
Sugar, butter
Flour
[horns honking]
[unintelligible chatter]
[music from "Waitress" playing over speakers]
- So this whole area, when you come here,
it just feels like "Waitress" headquarters.
I love the success of it and what it means for her
and her legacy.
But then I'm just immediately transported to,
she's not here to see it,
she's not here to experience it.
I'm making a documentary about Adrienne Shelly.
Do you know who she is?
- Uh, I can see her name right there.
Uh, it's based upon the mo-- yes, that's all I know.
- If I did that, do you know who she is?
- No, I don't. - Do you know who she is?
- I do not.
- No? - Um...no.
- Many people who come to see the show don't--
just don't know who Adrienne is.
How she created this story that has this life,
this amazing life on Broadway, 12 years later,
and they don't know who she is.
That to me is--is-- is profoundly sad.
- I wrote "Waitress" when I was
about eight months pregnant with Sophie.
And I was really scared about having a baby.
I just couldn't imagine what my life was gonna be
after I had a baby; I thought it was gonna change
so drastically that I wasn't even
gonna recognize myself anymore.
I was terrified.
The actual fear of how your life is going to change
is not spoken about,
so I--I wanted to write a movie about those fears
and, you know, give those fears a voice.
- I seem to be pregnant. - Good.
Good for you. Congratulations.
- Thanks, but I'm not so happy about it
like everybody else might be.
I'm having the baby, and that's that.
- But I also knew that, you know,
when you actually have the child
that this other kind of love probably kicks in
that you can't even imagine, which is true.
It's a complete, utter, unconditional kind of love,
and it does change your life in a--in a beautiful way.
And it's--it is a love letter to my--to my baby.
[soft music]
- The first page or two was the opening sequence,
making the pies and bread sequence.
And I was like, "Yeah, you got me."
I loved it.
- "Earl murders me 'cause I'm havin' an affair" pie.
You smash blackberries and raspberries
into a chocolate crust.
"I can't have no affair, because it's wrong
and I don't want Earl to kill me" pie.
Vanilla custard with banana.
Hold the banana.
- I loved her sense of humor, her sensibility.
For me to root for this adulterous affair
throughout this entire script is such a feat.
- I'm married. You're married.
I'm pregnant. You're my doctor.
- Maybe we could have a coffee or something--
- I can't have coffee.
It's on the bad food list you gave me.
What kind of doctor are you?
- That balance is so tricky, because...
- Sure. - You shouldn't--
you shouldn't kind of-- you shouldn't want...
- Banging your gynecologist. - These people to be
doing this--right I mean, it's like,
there's nothing good about this,
except it works.
- Mark it. - Mark.
- I loved the script immediately.
I mean, it's so fun and irreverent
and true all at once.
- Dawn, you're beautiful.
Your skin looks like a normal person's.
- Thank you.
- I thought she was really smart.
I thought she was really pretty.
She was super ambitious, I felt,
super clear about what she wanted.
- She strikes me as a woman who was ahead of her time
in terms of the kind of art she wanted to do
and the kind of subject matter she wanted to cover.
- She's a real feminist icon to me.
I really think of her that way, as being a real maverick.
- I remember her in her wedding gown
and, like, being in the scene
and then going behind the monitors
and then going back out in the scene,
holding up her skirt when she ran.
I mean, I think it's challenging anyway
to be in something that you're directing.
But also being a new mom is pretty crazy.
- You know, Adrienne was this small person
walking around the set
but quietly powerful,
because she knew exactly what she wanted,
this was her project, and you listened.
- I'm fine, Cal. We'll be right out!
- I wasn't surprised when I saw "Waitress"
for the first time.
It just confirmed
what I already knew to be true,
and that was, she was a great director.
- I would've liked to have seen where that career went.
I would've liked to have heard and seen more stories from...
her vision.
[baby fusses]
[baby cries]
- If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands
If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands
- In hindsight, November 1st started out
in-- in a really fortunate way.
I got to spend a lot of time with her that morning
in a way that I normally wouldn't have.
And I was really happy that day.
So we were together, uh, in the apartment
till about, um--
till about 9:15.
[somber music]
And I was gonna drop her at her office
on Abingdon Square.
I remember watching her get out of the car
and go into the building,
and I just watched her walk away into the building,
you know, and that was the last time I ever saw her,
you know.
I went to my office. I was working all day.
I had clients in from out of town.
All day long, it was just radio silence.
I couldn't get ahold of her through email,
cell phone, landline.
The nanny hadn't heard from her.
Nobody was in contact with her,
and that was incredibly atypical.
There's an intuition
that something really awful has happened.
A friend of mine and I were going to do an event together,
and I said to him, you know, "We got to go downtown
"and check on Adrienne, because I haven't heard
"from her all day, and I-- I just--
there's something that's just not right."
- You were definitely...
wound a little tight on the way over--
on the drive over from the office.
And I was trying to calm you down,
you know, trying to think of different scenarios
or reasons why you wouldn't have heard from her.
And then we pulled in front of the bus stop,
and I said, "Just leave the car running.
I'll wait here."
[tense music]
- She wasn't answering the intercom.
Went up to the fourth floor, banged on the door,
calling her name--nothing.
And I try the door, and it just popped open.
And that's when the real panic set in.
It was just palpable.
It was just weird how the room was just still,
and CNN was on, and Wolf Blitzer was talking.
But it was low, and you could just tell.
It was like there was evil in that room.
Really, like, that's what I felt.
I felt that there had been a monster in that place.
- And my phone rings, and you said,
"Brian, get up here. Adrienne's dead."
- I just remember thinking in that moment, like,
"Is-- is this really happening?
This is not how it's supposed to"--
like, I was supposed to go there
and find her, like, talking outside,
and, "Oh, Andy, I'm so sorry," like--
like, I wasn't supposed to find her dead.
- Someone had said, "Andy is, um, at the police station.
They think that she had killed herself."
I just remember in my-- in my mind, thinking...
"Sophie. There's Sophie.
She would never! Never."
And I remember thinking, "My mom!
She would never leave my mother."
- This was the time of her life!
This was it!
This is what she waited her whole life to have.
And she's gonna kill herself?
- Friday, I saw the "New York Post"
and the story they had written.
So I called up Sixth Precinct,
and I asked to speak to the detective,
and they told me he had gone for the weekend.
I said, "That's fine, just give me someone else
who's working the case."
"There's nobody else working the case."
And he said, "Sorry, pal,
"I know this is not what you want to hear,
but as far as we're concerned, it's a suicide."
It's almost like the grief
and everything that I had been feeling
just sort of, like, pshoo,
just-- just moved away.
And this other thing took over.
this, like, combat mode of like,
she's not here to fight for herself.
I've gotta fight for her.
My wife did not kill herself.
- Andy Ostroy says his wife's death on Wednesday
is suspicious and not a simple case of suicide,
despite media headlines that proclaim
that Adrienne Shelly, the beautiful blonde actress,
took her own life inside apartment 47
here in this Greenwich Village apartment building.
- There are emails, phone conversations
that took place almost up until the time of the--
of the tragedy itself.
She was making plans with our friends for the weekend,
dropping off things to our daughter's school.
That little girl has to grow up knowing the truth.
Everything changed the next morning.
I get a call from Detective Jimmy Piccione
of Manhattan South Homicide.
"Can you come in and talk with us?"
He showed me photos of her apartment,
of her desk, of her purse, her computer.
And then he showed me a picture of the knot.
And he asked me if she knew how to make a--a knot like that.
And I told him, uh, no--
and I got angry in that moment, 'cause I had--
and I said to him-- I flipped it back and said,
"Do you know how to make a knot like this?"
And he said, "No."
That day, I also called Dr. Michael Baden,
who's a world-renowned forensic pathologist,
so he was scheduled to do an autopsy
the next day, Saturday.
I remember getting the call from Baden that Saturday
and hearing him say, "She fought like an animal."
- She had bruises on her body, bruises on her face,
forehead, mostly left side of the face,
and, um, inju-- injuries to her hands,
uh, which would indicate a struggle.
We don't see that in suicides.
- Everything I wanted so desperately
was being given to me in that moment.
Like, she didn't kill herself. Like, here it is.
Here's this-- here's some proof.
And then just immediately,
I'm starting to envision what did happen.
