Smooth Talk (1985)
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Where to Watch
Source: JustWatch
Physical Media
As a child, she played an extra in a Martin Scorsese film and had to eat an ice cream cone on camera. It took 19 takes. Scorsese told her mother that if she could eat that much ice cream without throwing up, she was destined to be an actress.
Her mother was Diane Ladd, her father Bruce Dern. She grew up on sets, still mostly known as their daughter. Then, in her teens, Laura Dern carried a small film that went largely unnoticed, but has since become a minor classic.
SMOOTH TALK (1985) follows a fifteen-year-old named Connie through the last summer of her childhood. Dern plays her drifting between home and the mall, testing the edges of a grown-up world she does not understand. For most of its length it looks like a gentle coming-of-age film.
Then a man comes up the driveway. Arnold Friend, older, all smiling charm, played with slippery menace by Treat Williams. He stands outside while she is home alone and simply talks, toying with her, a predator coiling to pounce on her innocence. The Joyce Carol Oates story the film was based on was drawn from a true magazine account of a man who preyed on teenage girls.
Smooth Talk was the debut feature of documentary filmmaker Joyce Chopra. It won Sundance's top prize, then all but vanished, grossing under twenty thousand dollars. Chopra was hired to make Bright Lights, Big City, one of the first women trusted with a picture that size. Producer Sydney Pollack quickly fired her over creative differences and replaced her with a studio veteran.
The trades ran her name in every headline as the woman who got fired. In her writings, Chopra noted that the press turned her into a cautionary tale for other female directors trying to enter mainstream studio filmmaking.
She has since spent decades in television, and only lately, with a memoir and a Criterion disc, has the world opened its eyes to what Joyce Chopra made here.
About the Film
- Directed By
- Joyce Chopra
- Runtime
- 92 minutes
- Released
- November 17, 1985
- Certification
- PG-13
- Country
- United States of America, United Kingdom
- Starring
- Laura Dern, Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place, Levon Helm, Elizabeth Berridge
More Credits
- Genres
- Drama, Romance, Thriller
- Language
- English
- Origin
- US
- Studios
- Palmyra Films, American Playhouse, Goldcrest Films International, Nepenthe Productions
- Written By
- Tom Cole, Joyce Carol Oates
- Produced By
- Lindsay Law, Martin Rosen
- Cinematography
- James Glennon
- Music
- Bill Payne, Russ Kunkel, George Massenburg
- Also Starring
- Margaret Welsh, Sara Inglis, William Ragsdale, Geoff Hoyle, David Berridge
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I think Laura Dern later got emancipation from her parents so she could be in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains! There’s a bunch of female punk rock band movie themed features on Criterion right now.
I’ve read this Joyce Carrol Oates story and loved it and the images Oates conjures up within the tale but, never watched this film adaptation, so I can only recommend the Oates version.
Dan Leonard I’ve read the story and seen the film and I very much recommend both.
Don’t forget Happy Mothers Day, Chopra’s first (IIRC) film made with Ricky Leacock.
Jeff Kreines Oh, I haven’t seen that. You’re referring to the 1963 short?
Yes. It’s on YouTube but cut into pieces.
One of my Hollywood crushes when I was a teenager back in the 80s. I thought she was gorgeous, and still do, and then her face would transform every time she cried, and she cried a lot in the movies. I guess they call it ugly crying now and I’ve never seen anyone else top her at bawling on queue.
David Alan Goldberg I don’t know, Claire Danes’ crying face is pretty high up there lol
Erin Hansen … Not even close. Laura Dern is the OG.
“Arnold Friend” in script on the car.
Good movie they both played the parts well
Very well done movie
Big fan of her father, Bruce. Got to be an extra in Black Sunday.
I think of this film ALL the time. delighted that it has a Criterion disk now.
What scorcese film
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
The short story this film was based on was my introduction to Joyce Carol Oates. I read it in my high school literature textbook. I cannot imagine it would be a part of any hs curriculum now.
I remember watching this! I was way too young (elementary school) but I knew it was a good movie.
I watched this when I was 14, pretty freaky. Didn’t really understand it til I was older.
Every feminist’s nightmare is a charming man who slithers his way into a young girl’s affection. It’s also her fantasy. It must have driven Oates crazy to see that no one would or could resist Treat Williams.
I was one of the girls at that time that paid to see it.