Helen Childress

Young scripwriter, whose debut, Ben Stiller's "Reality Bites" (1994), ostensibly summarized her generation. The film featured the fetching Winona Ryder and the dour Ethan Hawke and boasted plenty of zingers, yearnings, media watches and emotional pulse-taking. Going in and out of self-consciousness, "Reality Bites" was Childress' "cri de coeur" and had many film critics in their mid-40s dizzy with the need to differentiate their generation from hers.