There she is. - Where?
Oh. - Love that quote.
- "Don't be afraid of dying. Be afraid of never living."
- True dat.
You're almost the same age as her here.
Oh, Lennon, your mother loved John Lennon.
What are you feeling as you're going through this stuff?
- It's interesting.
Just, like, learning more about, like, who she was.
- Look at that. What does that say?
Soph. - What is it?
- "I hate camp. Take me home."
- Oh-- oh.
- Boy, that sounds familiar, huh?
- Did she hate camp?
[gasps] What?
- "Allison is my new, nice friend.
She hates it here too."
That's literally-- oh, my God.
- I've literally gotten that letter from you.
- Gotta take that home, Andy.
- Oh, that's a beautiful face, Mrs. Levine.
Do you have any tips on how other families could
reach the level of intelligence that yours has?
- [laughs] - Is that all you have to say?
Okay.
- The day she was born was beautiful.
She was so beautiful, that chubby little face,
those cheeks, that little mouth.
Beautiful eyes-- she was beautiful.
And she looked exactly like Shelly, my first husband.
The exact same face, so of course,
my husband was thrilled.
You know what?
She really knew what she wanted.
From when she was five years old,
when she was in kindergarten, "Guys and Dolls,"
that was the play.
It was so cute.
Every year, they had plays,
and she was always in everything.
She always, always stood out.
It was always Adrienne, like-- whew!
- My crib was actually in-- in Adrienne's room.
I was actually one of her dolls.
That's how she treated me.
Adrienne used to like to dress me up.
My father was still alive at the point,
and I remember he was like,
"What are you dressing him in that--in that crap?"
Adrienne just said, "I don't know, it looks cute."
- Adrienne had a lot of fear about dying young.
Shelly, whose name she took
when she started working professionally, um,
when she was 12 years old and away at sleepaway camp,
he died of a massive heart attack.
Which left her with feelings of her own mortality, uh,
of, you know, "Am I gonna die young?
"If I die young and I have a child,
what-- what does that do?"
When she was 12, that was the summer when Shelly died.
- Yes. It was a horrible time.
And I remember sitting on the bed with them
and holding the three of them, and I said,
"We're gonna get through it. I promise you--
I promise you we will get through it."
- This is an odd thing you and I have in common,
I just realized.
- What was that? What do we--
- Telling little kids that... - Oh!
- Mommy or Daddy's not coming home anymore.
- Hello. Right.
She went into a funk. - Uh-huh.
- She really did. She became very quiet.
- "I wonder just how much of life is spent in mourning.
"It seems I mourn daily over something or other.
"Even when I am not mourning over a person,
"I am mourning over my own inadequacies--
"my feeble height, my heavy thighs,
my incessant fears, my habits."
- I didn't know her when her father died.
- Mm-hmm. - I remember
we were in my house, and I don't remember exactly how
she started talking about him.
She never talked about him, really.
And she started crying. And I hugged her.
And it was kind of just a moment where I just
held her and hugged her while she cried.
And then she revealed to me after that
that was the first time she cried to anybody...
- Mm. - About him.
And, um, well, we were already 16.
- Were there ever times when you just come in
and you close the door and you cry?
- No.
I haven't cried in a while.
Like, I don't cry about it. - Mm-hmm.
- I don't really show my emotions.
- Mm-hmm.
Do you ever worry that that's not healthy for you?
- Yeah. It's not.
- How do you think it's not healthy?
- 'Cause you need to let it out.
I haven't had, like, a-- like, a cry...
- Mm-hmm.
- In, like, years. - Mm-hmm.
- I don't even remember.
- Whee!
Whee! - Whoo!
- Wanna sing the alphabet song with me?
- Yes. - Okay.
both: A, B, C, D, E, F, G
- I'd gone to a psychiatrist to...
find out how-- what do I say
to a kid who's not even three?
They can't really handle much, so it's just very specific,
you know, "Mommy died.
"Her body stopped working.
She's not coming home anymore."
That's it.
And so that's what I told her.
And then I remember she walked over to the window,
and she just stared out the window, and I was beside her.
She just...
Turned to me and said, "Mommy died.
She's not coming back."
Then I said, "Nope, she's not coming back."
And she just stared right out the window.
And that was it.
Over the years, Sophie and I had what I thought
were incredibly deep conversations about Adrienne.
I felt it was important in those moments
to capture them forever.
So I copied them down verbatim.
- I really miss Mommy.
- I know, sweetie.
What made you think of that just now?
- I just miss being with her.
It makes me cry.
We used to do stuff together, and I miss her.
- I know. I wish I could have saved her.
It's so unfair. - Especially to me,
because everybody else has a mommy, and I don't.
I wonder what it's like to have a mom.
[soft music]
- She was probably one of the most
loyal friends I've ever had.
She was fiercely loyal and supportive.
- Did Adrienne perform here? - No.
I don't remember Adrienne here. - Yes, she did.
- She did? - She did.
- I thought it was the other theater.
- No. She did--they did, um...
- She did here? - I'm gonna guess
it was "Pippin."
- You got it? Let's see.
Oh, right.
- Did she call herself Adrienne Shelly in 1984?
- Anytime she could use Shelly's name, she did.
- Mm-hmm.
- Andy, do me a favor. - What?
- Put your hand together with me here.
Okay. It's for Sophie too.
Love you, A. Love you.
[gentle piano music playing]
- She was great on the piano.
She could play anything by ear.
I don't remember her taking piano lessons.
She could just get on and play and sing.
It was quite amazing.
- And it's good to know
My best friend has come home again
- We met through our ninth grade chorus class.
The teacher clearly recognized Adrienne's voice
and gave her a solo.
And I remember hearing this voice--
like, she belted it, and, uh, it was unreal.
- Come in from the rain
- That was really the first time where you could tell
that this was something she was really serious about.
- Um, Adrienne Lauren Levine.
- We kept in touch all through college,
even though we were, you know, in separate locations,
and I actually remember, junior year,
she called me to tell me she was leaving college.
She was running it by me before she had told her mom.
- Really? - Yes.
- What was your an--uh... - She said--
- Advice? - She called me up, she says,
"I think I wanna drop out of college
"and move to New York and become an actress.
What do you think?"
So I said, "Oh-- well, if that's..."
- Sounds logical. - "What you want to do."
She's like, "Well, I-- I'm nervous to tell my mom."
- And I said, "Oh, what are you talking about?
You have one more year."
"Ma, I wanna-- I know what I want.
"It's-- it's such a calling for me.
It's--it's-- it's my calling."
- "Well, I'm doing it.
"I'm leaving school. It's all done.
"All of a sudden, I've taken a huge risk.
"I face a new jungle now, with strange faces,
situations, rejections, and joys I can't even imagine."
"June 7, 1987. Happy June.
"Happy month of my 21st year.
"New York has given me much
"in the four months I've lived here.
"It has virtually ended the long depression sessions,
"which were once a signature characteristic.
"It has taught me a lot about myself
that I wouldn't have learned, not for a while, without it."
[soaring music]
- She sent her headshot out to hundreds of people.
One showed up and my office, and I liked it.
- She got the part right away.
And I said, "Oh, we did right. We did right."
- It happened quickly.
Like, in no time, she was now the star
of this indie cult film.
- Adrienne was the first actress
that I was asked to read with.
Hal had already given me the role.
- Hi. - Hello.
- Can I help you find something?
- This I remember more than anything.
Her evaluating me. She doesn't have the role.
Do you work here? - I happen to be a big fan
of George Washington myself.
- Really? But she was just kind of
giving me a-- you know, a once-over.
- I can't help thinking that if he were alive today,
doing the job he did then,
leading that particular revolution,
he'd be locked up or worse.
- Yeah, she was a complete unicorn
as far as I was concerned.
She scared me a little.
Um, she said certain things to me that totally unnerved me.
- All of them-- Franklin, Payne, Jefferson,
they'd be executed.
- Well, maybe not executed. - Oh, don't put it past people.
- Not in a bad way, just made me think.
[mellow guitar music]
- I hardly remember directing her at all,
because once I cast her,
I just didn't have to worry about her at all.
She always knew her lines.
She was always funny in the right way.
She was consistent.
She was perfect for that role.
The Toronto Film Festival selected it,
and it was a big hit there,
and that's where everything started.
