After making the independent film Clockwatchers--an excellent anxious comedy that received a lot of glowing press in 1997, when its wage-slave observations were especially au courant--writer/director Jill Sprecher's life didn't change all that much. After a few months of meetings, she was back to the temp work that had inspired her movie. Sprecher relates all this in a flat Chicago accent, absolutely free from any tinge of complaint. (Unlike those who labor under media-driven delusions about success and entitlement, Sprecher doesn't gripe--she understands that a life in art is all about struggle.) She and her sister/writing partner channeled the struggle into writing and preparing the film that eventually would become 13 Conversations About One Thing. The connection becomes clear in the final scene, which resolves a film full of fate, faith, and circumstantial downers with the tiniest human interaction: a smile.

"That last scene is really based on a real change for me," Sprecher explained, "when I went through what I call my year of bad luck. I was mugged twice; the second time I had brain surgery. And then some guy walked by me in the subway and slapped me on the head--not hard, I mean, it didn't hurt, but it was kind of like, well, wait a minute! Like, 'Why me?' And I just started crying. And that's when I looked, and happened to see a guy who had seen it, and he gave me the nicest smile, and you know: evidence to the contrary, right there in front of me. We always wanted that to be an ending for the movie, and yet it's so small, and so mundane, and it's not the ending of a Hollywood movie. We were never sure it would work. I always worried. And plus, Alan Arkin and Amy Irving are the most subtle of actors. We start with something very tiny to begin with on the page, and then it's even tinier with these two actors. And I kept thinking, wait, it should be a bigger smile or bigger wave. But the actors disagreed. And they were right."