Can Movies Truly Mimic Real Life?

06.01.2010

One of my all-time favorite movies ever is Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough. The writing is fantastic and so is the acting. It stars Kerri Russell (from Felicity), Cindy Hines, Shelly herself, Jeremy Sisto (most notably from Six Feet Under) and Andy Griffith is featured in the movie as well.

Rob took me to see this movie when it came out in the theatres (2007) and later told me the story behind the movie that made me fall in love with it all the more. The movie is about a woman who is in a dead marriage who finds out she’s pregnant. Despite not wanting the child, she keeps it and the movie is about her journey during the pregnancy. Every scene about the baby I can identify with; the fears, concerns, wishes, etc.

The story behind the movie is that Adrienne Shelly, who wrote, directed and acted in the movie, never got to see its release because she was murdered in her apartment office in New York. The murder was initially staged to look like a suicide but soon the cops pieced together what happened. An (illegal) immigrant, working on some construction in the building, broke into her office and tried to steal some money from her when she caught him. He panicked, killed her, staged a suicide and fled; he was eventually caught.

The most heartfelt and bittersweet part of the movie is that it was written as a love letter to Shelly’s own daughter who was only 3 years old (I think) when Shelly was killed and who is actually featured right at the end of the movie as Russell’s daughter.

I desperately latch on to (good) movies that are written and directed by women because there are so few women in Hollywood who are able to carve out a niche for themselves in that male-dominated world. And not just carve out a niche but successfully have a husband and child/ren too.

What’s difficult for me though, is at what point does a movie like Waitress separate itself from real-life? The issues and concerns that Shelly brings up in the movie are so identifiable for me.

I find that it would be ironic that I would choose to feel the joy that Russell’s character feels at the end of the movie because of a movie. And I say this mainly because it is I who continuously lambastes Hollywood for selling unobtainable images and dreams to hundreds of thousands of women. I’m not saying that any decision of mine has tipped in any one direction, but it would be an interesting way for a woman whom I never met to communicate to me about something I’m so scared and unsure.

Which again begs the question, Where does a movie stop and real life begin?

P.S. Shelly is one of Russell's co-workers; she is the one with the glasses, in case you don't know who she is.