I really liked this woman, even though I only knew of her for maybe a year (thanks to IFC).
The whole thing is so twisted:

November 7, 2006
Actress’s Death Is Ruled Murder, and Worker in Building Is Charged
By THOMAS J. LUECK
When Adrienne Shelly, an actress, was found dead in her Greenwich Village office last week, the police suspected suicide. Her body, with a sheet tied around her neck, was hanging from the shower curtain rod in the office bathroom.

But family members and friends were skeptical. Her show business career was thriving, they said, and she was a devoted mother to her 3-year-old daughter. They insisted that she would not have taken her own life.

And some investigators were skeptical, too. Yesterday, the police charged a 19-year-old construction worker with murder, saying her death was the horrific result of a chain of events set off by a complaint common to New York City residents: construction noise.

The police said that after Ms. Shelly argued with the worker about the noise on Wednesday, he struck her in the face.

Then, suspecting that the blow was fatal, he hanged her from the shower curtain rod in an attempt to make her death look like a suicide, investigators said.

“We have felt adamantly that what happened was not the result of suicide,” said Rachel Sheedy, Ms. Shelly’s agent, when informed of the arrest yesterday. “It is a great relief knowing that the police have taken us seriously.”

It was unclear whether Ms. Shelly died from the blow or from being hanged. Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, said an autopsy had been conducted but the manner and cause of death had not been determined.

The construction worker, Diego Pillco of Prospect Avenue in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, was charged yesterday with second-degree murder, the police said. A native of Ecuador who arrived in the city in July, Mr. Pillco had been working in a third-floor apartment directly beneath the one Ms. Shelly used as her office at 15 Abingdon Square, in Greenwich Village, the authorities said.

Ms. Shelly, 40, lived not far away on Varick Street with her husband, Andy Ostroy, and her daughter, Sophie. She used the Abingdon Square apartment as the base of a career that included leading or featured roles in two dozen Off Broadway plays as well as movies and television shows.

She first gained recognition for her film roles in Hal Hartley’s dark comedies “The Unbelievable Truth” and “Trust.” She was featured last year in the movie “Factotum,” starring Matt Dillon, and she had recently finished directing “Waitress,” which is under consideration for inclusion in the Sundance Film Festival.

Ms. Shelly, born Adrienne Levine, was a Queens native who started performing as a child in arts camps on Long Island and upstate. She dropped out of Boston University after her junior year and moved to Manhattan.

Several investigators said Mr. Pillco admitted to Ms. Shelly’s murder yesterday.

“He admits to hitting her, believes he had killed her and wanted to fake her suicide,” said one investigator, who asked not to be identified because the investigation was continuing.

Ms. Shelly’s body was found Wednesday by her husband. At the time, the police said, they found few signs of trauma or struggle.

“It appeared to be a suicide — he staged it as a suicide,” the investigator said. But he said investigators “never just accepted it for what it was staged to be.”

Detectives from the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village were particularly troubled by an unexplained footprint found in the bathroom. They examined the shoes of everyone who had entered the apartment, including police officers and emergency workers, but found no match for the print.

They canvassed the building, and found that renovation work was under way in some apartments. The detectives matched the footprint from Ms. Shelly’s bathroom to one they found at one of the work sites, and then used the match to track down Mr. Pillco, the authorities said.

Mr. Pillco was picked up Sunday night and taken to the Sixth Precinct station house, where he made his admissions early yesterday, investigators said. He was escorted from the station to a waiting police car last night wearing a Yankees cap low over his forehead, partly obscuring his face from photographers and television crews.

Neighbors at Mr. Pillco’s apartment building said he was hard-working and respectful. He lived in a basement apartment with his cousin and held a variety of odd jobs, they said.

“He sent money home to his mother and father,” said Frank Lingo, a neighbor. “He minded his business. He never bothered me or anyone else near here. He seemed like a good kid. I’ve never seen him hang out.”

Chris Pannhorse, another neighbor, said: “He was always respectful to me and my wife. He’s a good kid. Because that is what he is to me, just a kid.”

