Transforming the spare Joyce Carol Oates short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” into a rich coming of age drama with a dark center, Chopra collaborated with her screenwriting husband Tom Cole to tenderly craft and perfectly cast her feature debut. The heart of Smooth Talk is the complexity of Laura Dern’s performance as Connie, who is awakening to her sexual desires and those she elicits in men. Navigating the different tensions of both her fraught home life and various suburban teenage hangouts, she simultaneously radiates naiveté, sensitivity and a rebellious wildness. The latter draws the attentions of a handsome but unsettling stranger—played with controlled menace by Treat Williams. His disturbing pursuit culminates in an agonizing showdown with Connie, who faces a stark ending to her adolescence. In her first starring role, Dern immediately caught Hollywood’s eye, and even Joyce Carol Oates conceded, “Laura Dern is so dazzlingly right as ‘my’ Connie that I may come to think that I modeled the fictitious girl on her…”