Bad Lit passes on the news that Diego Pillco, the construction worker who admitted to killing actress and Waitress writer/director Adrienne Shelly, has been sentenced to 25 years behind bars for the crime.

I still get sick to my stomache when I think about this story. I wrote a story for FILMMAKER Magazine last year about the Waitress team’s push to both capitalize on and redirect attention away from the murder when selling the film, first at Sundance and then to the mainstream art house audience. Waitress may not be the highest work of art, but it’s undoubtedly a personal, writer/director driven film, and I was particularly interested in the idea that the actors and producers who survived Shelly were tasked with uneviable responsibility of protecting her vision in her absence.

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