The arrest came after a memorial service for Ms. Shelly on Sunday that drew hundreds of mourners.

According to The New York Post, Mr. Ostroy spoke at the service, repeating his insistence that his wife would not have committed suicide.

“There’s no way on this planet that she would have left that child,” he said. “Nobody is ever going to tell me that woman walked away from Sophie.”

Reporting was contributed by Al Baker, Kate Hammer, Daryl Khan, Colin Moynihan, William K. Rashbaum and Emily Vasquez.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company


Her imdb page

I recognize her (it's all over the papers here), but not anything the articles say she was in. It's probably safe to assume that since she lived in NYC she was a frequent Law & Order guest.

How sad.

__________________
We are sorry, the mind you have reached is not a working mind.
Please hang up and die again.
Please hang up,
And die again.

shit!!!!!!!!!!

i was a big hal hartley fan for a while (he began to grate), i was in luv with her after trust and the unbelievable truth

definitely seen her before. she looked like rosanna arquette. that was such a fucked up thing, what happened to her.

This really upset me. I love her work.
Funny you mention Rosanna Arquette, Adrienne was in her documentary.

she was the evil lady in law and order right? i've never seen her in anything else.

this all sounds very suspicious!!

__________________
i think there may be something on my head.

Part 1 of an interview:

Suddenly Adrienne Shelly

by Tim Rhys


At the Seattle International Film Festival, 1996.

Adrienne Shelly is well aware that something about her makes you want to wrap her in a blanket, kiss her on the forehead and ask her if she wants some hot cocoa before you tuck her in.

Whether she's in movie star mode, looking every bit the blonde bombshell with all the trimmings -- big eyes, pouty lips, slightly submissive demeanor -- or adorned with nerdy glasses and civilian clothes, speaking confidently about her latest directorial effort in front of a thousand Seattle International Film Festival fans, the vulnerability factor is always there, and she's smart and honest enough to go with it. Although she's made her reputation as an actress, starring in Hal Hartley's Trust and The Unbelievable Truth as well as nine other independent films, including Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me and the soon-to-be-released Grind and Sleep with Me, her true passion has always been storytelling.

She has written and directed several plays, has served as the artistic director of the New York City theater company "Missing Children," and directed a 26-minute film called Urban Legend before writing and directing her first 35mm feature, Sudden Manhattan, an accomplished, quirky comedy produced by Marcia Kirkley's new company, Homegrown Pictures.

Like most interesting people, Shelly is a package of contradictions. She is at times painfully shy, at other times disarmingly outspoken; her speech is peppered with references to Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard and ... Mattingly; she's a Cancer who eschews domesticity; she's the ultimate insider's outsider, an artist who could take full advantage of a high-profile independent film career, but who chooses instead to blaze her own trail toward her own brand of fulfillment. She's been patient and methodical and, with the acting offers still coming in and the directorial career taking off, she's just about where she wants to be. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Adrienne at several restaurants, bookstores and coffeeshops both in Seattle and in New York's West Village, where she makes her home.

Tim Rhys (MM): So you decided not to go the Hollywood route. Can you talk about that? When you were first becoming well-known as an actress I imagine you were getting a lot of offers ... were you turning down a lot of work? Tell me how you kind of guided your career in the early stages.



In Chris Kentis/Laura Lau's Grind (1996).

Adrienne Shelly (AS): I don't think I guided my career so much as I reacted to what was happening. I went to Sundance with The Unbelievable Truth and I remember being surrounded by lots of agents and producers and I was really scared. I went back to New York and managers and agents were flying themselves out to see me, agencies were sending limousines to pick me up to have lunch with them. It felt a little like the emperor's new clothes, you know? It didn't feel real rooted in anything. I didn't like it. I don't know. I think what was really imporant to me was to stay in New York, continue writing, working in theater, confining myself to doing what I ultimately started to do, which was create my own work. The opportunity to go to Hollywood was certainly there, my agent was there, I'd been offered a lot of different television series, for example, which would have made me very wealthy, and kind of established me in a particular way. But I didn't want to be established in that way.


