“The driving force behind ‘Thelma & Louise’”
A nice feature today in the LAT’s about screenwriter Callie Khouri, most well-known for writing the Academy Award-Winning screenplay for Thelma & Louise:
Summer audiences that year [1991] were flocking to “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “City Slickers” and “The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear” — all male-dominated movies. But one of the summer’s biggest surprises was “Thelma & Louise,” a feminist-driven American road movie starring Davis and Susan Sarandon as two best friends, both trapped in their stagnate lives, who decide to go on a fishing trip in Louise’s 1966 T-Bird. But their journey turns into a flight for freedom after they go to a cowboy bar and dance hall. The man Thelma meets there attempts to rape her in the parking lot; Louise loses her temper and kills the man with her gun. Soon the cops, lead by Harvey Keitel, are hot on their trail.
It’s always interesting to hear how screenwriters came up with the idea for their story:
“I started writing in between jobs and at night,” she says. “This was my first attempt at a screenplay. I idiotically thought screenwriting would be easier than writing a novel. I was just uneducated enough about screenwriting to think it was easy.”
Khouri says the idea came from am amalgamation of things. “I had and still have a very close friend of mine who is a songwriter-singer in Nashville,” she explains. “We had a very similar dynamic, I guess, you would say in terms of just being able to get in the car and feel like we were free from the rest of the world. There was a lot of fun involved and there were times when we found ourselves in all kinds of, not trouble, but situations, I guess, due to youth and other youthful pursuits. Looking back on it, we wouldn’t repeat a lot of the stuff we did.”
And then there’s the movie’s famous ending:
It’s an ending that will live forever in movie — and pop culture — history.
Thelma and Louise, played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, cornered by the cops, decide that rather than surrender they will drive off a cliff in their teal-colored Thunderbird convertible. Homages to the final scene have shown up everywhere from “The Simpson” to a current Bing.com commercial.
Callie Khouri, who won an Academy Award for her “Thelma & Louise” screenplay, notes that the ending “has really turned into a half-full, half-empty glass of water. People either thought it was an uplifting ending or they thought they committed suicide at the end. It kind of depends on how they see it. I always learn a lot from a person when they come up immediately and say, ‘Why did you kill them off?’ “
Of course, those of you who have participated in the 40 Days of Screenplays challenge remember reading the script for Thelma & Louise on Day 7.
For the rest of the article, go here.
For those of who living in So Cal, Thelma & Louis will be screening at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica this Wednesday night at 7:30PM. Khouri will be there to talk about the movie.
More information, go here.