By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Awaiting Waitress: a friend recollects
Read it and weep: Reid Rosefelt recalls the late Adrienne Shelley, whose Sundance triumph, Waitress, also sold for big money to Fox Searchlight. “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…” Shelley acted in Rosefelt’s short, Tiger: His Fall & Rise, which he concedes, “The problem with Tiger wasn’t that it was silly; the problem with Tiger was that it was awful.” But there is this reward: “[T]he 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… [T]he 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.” [The rest, at the link, is a must-read.]