MM: What gave you the X-ray vision glasses that a lot of people don't have? How did you see through some of the--

AS: I don't know, I was just reacting honestly to some of the people I was meeting. It was a gut instinct that was saying "Don't put your hand on that stove, it's going to burn." I have a really sensitive bullshit detector. I think I just stayed where I was happiest, and I've been able to make a decent enough living. I've never been very wealthy, working in independent film, but I've been able to support myself doing what I've wanted to do. I've never needed anybody else to decide if I was successful or not. I've felt successful.

MM: Give me some of the requisite background stuff. Like where did you grow up...

AS: I was born in Queens, my family moved out to Long Island when I was about five, and I grew up there. My mother is still there.

MM: What kind of kid were you? Shy, outgoing, what?

AS: I was a shy kid, and very sensitive, and quiet. I was a nice kid, I guess, except to my older brother, who was not allowed to hit me, but I was allowed to hit him. He got the brunt of my aggression.

MM: Were you a loner as a child?

AS: No, I always had close friends. That's always kind of been my modus operandi in the world. In high school if you didn't know what was really going on you'd think I was terribly popular. I was at all the parties and I was sort of acquainted with all the popular people. But I only had three very close friends and they were my life, and my steady boyfriend, who knew everyone, and I never felt like I was really fitting in all that well. But I did a really good job of seeming like I did. I've never had many friends who were not extremely close to me.

Part 2:

In Joel Hershman's Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me (1992).
MM: Did you do any acting when you were a kid?

AS: Yeah. When I was really young, at a day camp. I was so shy that I really never spoke to anyone. My earliest memories were looking up at people's knees because I was so small. And then they were doing a production of Peter Pan and they couldn't find anyone who wanted to play Wendy. And I went up to the counselor and said I wanted to be Wendy. And they were shocked because they'd never heard me speak before. And the teacher said "We're sorry, you can't be Wendy because you're too small." I was really bummed because I really wanted to play Wendy. So they made me a lost child or something and thus it began. I always wanted the biggest part even though I was really quiet in real life.

MM: They say that's typical of actors. A lot of actors are very shy people who use the stage as a place to open up.

AS: Yeah, I guess so. Try out different aspects of their personality.

TR: Were your parents supportive of your desire to become an actress?

AS: They were supportive. They didn't take it very seriously. I was at a performing arts camp when I was about 10 and we put a show on, and there were agents in the audience who came up to my parents afterward and said your daughter is talented and she could have a career and my father barked at them and put his foot down and said no way. There's actually a line in the Sudden Manhattan that was my father's response to the agents. He said "I will not have my daughter jumping out a window when she's 30." That was his idea of what would happen to you. That's kinda my tribute to my father.

TR: Did you act in high school?

AS: I did. I had my first professional acting job. I played the oldest orphan in Annie in a summer stock production. But by that time I'd already started writing. As soon as I was old enough to realize I enjoyed making stories up I was doing that. I'm not sure which came first. When I was very young we used to put these shows on when we'd gather at one relative's house or another and I'd always choreograph them. I made the stories up and cast everybody. The most enjoyable thing, even when I'm acting, is storytelling. And then college, and I'd gotten into a couple of the acclaimed drama programs across the country, but my mother was paying for college and she didn't allow me to go. And I'm really glad she didn't. I wound up first starting as a journalism major at Boston University and then transferring to the broadcasting/film dept. And I'm really grateful that I had the education that I had.

TR: On the screen you project a certain amazing vulnerability that I think a lot of people are attracted to. In fact you alluded to it in your film, how people want to protect you and run to your rescue. Is that something that you do consciously in your work? Or maybe I should back up -- is that part of you naturally, and because it's part of you do you put that on the screen more readily, or is it more of a public persona...

AS: I think it's a true aspect of my personality. But I also think of myself as pretty strong and capable of withstanding a lot. But I think my way of dealing in the world is to be honest about my vulnerability, and not sort of hide it. I'm not an extremely hardened person.

TR: Not for living in New York all your life, especially--

AS-- No, and I think because I'm as small as I am size-wise, that people do have a feeling like they're supposed to take care of me.

