Pie Love You

Waitress (2007) directed by Adrienne Shelly

I find myself thinking about pie. People get cake on special occasions, but people live with pie. I guess that’s why we can imagine stories where pie-makers bring people back to life and solve mysteries. It doesn’t take much of a leap of imagination to go from pie to magic. Cake is fine, but pie is divine. Pie is full of possibility.
I’m sure that pie, like baseball, doesn’t guarantee a film’s quality, but I’ll be damned if Waitress isn’t a fine film, and the pie doesn’t hurt the case.
Sometimes a film means enough to you that it becomes a litmus test for a relationship of any kind. You might like a person well enough but if they don’t like Serenity, then they’re out the door. On the other hand, maybe you get kicked out the door because someone else feels the same way about Miss Congeniality 2. Everybody’s got something. A while back I was in a conversation with someone and when I mentioned Waitress as one my recent favorites they wholeheartily agreed and proceeded to mention how awesome Ryan Reynolds is and while I have enjoyed Ryan Reynolds ever since Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place, I realized that this person was a huge fan of Waiting and had never seen Waitress. Game over. For the record, Nathan Fillion, who is in Waitress, was also on Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place with the aforementioned Ryan Reynolds, who is in Waiting. Do we have that straight now? Waitress is a great film, Waiting is (presumably) a moderately amusing movie made (one would hope) better thanks to the charm of Ryan Reynolds.
So what is it about Waitress that makes it so great? Let’s take a look at the ingredients.
1 part Nathan Fillion doing that Nathan Fillion thing.
(Jenna: You’re doing it again.
Dr. Pomatter: What?
Jenna: I don’t know, that nice guy talky thing.
Exactly.)
He was so good as an OB/GYN in this film that the highly ingenious casting directors who supply cannon fodder for Desperate Housewives put their hands into their unimagination barrel and cast him as…an OB/GYN. (Kudos, though, for casting Nathan Fillion as Dana Delany’s husband. Really. And the Halloween Frankenstein delivering a baby scene? Brilliant.)
Fillion’s delivery here is nothing short of brilliant. He has some of the best reactions ever.
Consider the scene at the bus stop where he describes where he lives. Nobody else could deliver this line like Fillion: “Yeah, it’s nice if you like trees…and who doesn’t like trees?” It’s classic Fillion and that would make even a bad movie fun and here it makes a good film great.
2 parts Adrienne Shelly. Insofar as you can angry about a stranger’s death watching Waitress makes me angry that Adrienne Shelly was murdered just before Waitress was released. Waitress is a sweet wonderful film and if every thing she wrote or directed after that had been a low budget Godzilla film her reputation would have been secure. As it stands, this is her directorial legacy and it is a fine one. There are other “great” directors whose entire body of work cannot match this film.
The second part of Adrienne Shelly is her absolutely hilarious performance as Dawn. Shelly navigates between sweet innocent realism and a more deadpan humorous delivery that make the style of the film hard to pin down.
1 part Eddie Jemison as Ogie. He creates spontaneous poetry that for all its silliness can be really profound. (“Could I hold you a minute and it turns into forever?”) His role could easily have been a real annoying stalker, but in a way you can understand that he and Dawn belong together, that it makes sense for them to get together.
1 part Cheryl Hines. She has some of the best lines and really brings a crusty charm to the diner. Who else could say “Dawn! You’re beautiful! Your skin looks like a normal person’s.” and not have it come off as intentionally mean. And, of course, the continual insistence of her character that her boobs are uneven is a hilarious touch.
1 part Jeremy Sisto as an asshole. Surprise, surprise, Jeremy Sisto is playing an asshole. (Thanks to Law & Order, I finally know what it looks like when Jeremy Sisto is likable. I understand Sisto played Jesus in a movie and I have always imagined that Jesus comes off as a bit of an asshole in that movie. Just an educated guess.) But uniquely in a film like this his character actually has some depth. His somewhat abusive husband character would normally be written as a brute ogre. Instead, here we see his needy core. We even get an explanation from Jenna about how he changed when they got married. Finally, an explanation of why the nice sympathetic girl ended up with an asshole. He was at some point a needy guy (with really good hair, woo-hoo) no doubt with borderline assholish tendencies (of the kind that girls seem to love) who stepped over the border after marriage into a controlling needy abusive asshole. But one who does still have a line. He does take a couple of swipes at Jenna, but he’s no Stanley Kowalski and in the scene in the bed where he’s begging for sex, I’ll admit that the first time through I held my breath for the inevitable rape scene to occur, but it didn’t. Because Earl may be an asshole, but he’s not that much of an asshole. He may call his pregnant wife “Porky” but somewhere in there he does love her, just not as much as he loves himself. This is one of the things that makes this film, despite its broad stylized elements ultimately more realistic than any romantic comedy or romantic tragedy, for that matter.
3 parts Andy Griffith. Why 3 parts? Because he’s just that awesome. Andy Griffith will always be justly famous for other reasons (Mayberry, Matlock, what have you), his role in A Face in the Crowd long ago proved he was a serious actor, but his legacy will be enshrined in his role as Joe. He steals this film from everyone and considering how awesome everyone else is in this film, that’s saying something. But then again, he’s Andy Griffith. You should already expect the level of awesomeness. And the writing doesn’t hurt either. Joe gets some zingers like the monologue about almost marrying a girl named Annette who he knocked up back in 1948. Joe is also the philosophical core of the film. “Pie Lady, listen to me! This life’ll kill you. I’m saying make the right choice. Start fresh. It’s never too late. Start fresh.” And if you don’t well up even a little or feel a tightening in the chest or something when he says “I was just dreaming a little for you, ‘cause all my dreams is gone,” then you are actually a wretched human being. Maybe you’ll start watching this film for some other reason, but Andy Griffith will put the finishing touch on making you glad you did.
1 part Cal (Lew Temple). Cal shouldn’t be an important role. A bad writer wouldn’t have bothered to do anything with it. A different director would have perhaps done something stupid like saying that giving this character even a couple of moments would be too distracting for the mindless drones expected to pony up the dough to see this film. But the fact that he gets to be another well-rounded character, that shows a depth of story-telling that we don’t get to see in the drivel that normally floats to the surface. Jenna asks Cal if he’s happy and he says “Well, if you’re asking me a serious question, I’ll tell you. I’m happy enough. I don’t expect much, 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. Why do you ask?”
That’s one you can spend your whole life chewing on. That’s a powerful thought packed in a cute package. That’s the power of pie.
1 part Keri Russell. Sure, she will always be Felicity to me, but if I needed to know what she was really capable of, this film proved it. Keri Russell is an outstanding actress. There, I’ve said it. We can stop talking about whether her haircut ruined a tv show for us.
2 parts art direction and cinematography. (Jason Baldwin & Matthew Irving respectively.) This is quite simply a visually beautiful film. The colors alone are worth the price of admission. Sure, some of those pies look like they’re made with ingredients that don’t occur in nature, but those colors are so beautiful that it’s like seeing a big box of crayons for the first time. Overwhelming.
And then there’s the pie. So much pie. As the weather here cools off, I intend to embark on the project of making each of the 24 varieties of pie (and maybe some others) that appear in the film. You can follow the process here: http://houstongastros.blogspot.com/
I suppose there might be some reasonable people who don’t like pie and there might be some folks who will like Waiting better than Waitress but as for me, I like pie…I love pie and Waitress is a film I find myself coming back to again and again and thinking about.
You might want to think about it, too. I’ll save a slice of pie for you and we can discuss it later.

