Thelma & Louise

Thelma & Louise
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ridley Scott
Produced by	Mimi Polk Gitlin Ridley Scott
Written by	Callie Khouri
Starring	Susan Sarandon Geena Davis
Music by	Hans Zimmer
Cinematography	Adrian Biddle
Editing by	Thom Noble
Studio	Pathé Entertainment Percy Main Star Partners III Ltd.
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release dates	May 24, 1991 (1991-05-24)
Running time	129 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$16.5 million
Box office	US$45,360,915 (US)[1]

Thelma & Louise is a 1991 adventure female buddy film co-produced and directed by Ridley Scott and written by Callie Khouri. It stars Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise, with Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen and Brad Pitt in supporting roles.

The film became a critical and commercial success, receiving six Academy Award nominations and winning one for Best Original Screenplay (Khouri). Both Sarandon and Davis were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Plot

Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) is a passive housewife, married to a controlling man, Darryl (Christopher McDonald). Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) is a waitress who appears strong, organized, and stern, with some unspecified trauma in her past. The two head out in Louise's 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible for a two-day vacation in the mountains that quickly turns into a nightmare before they reach their destination.

They stop for a drink at a cowboy bar, where Thelma meets and dances with Harlan Puckett (Timothy Carhart). She gets drunk and Harlan attempts to rape her in the parking lot. Louise finds them and threatens to shoot Harlan with a gun Thelma brought with her. Harlan stops, but as the women walk away, he yells profanity and insults them. Louise loses her temper and fires, killing him. Thelma wants to go to the police, but Louise says that because Thelma was drunk and had been dancing with Harlan, no one will believe he tried to rape her. Afraid that she will be prosecuted, Louise decides to run away and Thelma accompanies her.

Louise is determined to travel from Oklahoma to Mexico, but refuses to go through Texas. It is revealed that something happened to her in Texas years earlier, but she refuses to say exactly what. Heading west, they come across a young man named J.D. (Brad Pitt), and Thelma convinces Louise to let him hitch a ride with them. Louise contacts her boyfriend Jimmy Lennox (Michael Madsen) and asks him to send her life savings via Western Union. When she goes to pick up the money, she finds that Jimmy has come to see her. Thelma invites J.D. into her room and learns he is a thief who has broken parole. They sleep together, and J.D. describes how he conducted his hold-ups. Jimmy asks Louise to marry him, but she politely refuses.

In the morning, Thelma tells Louise about her night with J.D. Louise asks where J.D. is, and they find that he is gone with the money. Louise is distraught and frozen with indecision, so a guilty Thelma takes charge and robs a convenience store using the tactics she learned from listening to J.D. Meanwhile, the FBI are getting closer to catching the fugitives after questioning J.D., Jimmy, and Darryl. Detective Hal Slocumb (Harvey Keitel) discovers the event that Louise experienced in Texas, and during a couple of brief phone conversations, expresses sympathy for her predicament and pledges to protect her, but he is unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade her to surrender.

When a state trooper (Jason Beghe) stops them, Thelma threatens him with her gun, steals his gun, and locks him in the trunk of his cruiser. They encounter a truck driver (Marco St. John) who repeatedly makes obscene gestures at them. They pull over to demand an apology, but when he refuses, they fire at the tanker the truck is towing, causing it to explode.

Thelma and Louise are finally cornered by the police officers only 100 yards from the edge of the Grand Canyon. Detective Slocumb arrives on the scene, but he is refused the chance to make one last attempt to talk the women into surrendering themselves. Rather than be captured and spend the rest of their lives in jail, Thelma proposes that they keep going. Louise asks Thelma if she is certain. Thelma says yes and steps on the accelerator. As soon as the car starts forward, Detective Slocumb sprints after it in an attempt to save them, but the car drives over the cliff as the film ends.

