Search The Archive
After being fired from TV's Spin City for not making the best of a part that required her to lead a live tiger onto the set dressed in a bustier, skimpy hot pants and spike heels, Adrienne Shelly sat down and wrote the screenplay that became I'll Take You There. Her film is a completely original and sustained riff on the comic possibilities of life's disappointments. Word games, armed robbery, tuba solos and a vintage pistol figure in this quirky and endearing stew. Shelly's contemporary screwball comedy follows the disintegrating life of the inconsolable Bill (Reg Rogers: Friends, Wim Wenders" End ot Violence and / Shot Andy Warhol, MIFF 1996). In classic form, his beloved wife left him for his best friend but only informed him of her departure by phone. Bill's fugue of depression is interrupted by Bernice (Ally Sheedy: The Breakfast Club, St. Elmos' Fire and Sugar Town. MIFF 1999) an unstoppable lunatic force of fast lane amour fou. 'Kind of' kidnapped Bill gets a fresh perspective during a series of nightmarish but hysterical episodes on a road trip to Bernice's Grandma's house. Gunplay, batty relations, outlandish frocks and pivotal revelations set Bill on a new course in life.