MM: It's interesting to me because I've always heard that actors do better at playing a part that's opposite of who they really are.



In Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth (1990).

AS: I think often I get cast for who I am when people first meet me. I think I could play someone really monstrous, but because of how I look and my size I never get cast that way.

MM: So you've wanted to play the bad girl?

AS: Oh, sure. Actually I did play a bad girl once, in a film called Roadlflower, a Miramax film which went direct to video. I played this sort of bad girl in a bad gang who manipulates other people into killing. She's a different sort of femme fatale that she has no realization that she's so monstrous. She's kind of childlike. In that role I played up the girlishness, so it juxtaposes between something innocent and something evil. It was fun to play her that way. I get shot like 18 times at the end.

MM: How do you feel about getting into character in a role like that?

AS: It's my belief that everybody holds within them many different aspects of humanity.We all have a wide range of personalities within us. They're not difficult to tap into depending on the scenario you're facing.

MM: You seem to do it effortlessly and very honestly.

AS: It is effortlessly and it is a part of me.

MM: No long, agonizing nights thinking "Oh, god, I've gotta be in this character?"

AS: No, I don't do that. I don't write journals about a character's past. I work through details if necessary, but I don't do the preparation that a lot of actors do. I try to work moment to moment when I'm in front of a camera or on the stage; the given circumstances and basic understanding of who I am and who my character is, and I work off the other actors.

Part 3:

MM: Meisnerian style?

AS: Yes, I'm a Meisner-trained actress.

MM: Have you always been a writer?

AS: Yeah, that's what my family always thought I'd be.

MM: Are you more of an optimist or a pessimist? In the film (Sudden Manhattan) the gypsy says we all lead lives of terrible torture, misery and then death. How much of that is you talking? You told me you want to live forever, right, so obviously you're an optimist?

AS: Well, no, I want to. I won't. I'm as optimistic as someone who is mainly Russian in her geneology can be. I've got that sort of moody, dark underbelly, but I think there's also sort of an element of optimism that quietly helps me navigate through the jungle. I have both sides of that coin.

MM: I have to ask the Hal Hartley question. How did you hook up with him?

AS: When he was casting The Unbelievable Truth I'd sent my picture into another producer in his office who was casting music videos. Hal had received about 200 headshots through an ad in Backstage and someone in his office held up my picture and said "What about her?" So I was called in along with all these other people. I had to go back two or three times to read and then he gave me the part.

MM: So it was that serendipitous?

AS: It was. I was living in apartment with another actor and two strippers and the actor and I were really frustrated. One day we got Backstage and sent our pictures to every call that sort of applied to us. We did it just that one day and then three or four months later I got the call from Hal's office.

MM: That seems to happen to you a lot. You read the script for Sudden at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Marcia (Kirkley, former director of acquisitions at October Films) happened to be in the audience, and happened to be looking for a project for Homegrown Pictures. Good things happen to you.

AS: Sometimes they do.

MM: What was your working relationship with Hal? Did he allow you a lot of freedom, or was he pretty controlling?

AS: He knows what he wants and he's very strict about the script, about how he wants the performances to be. Nothing is an accident. He sticks to the script and to the characters in his head, how they speak and how they move. There really wasn't a lot of freedom. It was like "Turn to the left, wait three beats, turn back to the right, say your first line, scratch your head, wait three beats, burp." And the whole time he's saying "Less, less, less, I don't want to see anything on your face at all."

MM: That sounds pretty frustrating.

AS: Yes. Sometimes I wanted to kill him. And the other actors did, too. He tends to do that mostly with the lead actors; the supporting actors can have a little bit more fun. It was definitely a very controlled atmosphere. It taught me a lot, working that way. It taught me to have a real respect for the script. Hal is sort of the lead in every movie he makes. His voice is so strong and so singular and I think people really enjoy his films for that reason. There's something powerful about one person's vision, closely adhered to. Other people may react negatively to exactly the same thing, but my favorite work has always been by auteurs.

MM: Being that closely controlled by a director, did that make you want to direct more, so you'd have that auteur experience? Did that make you want to direct sooner? Did you feel you were stunted in your creative expression at all?