Miramax bought the rights to it.
In that company was Harvey Weinstein.
It's always an argument.
He wanted me to recut the film,
particularly to add some degree of nudity with Adrienne.
And I was like, "No. The film as it is, is fine."
- Dad, give me $5.
- Listen to me, young lady,
I've had just about all I'm gonna take.
- Mom, what's he talkin' about? Give me $5.
Well, "The Unbelievable Truth" was my first film.
And--and "Trust" was my second film.
- Come back here a minute.
- First one was so much easier for me to make,
because it was closer to who I actually am.
She's your typical pregnant high school teenager...
- Whose baby? - Yours, you jerk!
- Who accidentally kills her father
in the first scene of the movie.
- She seemed to be the centerpiece
to a lot of Hal's films.
I was like, "God, if--maybe she's his muse in a way."
And there was something kind of ethereal about Adrienne.
I mean, she looked like a doll.
- It was just young people learning the ropes
of being in the entertainment business
and some of the uglier parts of it.
And also very good parts too.
By the time we arrived in Toronto
for the opening night premiere of "Trust,"
she was kind of a star.
[Blondie's "Dreaming"]
- When I met you in a restaurant
- When you're starting out as an actor,
the odds of something like what happened to Adrienne...
- Right, she was, like, an overnight--
- Happening so, so fast-- yes.
And she was very conflicted about it as well,
because it is overwhelming.
I mean, suddenly she's on the cover of "Interview" magazine,
and filmmakers are calling her, and she just--
I don't think she was prepared for how big--
I don't think anyone was--how big that film was going to be.
- Dreaming, dreaming
- After we premiered "Trust," she immediately went to LA
to do a movie.
She was getting really good roles.
- I really like it. - What?
- Your work.
Reminds me of a dream I once had.
- Stephanie, that's just a blank canvas.
- Yeah.
- There was one-- some sort of glamorous opening
that she was invited to, and she took us,
and all of these people-- really, she was, like,
their darling, and she really didn't want
that much to do with it.
- Hi, everybody. - She was a little dismissive
of the movies she was making.
They were a means to an end.
- She did a lot of really crappy movies...
- Yeah, yeah. - In the '90s.
None of them really showcased who she was.
- Well, a lot of times, they liked to showcase her
as the sexpot.
- Right. - And as sexy as Adrienne was,
that's not her persona.
- I have a--you know, a certain interest in self-respect
that, uh, being an actor, there's a lot of, um,
people who would like to squelch that.
Like, I get a call in the car from my agent,
and he's like, "Okay, listen.
"Here's the thing that-- that's really important
to these people is that you be fuckable."
I get in the room, and there's these two great women,
and they're so nice, and they're wonderful.
And I'm like, "What, they don't care if I'm fuckable.
They don't care," you know, and they're just friendly
and, "Oh, we love your work," and I'm like, "Oh, thanks."
And then this man walks in.
And I swear to you,
he looked like Mr. Potato Head.
He walks in and he looks right at my tits.
Not even--not even at my face. Just, like, right--and I'm--
and I saw in his face that there was no way
that I was gonna get this part, because he didn't like my tits.
I think I spent a lot of my 20s
as if I were in some dark adventure of some kind,
not really feeling myself alive.
And I feel, like, a real desire to...
not... live my life that way anymore.
That I... live more consciously.
- I got a call out of the blue that said, "Do you want to be
in this theater company that I'm starting?"
It was an unusual choice to suddenly deicide,
"I want to do theater and I'm gonna start a theater company,
and I'm gonna pay for it and produce it," and--
and she did, and-- and, um, we did this series
of one-acts that we all wrote.
[whimsical music]
- "October 7, 1993.
"I'm sitting in a diner freaked beyond belief
"because 'Morgan Fitting In' is having a stage reading tonight,
"and it is not very well cast.
"Carla is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
"A lot of people will be here.
"People I don't want to fail in front of.
"What have we learned here? The answer:
"write it and direct it yourself.
"You are too much of a control freak
"for this ever to be pleasant.
"So embrace the fact that you are a control freak,
"and control.
"Amazing that you ever became an actress,
"wherein people would want to control you.
Weird."
- I know these things. I'm a psychoanalyst.
- You are not. - Am so, a psychoanalyst.
I know everything about the human condition.
- I remember... [laughs]
Going to her door and dropping off food
when she'd be writing a script, because--
and she would open the door just like this, 'cause,
you know, maybe her place wasn't the neatest.
- You know she was a little sloppy?
[laughs] - Is that a serious question?
- We weren't allowed in Adrienne's room.
- Yeah--oh! That's funny.
That--that's very funny. - Well, I wasn't allowed
in Adrienne's apartment when I met her.
- Yeah. - Literally.
- Probably for the same reason. - For the same reason.
And the crazy thing is, Sophie is exactly like her.
- Oh, wow. - Literally.
- She had this scheme once
where she was gonna sell stuff on eBay
that she, like, got in thrift stores
and Goodwill and stuff.
So on top of all the mess,
now you walked in there,
and her entire dining room was, like, lamps--
- Now she's a businesswoman. - Yeah, now she's a bus--
No, "I'm gonna sell these. I'm selling them on eBay."
- A tornado of things every-- you don't even know
how things would--would get-- hanging off the ceiling.
It was just everywhere.
And it was great. It was great.
I mean, a lot of creative people are messy.
- Yeah. - She's, uh, not--
you know, she's an alien.
- Right.
- She was like an old lady in a hot chick's body.
- That kind of personality
that was sort of shut in for four days
and really focused
is not necessarily the same kind of person
that's gonna be just schmoozing and schmoozing
and just trying to always get a job.
I think the visionary in her was actually an introvert.
And it allowed her to really accomplish
a lot in a very short period of time.
- So then she did a reading of the first movie she made,
not the shorts, but "Sudden Manhattan."
- Mm-hmm. - And I mean,
money wasn't coming through, and I said something
like, "Well, you know, it's your first movie.
"Like, maybe this'll be a sample.
"This is your first screenplay.
Like, the next one'll get made."
And she just looked at me, and she was like,
"I don't have that kind of time."
[tense music]
- I remember sitting with my friends Liz and Nathan.
They had come in from Los Angeles.
Liz was Adrienne's best friend.
Nathan was one of my best friends.
They had a baby two days after we did.
We were real close.
- My phone rang, my cell phone rang.
And, uh, I glanced at it, and it was you.
And then you just went right into--
you said, "Listen, I've-- I've got terrible news,
horrible news."
Just like that, "Terrible news, horrible news.
Adrienne, she's--she-- she died, she--she's dead."
- I just remember I fell to the ground,
and I started screaming.
I mean, screaming to the point that, like,
some neighbors said that they could hear me that night.
- Wow. - Down the street.
- We came to New York, um,
and I remember when we were getting on the flight,
I was on the phone with you and you were--you know,
you were in--you were in attack mode, you were in--
it was good to hear you--
at least you had that to focus on.
It was time to go, it was, like, 2:00 in the morning,
and we opened the door and we were heading out,
and you stopped, you said, "You know what my dream is?
That they call me and say, 'We've made an arrest.'"
- And at 6:00 or 6:30 the next morning,
I got a call from Detective Piccione.
He said, "Andrew, can you come downstairs in ten minutes?
We need to talk with you."
And then one unmarked car pulled up.
Uh, Jimmy and his partner got out
and said, "Andrew, we arrested the guy who killed Adrienne."
- Police now say the death of actress Adrienne Shelly
was murder, not suicide.
Now a construction worker is under arrest.
- Diego Pillco confessed to the crime.
Pillco had been renovating an apartment
in the Greenwich Village building
where the 40-year-old actress had her office.
- Diego Pillco was arrested after police allegedly
matched his sneaker footprint to one found
in the bathtub where Shelly was found hanging
from a bedsheet tied to the shower curtain rod.
- My control over my body just left,
and I just dropped to the floor,
and I started crying.
Because it was everything I needed to hear.
- Let's pretend Mommy's here.
Hi, Mommy.
- Mommy loved you very much.
She didn't choose to leave us.
She had an accident, and she died.
- She peed in her pants?
- No, a different kind of accident.
- Mommy coming back soon? She's gonna get out
of the elevator and knock on the door?
