Rebecca Schaeffer's memory is embedded in writer-director Brad Silberling's semi-autobiographical movie Moonlight Mile.

Schaeffer was a beautiful 21-year-old promising actress on July 18, 1989, the day she was to audition for Francis Ford Coppola for a role in The Godfather: Part III.

That same day, a criminally insane stalker shot her at close range, only 20 minutes after she had signed an autograph for the man.

She screamed: "Why?" and collapsed to the sidewalk in front of her Hollywood apartment and quickly died.

To avoid a possible death penalty, the killer, a paranoid schizophrenic named Robert Bardo, plea-bargained with then assistant district attorney Maria Clark (later infamous for her mishandling of the O.J. Simpson murder case) for a life sentence. Schaeffer's boyfriend at the time was Brad Silberling.

"There were almost shocking gifts that came out of what was the most impossible situation that I would ever confront, God willing," Silberling says now.

After the murder, Silberling found himself inextricably bound up in the lives of Schaeffer's parents, and the three of them helped each other understand the nature of tragedy and loss.

Through that experience, Silberling says, he learned "that I could feel the hope of my heart opening up and finding new people to love." He is now married to actress Amy Brenneman. They have an 18-month-old daughter Charlotte.

Moonlight Mile contains elements of his real experience, especially with Rebecca Schaeffer's parents. But no one should take it literally as the story of his relationship with the Schaeffers, Silberling says.

So the facts have been fictionalized, he says. "But the behaviour and the emotional context was all very much what I experienced."


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