AS: No. After I worked with Hal I worked with a lot of people who didn't control me at all, and just said "Do whatever you want here. Do you like this line? Would you rather say another line? Is this the line you want to say?" I was really given free reign. Given a choice between the two, I prefer the former-- someone who really knows what they want and has a vision and a style.

MM: Do you feel like you were prepared enough as a director? Were you apprehensive at all about the technical process?

AS: I think I've been around enough, and I also directed the short film a year earlier. I felt okay about it. I wouldn't have done it if I felt totally neurotic, like what am I doing here, I don't belong here, they're all gonna figure it out. I try to stay away from those situations in life. There was no time for that kind of stress, really. We shot the film in 20 days; three weeks before we went into production my DP quit and she took a higher-paying job. So the business at hand was finding another DP, storyboarding, going into rehearsals, working with my production designer. And I got extremely ill, also. It was a really bad stomach virus -- I had to go to the hospital, be on IV, I was totally dehydrated. I was finally better about five days ahead of time. When you're working that hard and that fast and there's that much pressure on you, you don't have time for the self-doubt that maybe you walk around with in your normal life when you have plenty of free time for self-hatred.

MM: What was your involvement in the editing of Sudden Manhattan?

AS: I was never not there. I can't imagine giving your film to someone... I know there are people who do it and they're fine with it.

MM: So how do you spend your time when you're not busy on a project?

AS: I hang out with my friends. We read. We go to the theatre, we see movies, go to coffeeshops.

MM: You're just one of those snobby members of the literati.

AS: I am. I'm a big old snob. It's probably one of my biggest flaws. I'm a big old snob. I have a real snobby attitude. What's art, what's not art, mainstream cinema. I have opinions, dogmas.

MM: So, your social life is really boring.

AS: My social life is a mess. In Sudden Manhattan there's this theme that's sort of based on all of the strange relationships and situations I've been in with men throughout my 20s...

MM: They've all been impotent? (like Tim Guinee's character)

AS: I don't even know what that would be like. But these sort of situations where you've met someone, they're really charming, you really like them, and then you find out they live in a car. "You live in a car!?" Or, "You're actually an alcoholic, and I never knew?" These strange sort of scenarios where people's identities are hidden from you. That's been kind of a running theme throughout my 20s.

MM: Are you religious in any way?

AS: I'm an optimistic agnostic. I'd like to believe. I'm willing to listen to any sort of evidence. I hope there's a God, I sure hope there is. I hope we don't just die and that's it. But there's a part of me that really needs some sort of scientific. There remains in my work, in my writing, an element of spirituality. But there are other moments when I feel profoundly insignificant. And that actually is a feeling that kind of frees me. A kind of feeling that this is it. This is my life, so I'd better enjoy it and I'd better be responsible. My father died when I was very young, and he died suddenly, without ever having been sick. So I've gone through life with this feeling that life could end at any given moment. When I wrote Sudden Manhattan and a writer friend said to me "Look, Adrienne, it's your first feature. It might take seven years to get produced." And I thought that is not acceptable to me. Because in my way of thinking I might not live another seven years.

MM: It's an intelligent outlook. It's the truth.

AS: There's something Kierkegaard writes about, in a similar vein. Don't make plans for the future without adding the phrase "However, I might be dead in the next 10 minutes, in which case I shall not attend to it."

MM: Never buy green bananas.

AS: It's opposed to how modern culture would have you think about life.

MM: This is a young, immortal society we're living in. We act like we're going to be around forever.

AS: Everything is so darned pleasant.

MM: And you being Russian, pain is important.

AS: Well, I just think people can enjoy life with the acknowledgement of the entire human experience, pain included. An acknowledgement of death, too. Otherwise it's kind of prozac. We can't live in a society that has us forget pain and suffering so that when it does happen, which it inevitably does, we're not prepared for it and don't face it with dignity or grace. We're also very closed off to the suffering in the rest of the world.

MM: But you have to have small talk.