- No. - Mommy come back
when she's bigger and better?
- No, Mommy wasn't sick.
When you die, you don't come back.
- She threw up and had a bellyache?
- No. - What can we do for her?
Give her chicken? Water?
- No, there's nothing we can do for her now, sweetie.
She's not coming back.
I often think about what my life would've been like,
how I would have handled it
if I had a different family situation.
- I just kept thinking over and over,
"What is Sophie gonna do?"
Like, that was just--"What's gonna happen with Sophie?"
It was just-- it was like a dagger.
- I remember Sean, the first thing he did
was come down here to Sophie.
And I've talked to him about it, and he--
he said wasn't even, like, a thought.
He just--he knew he had to be with Sophie.
- He was only... 13 at the time or 12.
And he immediately says, "I'm going to Sophie."
And then, you know, that was the last night
he lived with me.
- I think I knew when I-- when I left,
I was gonna start living here, which I ended up doing, but...
I--I don't think I had any other thought but just Sophie.
Like, "What's going on with her?
"How's she gonna feel when she, you know,
realizes what happened?" that kind of thing.
- Go get a ball.
- Hey, you! - Hi, Andy.
- Been a while. - How are you?
I know. Hi. - Pretty good.
Nice to see you. - Nice to see you too.
- Yeah. I was just trying to explain
before to someone that, you know, to come back--
to come to a place like this, for me,
you know, 'cause this is one of the places
that are a part of this crime, right?
- Right. - And over the years,
it becomes bigger and, like, bigger and bigger and bigger,
and it's a way for me to just take control of it...
- Yeah. - And for me to own it
and make it smaller and smaller.
- Sometimes when you visualize things, it helps, you know.
- Yeah, so it's not as mythical
and big and, like, larger than life.
- Right. - It's just--it's just
a building in Brooklyn
where a killer lived in the basement.
They had these footprints in-- in Adrienne's bathroom.
They checked everybody's shoes.
Nothing matched.
I believe it was the Saturday
that Detective Piccione went to the building.
[tense music]
He noticed a very thin layer of construction dust
up near Adrienne's door.
He inquired if there was construction in the building.
"Yes, there is." "Where?"
"The apartment below." "Oh, let's go take a look."
Open the door, boom. Footprint.
Same footprint that's upstairs in the bathroom.
- I'll tell you, if that footprint wasn't
on that bathtub, I don't think he would have
ever gotten caught.
That's where Jimmy comes into play, Jimmy Piccione,
because Jimmy kept saying,
"You know, I really believe him.
I really believe the husband."
He kept saying that. "I--I believe it."
He showed me the pictures, and he goes,
"Why would a mother who has a two-year-old child
and she's happy, why would she commit suicide?"
When we first interviewed him, we'd talk
pedigree information, like, you know, what's his name,
you know, where he came from,
how long he's been in America, how did he get here?
At some point, I noticed that he kept looking--
playing with a prayer card, like, he kept using
this prayer card, and you could tell that he was praying.
And I said to him, "Do you have any children?"
He says he didn't have any children.
I said, "Do you have any nieces or nephews?"
He says, "As a matter of fact, I have--
"my sister has a couple of kids.
I have, like, four nieces and nephews."
I believe it was four.
And I sa--made him go through the list of how old they were.
So he went through the whole list of all the children.
The last child that he discussed,
her name was Tiffany, and she was two years old.
And I said to him, I go, "You know the lady--
"the lady that died upstairs, you know,
she had a two-year-old daughter."
So then I said, "You know something?
"In life sometimes when, you know,
"you do something wrong, God doesn't punish you.
He punishes someone in your family."
And at that point, he puts his head down
and he comes back up, he goes, "Okay, I did it."
- Mm.
- So after I got the confession,
was driving in my car,
I remember I got an ice-cold chill in the back of my neck,
and I felt my hairs on the back of my neck stand up,
and I felt that it was your wife thanking me
for having this guy confess
so your daughter doesn't have to go through life
thinking it was a suicide.
[soft dramatic music]
- The stories that he had told
when he gave his confession,
which was a total made-up story
about noise complaints and her coming downstairs
and slapping him in the face,
that was all made up.
And then when his plea was accepted,
his story at that time was that he followed her up
and attempted to rob her, and she caught him.
We've got them to agree to 25 years,
no parole, no appeal,
guaranteed.
At the time, it seemed like a really good deal.
But now that he's much closer to being out,
it starts to really feel like
that was no sentence.
She died. She died a horrible death
at the age of 40, and he'll be,
you know, 45 when he's out.
Like, you know?
So that 25 years is gonna go by real quick.
I think I first started to think about meeting him
about a year after Adrienne died.
It was largely born out of a feeling of being unsettled
in terms of what happened that day.
And there's only one person on this planet
that knows what happened that day who's still alive,
and that's him.
"Diego Pillco, you'll probably recognize my name.
"I'm Adrienne Shelly's husband.
"11 years has passed since that fateful day
"in November 2006.
"So many lives profoundly changed that day,
"including yours.
"Not a minute of every day goes by
"without me thinking of Adrienne and what I've lost,
"what my daughter Sophie, who is now 14, has lost,
"what the world has lost.
"I would like to talk with you about what happened that day.
Will you agree to meet and talk with me?"
- Oh! - Ow, watch where you're--
Hey. - Hey, hi, Adrienne.
- Hi, Tim. - Good to see you.
- Good to see you too. - Hey, what are you doing?
- Oh, I don't know-- - Do you have a minute
to talk about "Sudden Manhattan"?
- I certainly have a minute to talk about "Sudden Manhattan."
Six, seven, eight.
Eight zits.
One less than yesterday.
What happened to the missing zit?
Where'd it go?
Hmm.
One zit less.
Well, I wanted to make this movie
because I think it's sort of an analogy
to being in your 20s, being at a certain point in your life
where, you know, a lot of strange things are happening
to you and you can't really make any sense of--
of them.
I'm stuck in a vortex.
It's really about, uh, trying to find meaning
in a world that is often very confusing.
- And then she steals the carrot out of my mouth,
and she hop, hop, hops away.
And my voice tells me, "Bonnie, you dumb bunny.
She wants you to follow."
[distorted] Then he took the gun and shot the man dead
in plain daylight.
- That film was nuts, right?
Like, what did you think of it? - It was nuts.
Like, it always amazed me, Adrienne would say,
"I'm writing this thing," then suddenly she would call
three weeks later and say, "We have funding."
I don't know how it happened. - Right.
- It just--somehow, she knew someone and knew--
and she just got on the phone and worked connections
and called people, and they read her work
and liked it, so they produced it.
- Tea leaves, palm readings, aura readings,
tarot cards, astrology, past life readings,
or guardian angel information.
- Uh, no, I don't-- I don't think--
- Or I can do all of them at the same time.
- You do all of them at the same time?
- Mm-hmm.
- I think it was "Sudden Manhattan,"
and she was having a lot of difficulty with the reception,
and she got a negative review somewhere,
and she called me.
And she was just crying...
- No reason to get out of bed.
- For several hours,
because somebody had ripped her to shreds.
- No reason to brush my teeth.
- What Adrienne found in making that movie
is that being in the movie, writing it, and directing it,
critics were not going to be kind to a woman who did that.
- Right. - And I really do feel
there was tremendous sexism that made that
a hard thing to do.
[dramatic romantic music]
[doorbell rings]
- Mahjong.
all: Mahjong!
- I said to her, "Tell me about this character.
I mean, what are you really looking for?"
What I wanna know is...
Do you wanna go to Spain with me and make love?
And she said, "Well," she said
"This character's really based on my mother."
- You know Missy. - Hi, Lois.
- Missy's taking Mona's place in the mahjong game.
- How's it going?
- It's-- it's going well.
- Yeah? - Yeah, I'm having a good time.
Somebody's agreed to let me make a movie again.
And that's, um--
that never, you know, fails to surprise me
and delight me.
It's called "Get Up and Recover."
- Oh, Lucy.
- There are all these great exercises in here,
not just to, um... forget your misery
but to go forward, to face your pain.
You know, to strengthen your soul.
- There's nothing wrong with my soul.
- This is exactly the situation that life offers you
a real opportunity to grow.
There's--there's not really one breakup in particular
that inspired this film.
I think I've probably been all of the characters
in the film at one time or another.
