Chapter One
The Phenomenon of Thelma and Louise:
Callie Khouri
When Thelma and Louise was first released in the spring of 1991, I was conducting a screenwriting workshop for Austrian filmmakers in Vienna, a city of great beauty and culture, the home of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Strauss, Mahler, and Freud, to name just a few, and more recently, the homeland of Billy Wilder and Arnold Schwarzenegger. That spring MGM was in financial turmoil and executive chaos, and it was possible that many films that were on the verge of release might be locked up in legal limbo until the traumatic events could play themselves out.
One of the films that was affected was a moderately budgeted film called Thelma and Louise, starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, written by Callie Khouri, and directed by Ridley Scott, director of such highly stylized films as Blade Runner, Black Rain, and Aliens.
But after the legal hassles had been somewhat resolved and the film finally opened, everybody in the Austrian film industry was talking about Thelma and Louise. Word of mouth spread very quickly, and I was asked a million questions about it. I simply attributed the hype to Hollywood and promptly forgot about it.
When I returned home several weeks later, people were still talking about Thelma and Louise, and it continued to be the subject of discussion and debate. It even made the cover of Time. I didn’t know what the film was about, but it seemed everybody had an opinion about it, and nobody agreed about anything. I liked that.
So I finally went to see Thelma and Louise. I had no idea what to expect, so I put all my expectations on the seat beside me and spent the first ten minutes thoroughly enjoying myself. I thought it was a comedy.
Then came the scene with Harlan in the parking lot. He has Thelma spread out against a car, and he’s going to rape her. It’s starting to turn ugly. He shoves her face down on the hood of a car, spreads her legs open, shoves her dress roughly above her hips, and starts ripping her panties. Wait a minute, I thought, this is getting serious. I thought it was a comedy, and now this is happening.
When Louise comes out, gun in hand, and forces Harlan to stop, I was on the edge of my seat. And when she actually blows him away, shoots him in the chest, I was shocked.
As that green ’66 T–Bird barrels out of the parking lot, I didn’t know what to expect. I was set up to watch a comedy, and now this happens. But the great thing was that it worked! This film literally grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and forced my attention to be focused on the screen.
Suddenly I understood what everybody had been talking about. This film was fresh and funny, the relationships insightful, the humor laced believably through the dramatic situation. Every moment took me deeper and deeper into the characters and story. I experienced the film scene by scene by scene, and I trusted the screenwriter and director to take me where they wanted me to go—the ending.
I don’t see too many films like that.
As the film progressed, I still thought it was a comedy, and it took me a while to realize that these two women had committed a murder, and somehow they were going to have to deal with the consequences of their actions.
How is this movie going to end? I asked myself. I can usually spot the ending within the first few minutes, but in Thelma and Louise I didn’t have a clue. It was only when Hal climbed into the police helicopter to join the chase that I knew how it was going to end. I knew they were going to die; I didn’t know how it would happen, but I knew I didn’t want it to happen. I wanted them to live. Somehow.
But I had to let go of my last shreds of hope as the two women said their good–byes on the lip of the Grand Canyon with a wall of police cars behind them. Only when Louise floored it and they sailed out over the eternity that is the Grand Canyon did I breathe easily. It worked. The whole film worked.
Over the next few days I kept thinking about the film. Moments of their relationship, the rape sequence, the truck driver sequence, little bits and pieces of visual memories flooded through me and kept replaying themselves in my head.
The more I thought about the film, the more I liked it. It was a script worth reading and studying, so when I decided to write this book, one of the first films I chose was Thelma and Louise.
At the Time I was working with Roland Joffe (director of The Killing Fields and The Mission) on City of Joy (Mark Medoff), and one day when I was in the office, I saw a copy of the script of Thelma and Louise.
I found that it was a great read. From the very first page it had a strong visual style; it was truly a story told with pictures. It didn’t matter to me whether there were unrealistic moments in the screenplay. You always have to suspend your disbelief when you read a script or see a movie. You must try to accept any story for what it is, regardless of whether it coincides with reality as you perceive it. When the unbelievability of the story punctures the willingness of your belief, the film doesn’t work for you.
Who was this Callie Khouri person who had written this screenplay? I had never heard of her before, but I did manage to get hold of a videotape from a Writers Guild question–and–answer session with Callie Khouri, and the producer, Mimi Polk, and some of the production team. Callie Khouri was bright and articulate, and when she started talking about the film I was impressed by the way she spoke about her characters.
It was hard for me to believe that this was her first screenplay; to be this good she must have had some writing experience. You just don’t sit down and write this kind of screenplay.
When I started telling people that I was writing about Thelma and Louise, some of my writer friends went nuts. “The characters are stereotypes,” said one. “It’s antimen,” said another. “I can’t believe the relationship between the two women,” said another. “She didn’t have to kill him,” the wife of a writer friend told me. “There were other ways she could have gotten out of that situation,” she said. Everyone had an opinion. Even my aunt, an elderly woman who never goes to movies, went to see it. Somehow Thelma and Louise hit a common chord and jangled people’s emotions. What was it that sparked so much emotion?
I did a little research. I went to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Library and pulled out the review files of Thelma and Louise.