Smooth Talk Book Comparison

“Where are you going, where have you been?”written by Joyce Carol Oates takes place during the sixties in a suburban area a few miles out of town. The plot of the story follows a fifteen-year old girl named Connie who is distant and hateful towards her family. The next day, after her and her friends sneak out to a restaurant where older kids hangout, a man pulls up to her house and vigorously coerces her to go with him. This short story is important to read because an anecdote of typical teenage behavior. This story is included in several anthologies because it is relatable to a wide variety of readers. It could be considered a classic because it presents a main character who tends to not listen to her parent which then becomes her tragic

It was made in 1985 and was directed by Joyce Chopra and features Laura Dern and Treat Williams as the two lead roles. There were several similarities shared by both the movie and the text. One similarity is the character of Arnold Friend. In both forms of the story, he is introduced at the restaurant that Connie sneaks over to as a man who wags his finger at her. When he arrives at her house, he and his car are both dressed just as described in the book. As the scene continues in the movie, the conversation between Connie and Arnold follows the book with great detail. It is extremely important that these aspects were not changed at all because he serves a major role in the story. Treat Williams does a great job at representing this character by portraying that same determination and charm to get Connie to go with

One of these differences in the film was Connie’s relationship with her family. In the story, Connie’s mother was critical of Connie on multiple occasions, but really was not that bad. In the movie however, the mother was very harsh on Connie , so much that at one part in the movie the mother actually slaps connie across her face. Another condition of Connie and her mother’s relationship is her mother’s favoring of June. In both the book and the story, the mother very obviously likes June better, but this is exaggerated in the film. For instance, at one point in Smooth Talk, the mother says “ June would never do that, she is perfect”. Her father is only briefly mentioned in the story a couple of times, being described as “always being at work, coming home to eat supper, and then just going to bed (Oates). Yet in the movie, he is in several scenes often conversing with Connie usually giving her some support against her mother. By making him much more active in the movie, there is an element of isolation or loneliness that is taken away in Connie’s character. Finally, her relationship with June is also different. Throughout the book her and June are distant and don’t really get along. While these same traits are presented in the movie, they are once again exaggerated. This big group of differences makes the film worse than “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” because it