I set up a date for you.
- Are you kidding? - With Bernice.
My friend from college, she just moved here from LA.
- You did what?
- You told me you thought she was cute.
- That was eight years ago. I met her for five minutes.
- Bill, you gotta move forward.
You gotta move forward, Bill.
- I can't go on a date, Lucy. I can't tie my shoes.
What are you talking about, a date?
Cancel it. - I can't.
- Why not? [doorbell buzzes]
- Hi.
- I was going for a tone in the film where--
where you can kind of find what's funny in what's painful.
Um, which has always kind of
been my strategy anyway in life, you know.
I think it's a great sort of survival technique.
- "Oddly enough, I believe that the person
"who's had the greatest influence on my creative life
has been my father."
"The reason why this is unusual
"is that I have not seen my father in 18 years.
"He died very suddenly when I was 12.
"He was 40 years old.
"This was to begin my strange
"and ugly companionship with grief.
"Learning to cope with loss has been an odyssey
for me throughout my life."
- One of the most incredible moments
I ever had with Adrienne
was when she told me
what she remembered from that day.
- From when her father-- [gasps]
And what was that?
- She was picked up at camp. - Right, right.
- She said it was a-- a long ride home,
and she literally was staring out the window,
wondering, "What is going on?"
And she said, "I went into the house,
"and I walked into the kitchen,
"and on the kitchen table
was an obituary from the newspaper."
- [gasps] Oh!
- So here--here's-- here's the incredible part.
She faked not knowing...
- Yeah. - Because she didn't want...
- Oh. - To make you feel bad.
The way she told me this story, she started laughing.
And she said to me, "Can you believe this?
This is how I found out how my father died."
The tonal shift is really what she brought to her work.
Just the horror and the comedy
all wrapped into one crazy moment.
- "When loss--the fear of it as well as the truth of it--
"runs your life, there is not much room in your life
for other things, like love."
That's it. - That's it?
- Yes. - No more?
- No. - Did you have fun?
- Yes. - Yeah, is that a fun car?
- Yes. - Why is it fun?
- Because you bought it.
- Because I bought it?
- Yes. - Oh, that's nice.
So are you a good driver?
- Good job.
- I think it was about three weeks later, maybe--
no, a month later.
You-- you wanted to get Sophie--
you got--you just wanted to get her out of--
you needed to get out of New York.
And you came to visit.
I remember opening the door and--and...
you and Sophie walking up the walkway there,
opening the gate.
And I remember...
It wasn't three of you. It was two of you.
- I had a lot of people who would say things
like, "Everything's gonna be okay,"
"You'll get through it,"
all the things that nice people say
when they care about you and want to make you feel better.
I remember this one guy
whose son committed suicide many years earlier,
and then he contacted me right away, and he was like,
"Here's what's gonna happen day one.
"Here's what's gonna happen month one, month two,
year one, year two."
He laid out, like, a blueprint
of, like, how often I'll cry.
I found that invaluable.
Uh, my friend Julie Rudd,
uh, had a fiancé who died in a horrible work accident.
- I think it might have been a week later
that you called me, and I was like,
"Oh, he--this is--he's-- he's gonna be okay,
"because he is already looking to climb himself out.
"You know, he doesn't wanna stay where he is,
and he knows he can't, because he's got a young daughter."
- Was there ever a moment where...
you didn't think you would be able to move on from this?
- No.
No, not in that sense.
But I had really dark moments--
dark, dark, dark moments,
going in that closet in the back,
taking her clothes and curling up on a--
fetal position on the floor and just sobbing
till I literally had nothing left.
But then over, you know, the next few days,
the next week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks,
all of a sudden, you know, a routine settles in.
I just looked at her and made her a promise
that she's gonna grow up happy and healthy.
We're gonna be okay.
Like, we're a team. We're gonna be okay.
[soft music]
- I don't want you to be sad, okay, Daddy?
- You think Daddy looks sad? - Yes.
But I'm gonna take care of you when Mommy died.
- I'm so lucky to have you.
- You be so proud of me,
and you not be sad anymore that Mommy died.
I like Mommy's picture up there.
- Mommy's watching over her little girl while she sleeps.
- She's watching me? - Yes.
She'll always be with you, everywhere you go.
How do you feel about, like, today
versus other days?
- It doesn't really feel very different
than most days, like, 'cause it's just a day,
but it just happens to be, like, when--
like, an anniversary of something,
so it's, like, always in the back of my mind.
It's not like it's harder today.
I think it's only harder
because I'm thinking about it more
than I would on a different day.
- Are there days or holidays in particular
more so than other days or other holidays
that make you think more about that?
- Well, Halloween, 'cause it's right there,
and the party you guys threw.
- Mm-hmm. - Um, Mother's Day, obviously.
- Mm-hmm. - Um--
- What do you typically feel on Mother's Day?
- Um, just kind of like, um,
like, robbed.
Like, I'm just jealous all day.
Just 'cause of, like, other people
and, like, their moms.
Like, I'm jealous of that.
I'm understanding now how permanent it is.
- Mm-hmm. - That's hard to deal with,
but it's mostly just like, I'm never going to have one.
Like, the permanency of that. - Mm-hmm.
- Hi.
It's me, Adrienne, and, uh--
and I just started shooting this documentary
a few days ago.
- One of the things that I've discovered
through this process is, Adrienne--
and maybe you know about it, Adrienne was
making a documentary about happiness.
Do you know anything about that?
- There's too many things I haven't done yet
There's too many sunsets
I haven't seen
You can't waste the day wishing it'd slow down
You would've thought by now
- I have the tapes.
- That's amazing. - And they're amazing.
[Sara Bareilles' "Many the Miles"]
[doorbell rings]
- We're making a-- a documentary about happiness.
I'm assuming you're a couple. - We are.
- We're--we're actually looking for the happiest person
in New York.
- We're pretty happy. Erica makes me happy.
- Aww. This is for you.
- What is--this is for me? - It's a yo-yo.
- Oh, how very nice. I shall play with this at home.
[laughter]
- We went, uh, my boyfriend and I, to see, um...
Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello
in concert at Carnegie Hall.
I used to come here for breakfast--
it was a breakfast place-- with my ex-boyfriend.
And, uh, it was really painful because we knew
that we were gonna end our relationship that night.
We used to fight a lot here.
We were just kind of frozen there in our seats
listening to them sing this stuff.
And then finally, uh, we broke up here.
And I remember feeling like, "Ugh, yeah, pain!
Ugh, yeah, life-- give it to me, give it to me."
And the place, uh, was a place I think of misery and failure
for the owners also, 'cause they went out of business,
and it became another restaurant altogether.
We were very specifically looking for a restaurant
to break up in, and finally, uh,
we settled into Ollie's Noodle Shop and Grill.
I came back, um, with a-- with a new boyfriend,
and, uh--and he broke up with me here too.
I listened to him tell me everything
that was wrong with me and how I had failed him.
And then shortly after that,
uh, that restaurant went out of business.
And I sat there and told him everything that he did wrong
and how he failed me.
And, uh--and it was just-- it was just awful.
So I try to stay away from here if I can,
um, not bring any beaus here,
because they're just gonna break up with me,
and--and then the restaurant's gonna close.
- She had so many crappy relationships.
- So many, so many. - I often think about, like,
she was smart, she was beautiful.
Like, she had everything to offer.
- I want, you know, very different things now
than when I was younger.
And I'd like to think that, you know, I could...
Spend my life with somebody and have a family and, uh--
and still be allowed to be myself, you know?
- And was it just the-- - I think
that a lot of men
felt that here was this tiny, little, adorable woman
that they were going to take care of
and protect and control.
And she had no intention of that happening.
She was tiny but very large in personality
and in mind and in deed and in will.
- Are you in love?
- No. I'm in love,
but, um, I don't know with--
I mean, he's somewhere out there.
I don't know where he is.
I'm--I have all this love inside of me
and no one to give it to now.
- And because I'm-- I'm on this sort of quest
to figure out what happiness is in this documentary,
I guess I--I should... probably admit that, uh,
I--I'm not really such an expert on it.
- The conversation that we used to have quite a bit
is, what's more important to us?
Is having love and marriage more important to us?
Or is it more im--is our art more important to us?
And we would have those debates a lot.
