January 25, 2016

Smooth Talk

 A MOVIE BASED ON A STORY  BY  JOYCE CAROL OATES

As part of getting to know about our keynote author, JOYCE CAROL OATES who is featured at the San Miguel Writer’s Conference, the Big Read is showing a movie SMOOTH TALK.

This is the 1985 movie based on her most famous story “Where are you Going? Where have you Been?”  To read this story for free please go to:
https://www.d.umn.edu/~csigler/PDF%20files/oates_going.pdf

The movie won the Sundance Festival award for Best Dramatic American film. It stars Laura Dern and Treat Williams with music by James Taylor. Ebert has called it a “provocative gem.”

Although the movie is shocking, it is not sensational in the way it might have been-if it had been handled as a horror story, say, instead of as a morality play.

The story is about a young girl (Laura Dern) who is surrounded by sexuality, who is curious about it, who flirts dangerously in the wrong places, and who not only learns her lesson, but grows up all at once, into a different person than she was.

The movie is almost uncanny in its self assurance. SMOOTH TALK [is] the story of the process of life instead of a sad episode.

This beautifully acted movie will also help to illustrate the short story form that we will be exploring in the book groups and our next program of the Big Read on February 3. First we’ll see the slow and detailed rising action building towards a crisis point or turning point and the (usually) shorter falling action  towards a resolution.