AS: Whatever I small talk about is actually extremely important to me. Like baseball, which is a complete representation of my life, actually. I just feel better when the Yankees are winning. I'm no fair weather fan. I'm always a Yankee fan. When they suck, when they're great, when Steinbrenner is a bastard, I love 'em. You might be disappointed in them but you still love them. I cried when Reggie Jackson was traded. I wrote letters. And when Don Mattingly left the Yankees this year I was utterly heartbroken. I had framed pictures of him in my kitchen. He's the only person in the world who renders me completely starstruck. I saw him on the street once my knees became weak and I started sweating. And I've met everybody. Martin Scorsese came up to me at a party a couple of weeks ago and told me he was a fan of mine, and I thought that's great. But Don Mattingly nearly bowled me over just by being within 50 feet of me.

MM: That's because you can be a Martin Scorsese, but you can never be a first baseman like Don Mattingly.

AS: Oh, I don't know. I don't think I could ever be like Martin Scorsese. My father instilled a real love of baseball in me. I used to go to baseball games with him and my brother all the time. And when they'd lose my father would get so angry and he'd say Finito! Finito for the Yankees! In 1978 the Yankees were in last place, they were doing terribly. And my father died that August. And right after he died they made this amazing comeback. I felt like Dad had a hand in it. MM

I recommend Trust for starters. I believe it is only available on vhs currently, but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

had a crush on him too once

I don't recognise her and haven't seen anything she's been in, but that is sad.

she was so strangely gorgeous and appealing. Trust plays all the time on ifc. Martin donavan was pretty hot in it. Psychos are always hot (in movies, not in real life). Such a shame.

January 19, 2007
Sundance Dream Most Notable for an Absence
By DAVID CARR
PARK CITY, Utah

MICHAEL ROIFF could be forgiven for seeming a little discombobulated on Tuesday night. A first-time producer with “Waitress,” one of the higher-profile movies at the Sundance Film Festival here, he had just arrived and was knocking around a rented condominium, trying to figure out where everything was and how to get a flat-screen television to behave for another look at the film.

But something more profound had him at loose ends. Adrienne Shelly, the writer, director and one of the stars of the film, was not there, and she was not coming.

Ms. Shelly was murdered on Nov. 1 in her Greenwich Village office. Although it was initially thought that her death was a suicide because she was found hanging from a shower rod, a construction worker has been charged with murder, accused of staging the scene after an altercation with Ms. Shelly.

Mr. Roiff, who worked with Ms. Shelly for two years on “Waitress” and was continuing to work with her on other projects, talked to her the night before her death.

“We talked about what we always talked about, which was the movie, Sundance and whether it would get in,” he said, idly tapping the remote control.

And it did, although Ms. Shelly, 40, did not know that before she was killed — the selections had already been made, but notifications had not been sent out. She leaves behind a husband, Andrew Ostroy, and a 3-year-old daughter, Sophie, along with a film that offers a tender-hearted rumination on a woman who is trying to find her place as she faces impending motherhood and the constant threat of violence from her brutish husband. The movie evinces sunniness amid all sorts of gloom, a prism on life that should come in handy in the next few days, as friends and family members fly in for its premiere on Sunday.

“She likes to juxtapose comedy and tragedy, in part because real life doesn’t get compartmentalized,” Mr. Roiff said, letting the allusion to the present circumstance speak for itself. He apologized for still referring to Ms. Shelly in the present tense, but said it was all still very raw.

“It is unbelievable to me that I am in Park City, and she is not,” he said. “She so much wanted this film to get in here, to be seen, and that’s why all of us knew that there was no way that she committed suicide. This movie is a huge turning point in her career.”

All films arrive at Sundance with a back story, but none have the poignancy of “Waitress.” At a festival where films frantically vie for attention in a crush that lasts 11 days and is dappled with parties and events, “Waitress” hits a very different note.

“It is bizarre coming there under these circumstances,” said Keri Russell, the star of the movie, who is best known for her role as television’s “Felicity” and for playing the love interest of Tom Cruise’s character in “Mission: Impossible III.” “Sundance is a raging, nonstop party, a huge celebration, and you feel so lucky to be there. This will be very different for all of us, but I have huge affection for her family, and I think all of us believe that this movie deserves every bit of attention it can get.”