And Adrienne fell into the camp of, "Love and marriage
is ultimately more important to me."
- Are you happy? - I'm content.
- Knowing her and knowing how passionate
about her work she was, I was surprised.
But thinking back on it, I'm not.
- "I want love to work. I want no more pain.
"I want to have a child and a family.
"I want to create marvelous things from my heart and mind
and hands and mouth."
- I remember when I first came to New York,
when I first moved to New York, I--
I, um-- I--I--
I said the same kind of thing to myself,
that, you know, he's somewhere here.
- He has to be. - Wonder where he is
and what he's doing right now
and if he's wondering where I am, you know.
I want to be part of something that's bigger than just me.
- She wanted to be loved.
You know, talking to her a few late nights where she really
had the feeling she would never be loved
and it would never happen.
And I knew that was literally impossible.
This is just what's happening now.
That person is out there.
And of course he was, and it was you.
- She met you, um, as I believe, after 9/11.
You were volunteering downtown.
- No, no, no, no. - She said she met you
at a political fundraiser.
- What? She said to me,
you know, like a lot of people after 9/11,
you know, you start reassessing your life.
- Right. - Like, "What am I doing?"
- So it was after 9/11? - It was right after--
- So I got that part right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- She told me that you guys met
at a political fundraiser.
- Did you volunteer with her after together?
- She told me she went on Match,
and she was embarrassed.
She was a little, like, "I don't want anyone to know."
Hi, now everybody knows.
I supported her instantly. I said, "Great.
"That's how people-- you know, it's--you know,
people meet people that way now."
I mean, it's a great way to get outside
of the sphere of just show business.
And she made it clear, like, "I only went to one person.
I saw his profile picture, I chose it, and that was that."
She made one connection. It was you.
- Listen, um, I have a five-minute blind date tonight
with an insurance salesman named Pete--
5'10", 37, all his hair, nice picture, loves fishin'.
- Five-minute date?
Can't the guy pay for the whole thing?
- She literally said to me,
"We're gonna go on a five-minute date."
That was the first time I heard that idea.
And I said, "How does that work?"
She explained the whole thing.
She said, "I show up, I look at you, you look at me,
"and we talk for five minutes, we hate each other.
Like, why--what's the point of staying, like, longer?"
And we sat there for five hours.
The five-minute date became five hours.
- I got a secret too.
- You, Dawn? - Yes.
I have a boyfriend now. - [gasps]
- No. - Yes.
- It really did feel different from all the other guys.
And she said, "You know, I can't believe it,
but my dream guy is, like, a divorced dad of three."
- I'm happy to say I loved you right away.
Um, you had good hair.
- I just remember how excited you were and how surprised
I was that somebody like her was going out with you.
- You said, "You're dating Adrienne Shelly?"
And I said, "Yeah," and you said, "The Adrienne Shelly?"
And I said, "Yeah," and then you--and then you said,
"The Hal Hartley Adrienne Shelly?
'Trust' Adrienne Shelly?"
And then you said, "Ostroy,
"most days, I feel sorry for you.
Today's not one of 'em."
[laughter]
Not only was she just brilliant and funny,
but she was absolutely the cutest thing I had ever met.
I really felt like I was in the presence of someone special.
Like this was the person I was intended to be with
for the rest of my life-- my soul mate.
All the cheesy stuff.
[jaunty accordion music]
Who is this crazy lady?
- It's so big.
- I just got an Eiffel Tower for one euro,
but he gave me another one for free.
- Ooh, cool. - So nice.
- I proposed to her that following summer in Paris.
I carried the ring with me everywhere we went.
- So how did you propose?
Like, was it a surprise? Did you walk up--
- Well, we walked up this street,
and I told your mom that ever since I met her,
I'd been really happy and I can't imagine
my life without her.
So after Daddy proposed, we came down here.
And we just sat here, and we talked for, like, hours.
And we'd start planning--
this is where we planned the wedding, right here.
- Really? - Yeah.
[John Lennon's "Oh My Love"]
- Oh, my love
For the first time in my life
My eyes are wide open
- When I first spoke with everyone I knew
about the man I was falling in love with,
who had been married twice before and has three children,
I braced myself for skepticism.
But this is the mad, crazy love affair
I have waited for all my life.
I vow to care for your children,
because they are a part of you and an extra blessing to me.
- Everything is clear in my heart
- Yeah, when she called me, I think she was so at peace
that this other life that she really actually wanted,
she could have that too.
She could-- she could do both.
- Everything is clear in our world
- I used to go over to the house when I used
to sleep over all the time,
and Sophie would be on-- on the bed,
and she would be changing, and she would look,
and she would say, "Ma,
did you ever see a baby like this, Ma?"
The love that--I said, "I know, I know, I know."
And that's the thing that she won't know.
Sophie won't know this.
- "April 7, 2004.
"Dear Sophie, you are nine weeks old today.
"It's semi-crazy how much I love you,
"how you're so clearly the best and most important
"and realest thing I've ever done.
"Sometimes I well up with tears just looking at you.
"I have a ton of nicknames for you:
"Peanut, Monkey, Chicken, Gumdrop,
"Princess Boo-Boo, Soph-Soph.
I love you so much--so much. Mommy."
"Happy first birthday.
"My dear, sweet love bunny
princess of the universe Sophie,
"you are meant to read this when you are much older,
"maybe 18, maybe 21.
"At any rate, when you are a woman.
"So hard for me to believe that you will be that someday.
"Right now, you are delicious-- beyond delicious.
"You are truly the most beautiful baby
"I have ever seen.
"Your spirit is joyous, and it is enormous.
"I pray that you will keep this amazing spirit always.
"You are truly the light of my life, my love.
"You are nothing less than the light of the whole world.
"I could kiss you a million times
"and it would not feel like enough.
"Please take my love with you wherever you go.
"You hold my heart in yours.
"My dearest, dearest Sophie,
"I love you beyond words to tell it.
Your Mommy, XOXOXO."
- Happy birthday, Sophie.
Little Sophie.
[somber music]
- Who hurt Mommy?
- A man.
- What did he use to hurt her?
- His hands.
- What's his name? - Diego Pillco.
- Where did she die?
- Her office. - Can we go there?
- Why? - To see Mommy.
- But she's not there anymore.
- Where is she? - She died, sweetie.
Her body stopped working, and she's not coming back.
"Dear Mr. Ostroy,
"I don't know how to start this letter.
"I'm surprised that you want to talk to me.
"I also would like to talk with you.
"I'm very"-- underlined--
"very ashamed of myself
"for what I did to you and your family when I was a teenager.
"Ashamed for the pain I caused you and your daughter
"and the rest of your family.
"I'll carry this guilt and remorse
"for the rest of my life.
"If at all possible, could you let me know
"what day you're planning to come
"so I can prepare myself mentally?
Because I'm very scared and nervous."
Um...
He said yes.
- I have a secret too.
- You, Dawn? - Yeah.
I have a boyfriend now.
- No. - Yeah.
- That's wonderful, honey.
Who is he? Tell us everything.
- Oh, well, you're never gonna believe it,
but you know that guy who came in the diner that time
and he wouldn't leave-- name was Ogie?
- Ogie, the stalking elf. Yes, I remember that guy.
What about him?
[cheerful music]
Adrienne was always writing.
There's always a concept, there's always a thing,
there's always a--index cards of the characters and--
I used to see these things all over the house
and-- and say, "What is that?"
"Eh, it's just something I'm working on."
Or, "That's an idea, that's a"--always ideas.
And then she said to me, "I'm working on something
"I really like, and I-- I think--
I think has real potential."
- Sorry, I don't want-- I won't do that anymore.
You shouldn't be uncomfortable during this time.
- See, and you're doing it again.
- What am I doing? - I don't know.
I mean, you know, you do the-- the Mr. Nice Guy thing and--
Forget it, forget it.
- Good. Okay.
- I messed it up a little bit.
- It's fine. I don't care.
- I was sort of like, "Why doesn't she want to do this?"
And she's like, "I wanna direct it, I don't--you know."
- The only time we ever really worked together
was trying to get "Waitress" made and doing--
- The reading. - Doing the reading.
It was apparent even during the reading,
she conjured everything, and because she was an actor,
she knew how to talk to actors.
- You drop it here. You come in, you rush in.
