Screenwriting 101: Callie Khouri

“It wasn’t meant to be a literal ending [Thelma & Louise], you know what I mean? It was them kind of flying off into the mass unconscious. We purposely did not show the smoke coming up from the bottom of the canyon or the car tumbling down the side of the canyon. It was like a flying away. If you think about it, what would have happened if they got to Mexico? They’d be these two women in Mexico, like that’s getting away? What they were trying to get away from, you don’t get away from in this world. You don’t still inhabit this world and get away from what they were trying to escape. There wouldn’t be any of that, they never would have gotten away. Louise would have still been living in her own private nightmare, and it just wouldn’t make any sense. To me it wasn’t realistic that they would end up working in a Club Med, or that would even be possible or desirable. I guess if you had to just say what it is, if you had to put a name to it, it got to a point where they were too big for this world. They weren’t ever going to be able to push themselves back down to what was an acceptable form of life for both of them. They were never going to be able to get themselves back. That was the whole thing of Thelma saying, “I understand if you wanna go back, but something’s crossed over in me and I can’t go back.” She’d become so much herself, that there was never going to be another set of circumstances where she was going to be any less than that.”

— Callie Khouri

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