Even for someone who did not know Ms. Shelly, watching the movie might prove to be a bittersweet experience. What seems like a joke-filled riff on expressing yourself through domestic arts — Ms. Russell’s character, a waitress named Jenna, has a penchant for baking and advances pies as plot points, including “Kick in the Pants Pie” and “Pregnant Self-Pitying Loser Pie” — takes on dramatic weight and portent as the movie proceeds. Written by Ms. Shelly when she was in the end stage of her pregnancy, it is a frank examination of the fears of impending motherhood, particularly when it occurs within the confines of a disastrous marriage.

What could have been another indie confection takes on additional heft by virtue of a strong cast — including Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto, Cheryl Hines and, of course, Ms. Shelly herself, who stepped aside as the lead and cast Ms. Russell instead.

Ms. Shelly plays Dawn, one of three waitresses working at a pie shop. Ms. Shelly recently appeared in “Factotum,” the Charles Bukowski-inspired film starring Matt Dillon, and came to prominence as a muse for Hal Hartley, whose films “Trust” and “The Unbelievable Truth” were Sundance hits.

Mr. Hartley, who will be here Monday for the showing of his latest film, “Fay Grim,” said Ms. Shelly had a rather complicated relationship with the profession of acting.

“She had a funny attitude about her ambitions to be an actress — she was skeptical of her own motives — and I think that came through in her work, to good effect,” he said. Mr. Hartley, who will be attending a Monday pie-eating contest here on behalf of the film, said Ms. Shelly had no such conflicts about her work as a writer and director.

“She had so many different things going, I had trouble keeping track,” he said. “She knew completely what she wanted, and I think her confidence was growing with each film that she made.”

Her work as an actress in her own movie is less affecting than the sensibility that drives the film. A tragicomic mash-up with a high/low music score, it ends in a very significant hug, one that in light of subsequent events could be easily mined for allegorical meaning.

Her friends and collaborators, who were initially trying to diagram how somebody who was in full stride as a mother and filmmaker could commit suicide, at least found a place to put her death, once it was revealed to be a murder. Ms. Shelly was in the midst of writing other projects in her office and argued about construction noise with Diego Pillco, a 19-year-old immigrant from Ecuador. Notes made by investigators who interviewed him say he admitted that he punched her, then pushed her, causing her to hit her head on a table. There were reports that Mr. Pillco was worried that he would be deported and staged the suicide; he was questioned after police found a footprint that did not belong to Ms. Shelly.

“Hearing the news was one of the strangest feelings I have encountered,” Mr. Roiff said of the arrest. “A huge burden was lifted by this horrible news, because it was so much better than the horrible news that came before it.”

Because Ms. Shelly had such a clear idea of what she wanted and was not shy about making it happen — Mr. Roiff, Ms. Russell and Mr. Hartley all spoke of her single-mindedness — her absence here as the film makes the rounds is all the more acute. The other people involved in the film, which had a budget in the low millions, retain significant commercial hopes for it. Mr. Roiff said he believed that “Waitress” had a bright future on its own merits, something that people used to say about its director as well.

Ms. Shelly had strong feelings about the objectification of women on camera and had a belief that she and other women belonged behind the camera as well. With that in mind, her husband has created a foundation in her name that will provide money to women interested in making the transition from acting to directing, a path that currently seems far more open to men.

“Waitress” could be seen as something of a curio here, the movie by that director, a possibility that her friends and colleagues cannot abide.

The premiere, Mr. Hartley said gravely, “is a chance to get on with it.”

“It is gratifying that a friend’s work is being shown and getting attention,” he added. “The movie deserves it.”

Whatever the motivation, a crowd will gather, one that is predisposed to dwell on the film’s message of redemption and hope, as opposed to the calamity of last November. In the production notes, the only place that the director is now able to speak in support of her film, she sounds as if she saw that coming.

“I feel like there are a hundred people around me all the time,” she writes, “all rooting for this thing to go well.”