- I think the biggest thing about Adrienne, um,
was, she really knew what she wanted.
She had such a clear idea of it.
- In this shot, we just sit down in two and three.
- Okay.
- Okay, rehearsing.
- Look at this, Jenna.
As you can plainly see,
my right boob is much higher than my left boob,
and Dawn here has pasty, pasty skin.
I'm stuck in a marriage to drooling Phil, the invalid,
and Dawn eats TV dinners alone,
but still we wouldn't rather be you.
- I do have pasty, pasty skin.
- It was so funny
and some, like, real female feelings.
- I know what you're thinking, 'cause you called him an elf.
- Only 'cause you initially called him an elf.
- You're jealous. - No.
- You are. Because you have
the most controlling husband in the world.
And you are stuck there, but I have found someone
who loves me to death.
- Well, let's hope not to death.
- And I am happy! - Good.
- She understood
when you weren't being honest in a scene.
I had built this "are you happy enough?" Cal speech,
and she goes, "Well, we got it, and it's great.
I'm so happy, are you happy?" I go, "Yeah, I mean"--
She goes, "Great.
"Hey, can we try one where
no one's ever asked you this before?"
- I mean, would you call yourself a happy man?
- Well, if you're asking me a serious question,
I'll tell you.
I'm happy enough.
I don't expect much.
I don't give much.
I don't get much.
I generally enjoy whatever comes up.
That's my truth,
summed up for your feminine judgment.
I'm happy enough.
- I felt safe, because I knew
that if she didn't get what she wanted,
she wouldn't stop, you know?
That's really what it-- as an actor,
you just wanna feel like-- like she knows what she wants,
she knows when she gets it, and--
you know, and that she has-- and she knows when I'm--
I'm not doing it.
[glass shatters]
[all gasping, murmuring]
Jenna,
I'm very upset with you.
- Well, of course, you remember none of this, right?
- Mm-mm. Just from the movie. - Uh-huh.
Brings back a lot of memories.
- Bye. - Bye.
- We--we went to the road,
like, um, that we walked in at the end of the movie.
- No way! - Yeah.
Bye-bye-bye. [squealing]
- [chuckles] Bye.
I mean, you were too little. - Yeah.
- You probably don't even remember that.
I remember that. - She doesn't remember.
- You wouldn't let your mom out of your sight.
And, um, so we just had-- she had to run and hide
behind a bush, and I was just holding you
until you kind of calmed down,
and then we sort of sang together.
Baby, don't cry, gonna make a pie
Hold you forever in the middle of my heart
- On the Monday when we learned of the arrest,
that's when we also learned that "Waitress" had
been accepted into Sundance.
- I'm sure as she was waiting for Sundance's response,
she was uncertain whether or not--
- Yeah, she had no idea.
And I remember once saying to her, like,
"Do you know what you have here?"
And she said, "If it gets into Sundance and people see it,
it could be big."
- I didn't think about the film.
After what happened with Adrienne,
I didn't think about the film.
I just-- it seemed insignificant.
And then, um--
and then we went to Sundance.
[soft rock music]
- Sundance was something I dreaded going to.
I knew going in, it was gonna be one of the hardest things
that any of us in the family had to do.
- You looked ashen.
You were there, you were present,
but it was everything-- every ounce of energy,
you know, just to be standing up and functioning right.
- It's the most heart-wrenching
and most beautiful thing that I've ever experienced.
We were all there, and-- and you were there,
and your family was there.
And we watched this movie, all of us, for the first time.
[dramatic music playing]
- Oh.
Look what you did.
You made me almost pretty.
- What do you mean "almost" pretty?
You're lovely.
- Lot of people say how, obviously, at Sundance,
you know, just seeing her--
I know how it was for me, but seeing her--
- It was a killer! Are you kidding?
- Aw, I'm sorry, hon.
- I looked, and then I didn't look.
I remember I was crying so,
and there was a man-- I don't know who--
who he belonged to, whatever,
and I remember he-- he was, like, trying to--
"It's okay, it's okay, don't worry."
- As soon as the opening credits started rolling,
Elaine just buried her head in my shoulder
and started bawling her eyes out.
"That's my baby, that's my baby, that's my baby."
- We were all just confused
by how that could be a part of this world,
that this murder could be anywhere connected
to this movie that was so much about life.
- Oh, my God. Here it is.
A character and script and story and everything
that I know so well.
It just seemed simultaneously
magical and unfair.
- Everywhere we went, people gave you
such effusive compliments about being in "Waitress."
I mean, I got into every suite,
I got into every party--
"Oh, you're in 'Waitress,' aren't you?"
I mean, it was the darling.
- Here was the success of this film
by a woman who struggled as a filmmaker
to get to this point.
This was gonna be her moment.
How are we here
and she's not?
[soft music]
I wanted her there, so I took a little vial
of her ashes.
And I got up really early that day
and went to the top of the hill,
stood in the middle of the street,
and just, like, walked the yellow line
and just...
threw her ashes in the air.
- No, you never told me that. - All the way down the street.
And then that night, I brought the little vial again,
and because I wanted her in the theater.
This was her moment.
It was her-- her premiere.
She had to be there.
And I remember throwing ashes in--in the air,
and Harvey Weinstein walked right by.
And they landed on his-- - Whoa.
- On his shoulders.
And I just, like, started laughing on the inside,
because I just-- like, literally it was as if
Adrienne was right next to me
laughing and thinking that was the funniest thing ever.
- I started out saying, "I'm never ever going to speak
"like it's harder because I'm a woman.
That's the last thing I'm ever, ever gonna do."
And then, you know, five years later, I was saying,
"You know, it really is much harder because I'm a woman,
"much harder, and I want everyone to know.
And I want to talk about it constantly."
And--and then, now I'm sort of back to feeling
like it's hard for everybody.
It's hard. It's a hard business.
- I just made a decision early on
that I not only need to accept what happened,
in that "shit happens, life's not fair" kind of way,
but also try to spin some gold from it,
to turn what is probably the most horrifying negative
I'll ever experience in my life
to something positive somewhere, somehow.
Um, so that's what got me started very early on
on creating a foundation to support women filmmakers.
[Sara Bareilles' "Opening Up"]
- 2007, saw that film, loved the characters,
felt for them, cared about them.
The storytelling, of course, a wonderful story.
It felt like those characters would reach
an emotional moment in their lives
where they had to burst out in song or dance.
- The day starts like the rest we've seen
Another carbon copy of an old routine
- Days keep coming - One out, one in
all: They keep coming
- Make that coffee strong enough to chew.
- I think in the year 2019,
we'll be 1,300 performances deep into our Broadway run.
I mean, that's preposterous.
- It was always really precious to us
to maintain the integrity of-- of her mission statement
and the sort of bold feminism of it.
- It's delivered with such humor and fantasy
with Jenna's pies, and it's just
got its own signature tone.
- There's victory-- there's human victory here
in--of the best kind.
- Sugar
Sugar, butter, flour
- I did a lot of talking to Adrienne.
I--like, out loud, at the piano,
come on in, come play, come play with me.
Let's create something.
- She is messy
But she's kind
She is lonely
Most of the time
She is all of this mixed up and baked
In a beautiful pie
She is gone, but she used to be
Mine
- Jenna's someone who is endlessly loyal and caretaking
and self-diminishing.
- The queen of kindness.
- The queen of kindness and goodness
to--to a fault.
It's then so powerful to watch that person,
which we can all relate to in some way, shape, or form,
rise above that limitation.
And to watch it be a happy ending, it's so nice.
- But used to be
Mine
Oh, used to be
Mine
We just had this goal of honoring her.
And whenever things would get tough--
I remember at one point, I had a sticky up on my mirror
in Broadway that said, "It's for Adrienne."
Mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie
She is gone
But she used to be
Mine
[applause]
- I want to take a moment to talk about the fifth, uh,
female on the team, and that's Adrienne Shelly.
[cheers and applause]
For those of who don't know, but I think most of you do,
Adrienne wrote, directed, and was one of the stars
of the movie "Waitress," and she died
before the movie was bought at Sundance,
before she could experience how embraced
her beautiful gem that she created was--
this beautiful pie she created.
And she wrote this movie before the Me Too movement,
when stories about quiet bravery of women
were deemed unimportant.