Special Features
Commentary with producer Michael Roiff & Keri Russell
For obvious reasons Adrienne Shelly couldn’t do the commentary so the producer and star had to fill in. Here are some things you learn:
Nathan Fillion’s character was named for a contraction of Posada, Mattingly and Jeter, because Adrienne Shelly was a serious Yankees fan.
“Broke is temporary.” “Being poor is having no options.” That’s something for us all to think about.
And for you aspiring filmmakers, chew on this thought: only one scene didn’t make it into the movie.

This is How We Made Waitress Pie
This is a generally enjoyable little featurette that gives you a few more insights (including from Adrienne Shelly) into the philosophy of the film.
“It’s just about people”
“We all deserve our life to be what we want it to be.”
And you get more gems like this--Nathan Fillion: My ingredient was cinnamon.

Written & Directed by Adrienne Shelly: A memorial
Another short about the bittersweet personal nature of this film for those who made it.
It’s hard to think about the film’s ending (which features Adrienne Shelly’s real daughter as Lulu) without thinking about the real life tragedy behind it. It really makes the ending of the film more bittersweet than it might otherwise have been.

Hi! I’m Keri, I’ll be your waitress.
Alternate title: Keri Russell: More than the sum of her hair.

The Pies Have It
A short bit about the pies. Really deserved a whole second disc full length feature.
Adrienne Shelly: I have never met a pie that I didn’t like.
Sisto says he likes cobbler. I’m beginning to like this Sisto.

Fox Movie Channel – In Character segments
These things remind me of the kind of little things you see in airport waiting areas and in between programs in the in-flight entertainment.
So we have In Character with Keri Russell, Cheryl Hines, Nathan Fillion. Pretty much just little promos. Nothing really exciting and there’s no baking there.

A message from Keri Russell about the Adrienne Shelly Foundation
I sincerely hope there is one day another filmmaker as good as Adrienne Shelly, so I wish this foundation well in its support of women filmmakers. For more information see the Adrienne Shelly Foundation website.