And they were impossible to get made, and she got it made.
To Adrienne, I think I speak for all of us when I say,
as we all look up,
thank you for taking us to the moon, moon pie.
[cheers and applause]
- I was sobbing the whole time watching the show.
And towards the end, I felt paralyzed.
Like, I didn't want to leave the theater.
I couldn't leave.
Uh, and eventually, I made my way out,
and again, I was, like, hanging around.
I didn't know for what. Like, I just didn't want
to leave the theater. It was such--
I don't know, this was like my connection
with Adrienne, this is, you know, my last kind of...
Time with her.
- The thing that I picked up from working with Hal,
he gave me a--you know, a sort of way to drop my own timidity,
you know, to--to understand how important it is to--
if--when you're-- when you're making a film,
that you should ask for what it is you want, you know,
and to not sort of shy away from what your own,
uh, ideas are.
His films are unique and they could only be made by him.
And I'm hoping that one day,
someone might say that about me too.
[suspenseful music]
- Did you ever meet Pillco?
- I saw him in court a couple of times.
- Can I see him? Show me a picture of him.
- Yeah, if that's what you want.
- Will you ever meet him? - Yes, someday.
Not to forgive him
but to learn the truth about what he did
and make him know how special Mommy was.
- I'd never forgive him.
And when you show me his picture,
we should draw a mustache, elf ears, and devil horns on it.
[phone rings]
- Here's Sophie.
Hey, Shmoph. - Hi.
How are you feeling about today?
- I'm a little nervous but not as nervous
as I think I'll probably feel when I see the prison.
- Yeah. Text me if you want.
- Okay. I love you so much.
- Okay, I love you too so much.
Good luck.
- Now, I'm not coming here 'cause I need to beat him up.
Just want him to be honest.
You know, I want him to shed light on stuff,
and I want him to acknowledge what he did
and who he took and the consequence of that.
It'd be funny if everything I said just goes out the window
and I fly into some fucking rage.
Have to be carted out of there
and that's the end of the interview.
[tense music]
I think I wanna vomit.
13 years ago, Adrienne died.
Part of me died that day.
There's some things I--I-- I need to know,
some things I'd like to know.
There's also some things I'd like you to know.
That's really why I'm here today.
I'm not here to attack you.
I'm just here to share
what I've had in my head for 13 years.
I'm sure you've had a lot to think about too.
- I'm sorry.
I wish I could go back and change things.
I can't.
[speaking Spanish]
- I was never aggressive.
I never hurt anyone.
- I need to understand how someone like you,
who says he never hurt anyone--
help me understand how you--
how you turned into a murderer that day.
- [speaking Spanish]
- I came to this country owing $13,500.
My mom put my-- put her house in the bank
so that I could have money.
I was looking to find how am I gonna send the money.
I started working in apartments.
And one day, I saw someone come out of the apartments.
And I said to myself, "I'm gonna go in to look for money."
- So you were looking
to rob apartments that day?
- [speaking Spanish]
- I had been doing it for a while,
since I started needing money.
Nothing ever happened-- - In that building or anywhere?
- [speaking Spanish] - Everywhere.
Wherever they put me to work.
That day, they sent me to work where she lived--
where your wife lived.
So when I put my ear to the door, the door opened.
I was afraid that I was gonna get caught,
but then I saw a bag.
When I took out the money, I put the bag back in.
And that's when the lady came out and she ran after me.
And when she started yelling at me...
The only word that I heard that she said was "police."
She went to grab the phone.
I got behind her and covered her mouth
and told her not to call the police.
I lost my mind. I lost it.
And I was choking her with my hand.
At the same time, I was covering her mouth...
So that she wouldn't make noise.
I took my hand off,
and I let her go.
And I saw her--
That her--
her lips were blue.
Then I thought, "Oh, I killed her."
And I took her to the bathroom.
And then I hung her like if she committed suicide.
- Did you think you got-- you got away with it?
- [speaking Spanish] - Yes.
- I want to show you some pictures.
You took a wife.
You took someone who I was madly in love with.
You took a mother.
That's my daughter with her mom.
They don't have anything anymore.
And they had everything.
That was taken October 31st.
That was the day before you killed her.
Adrienne missed a lot.
She missed birthdays.
That's the first birthday after her mom left her.
This is a recent birthday, still no mom.
This is what she was left with--me.
Just me.
First day she rode a bike. Her mom wasn't there for that.
First days of school.
Mommy wasn't there for that.
She's a damn good soccer player.
Mommy's never seen any of her games.
This is-- this is the life you took away.
[somber music]
Okay. I'm done.
- [speaking Spanish] - I'm sorry.
- Stand up.
[door slams]
- I remember being very young,
and I just wanted to know exactly what happened.
- What did Mommy look like when you found her?
- She looked bad.
- Where was she? - In the bathroom.
- How did he kill her? - He strangled her
and put a rope around her neck
so it'd look like she killed herself.
But no one believed that. She loved you so much
and would never have left you.
- I bet it was scary. - It was.
- What did you tell me when she died?
- I told you her body stopped working
and she wasn't coming home.
- Did I know what dying meant?
- No. - That was good, right?
- Yeah. You were so little.
- How often do I think about him in my life?
Every day.
Whenever I think of her, I think of him.
But it's also different, because I'm grieving her
in a different way
and more so kind of.
both: One, two, three.
- She's entering an age where, you know,
nobody can take the place of a mother,
and I'm sure she... wishes she were here
and needs her for so many different things.
- If you could bring Mommy back for one day tomorrow,
what would you get up and do?
- Um...
Just walk around.
- Mm-hmm.
Would you guys talk a lot? - Yeah.
- What would you tell her?
- I don't know. Just whatever came to mind.
'Cause I could, you know? - Mm-hmm.
I struggle with the concept of closure.
My life will always be about grief.
You know? There will always be
that ghost in the room.
The love that I had at that time, it didn't go anywhere.
It just, like, froze. Like, she is frozen in time.
- Every morning, we talk.
She helps me.
I loved her.
I can't even believe it sometimes.
She's so alive.
She was so alive, Andy. She was so alive.
- I think about her every day.
I think about my girls' pain in not knowing their aunt,
Sophie's pain.
- To me, her greatest joy was that child.
- She's a little wind-up toy.
- So to watch Sophie grow into this incredible woman
is terribly painful.
And beautiful, because she's such an amazing kid
and has so much of Adrienne in her
and all the mannerisms and all the sweetness
and the silliness
and sense of humor and all of that,
but Adrienne not getting to have that...
- Mm-hmm.
- Is worse than anything to me.
- She was getting more and more confident in her life
as a mom, a wife, and all that,
but in her-- her creative life too,
she had a very clear idea where she wanted to go.
- She craved making great work.
She craved having her voice heard
and her vision be out there.
- You just-- with certain people, you know
certain things are gonna happen if they continue on.
- Do you hear that?
- With Adrienne, it's always gonna be
the what could've been, what was.
- I just have a very specific kind of satisfaction
when I walk around midtown and see "Waitress"
on a Broadway marquee.
The majority of people that are going to see that show
every day come from all different walks of life.
They don't know her story. They don't even know
what the deal is behind "Waitress."
And judging it completely on its own merits...
- Well, sure. - And having an incredible
experience as an artist,
that's the best we can hope for.
In that regard, what an incredible thing she's done.
- Creative desire. Create life and celebrate life
and contribute to the world.
It's part of, you know, being a woman.
It's part of being a human being, I think.
- After we do this interview,
I'm just gonna give you this tape, you know?
And you can have it and, uh, maybe, like, one day perhaps
there's an off-chance that your children might see it.
- Mm, mm, mm! Delicious baby.
- What would you, if anything, want them to know
or understand about you at this point in your life?
- That I--you know, I-- I don't have them yet,
but I... I'm thinking of them.
You know?
I really want them to have a good life.
Yeah, their mother starred in some movies and...
was on magazine covers and...
was admired by a few people,
but, uh,
none of that she considers as important as they will be.
- All right. - All right, say bye-bye.
- Bye-bye. - Bye-bye.
- All right, bye, camera. - Say bye-bye.
- Sophie, can you wave?
Can you wave bye-bye to the camera?
- Wave bye-bye. - Bye-bye.
[expressive piano music]
[bright tone]