Cast

• Susan Sarandon as Louise Elizabeth Sawyer
• Geena Davis as Thelma Yvonne Dickinson
• Harvey Keitel as Detective Hal Slocumb
• Michael Madsen as Jimmy Lennox
• Christopher McDonald as Darryl Dickinson
• Stephen Tobolowsky as Max
• Brad Pitt as J.D.
• Timothy Carhart as Harlan Puckett
• Jason Beghe as State Trooper
• Marco St. John as Truck Driver

Production

Although the setting for the film is a fictional route between Arkansas and the Grand Canyon, the movie was filmed almost entirely in the states of California and Utah. The primary filming locations for the movie are rural areas around Bakersfield, California and Moab, Utah. The Grand Canyon scenes were actually filmed just south of Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah.^[2]

Reception

The film was a critical success. Metacritic lists a composite critical score of 88 out of 100.^[3] Rotten Tomatoes rates Thelma & Louise 83% "Fresh". Janet Maslin of The New York Times had only praise for the film in her 1992 review: "Mr. Scott's Thelma and Louise, with a sparkling screenplay by the first-time writer Callie Khouri, is a surprise on this and many other scores. It reveals the previously untapped talent of Mr. Scott (best known for majestically moody action films like Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain) for exuberant comedy, and for vibrant American imagery, notwithstanding his English roots. It reimagines the buddy film with such freshness and vigor that the genre seems positively new. It discovers unexpected resources in both its stars, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, who are perfectly teamed as the spirited and original title characters."^[4] Roger Ebert also praises the film, but withholds a perfect score on the basis of "the last shot before the titles begin. It's a freeze frame that fades to white, which is fine, except it does so with unseemly haste... It's unsettling to get involved in a movie that takes 128 minutes to bring you to a payoff that the filmmakers seem to fear."^[5]

The film was screened out of competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.^[6]

After watching this film, singer-songwriter Tori Amos wrote "Me and a Gun", the story of her rape six years earlier, which she had told no one about before watching this film. Triggered by a scene in the movie, Amos began sobbing publicly in a crowded movie theater and writing the lyrics to the song in her head.^[7]

Argentinian singer and musician Fito Páez wrote a hit song called "Dos días en la vida" ("Two days in one lifetime") after watching this movie. The lyrics tell the story of the main characters, with verses played by singers Fabiana Cantilo (in the role of Thelma) and Celeste Carballo (Louise). It was one of the most successful singles from his 1992 album "El amor después del amor".

The final scene, where the two embrace each other before driving off a cliff, has become an iconic scene. Numerous homages and parodies of this scene have appeared through the years, including alternate movie endings, cartoon parodies, and as a tragic ending to television series, music videos and commercials.

The film also received significant criticism from those who thought it was "male-bashing" and "man-hating" and that its depictions of men were unfairly negative.^[8][9]

Feminism

Numerous critics and writers have remarked on the feminist overtones of Thelma & Louise. Film critic B. Ruby Rich praises the film as an uncompromising validation of women's experiences,^[10] while Kenneth Turan calls it a "neo-feminist road movie".^[11] In her essay "The Daughters of Thelma and Louise", Jessica Enevold argues that the movie constitutes "an attack on conventional patterns of chauvinist male behavior toward females". In addition, it "exposes the traditional stereotyping of male-female relationships" while rescripting the typical gender roles of the road movie genre.^[12]

However, in her review for The Los Angeles Times, film critic Sheila Benson objects to the characterization of the film as feminist, arguing that it is more preoccupied with revenge and violence than feminist values.^[13]

Awards and honors

Khouri won an Academy Award for Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen; Scott, Davis, Sarandon, cinematographer Adrian Biddle, and film editor Thom Noble were nominated for Oscars.

The British Film Institute published a book^[13] about the film in 2000, as part of a Modern Classics series. On the Writers Guild of America Award's 101 Best Screenplays List it made No. 72.^[14] The film was ranked on the Australian program 20 to 1, in the episode Magnificent Movie Moments.

American Film Institute lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #76
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
  • Thelma Dickinson & Louise Sawyer – #24 Heroes
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers – #78
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated

Soundtrack

In addition to Glenn Frey's "Part of Me, Part of You", which became the film's primary theme song, the soundtrack included songs by Martha Reeves, Toni Childs, Marianne Faithfull, Charlie Sexton, Grayson Hugh, B.B. King, and Michael McDonald.

References

Further reading

• Fournier, Gina. Thelma & Louise and Women in Hollywood. McFarland & Co., Inc. Publishers, 2007
• Cook, Bernie, editor. Thelma & Louise Live! The Cultural Afterlife of an American Film, The University of Texas Press, 2007

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Thelma & Louise

• Thelma & Louise at the Internet Movie Database
• Thelma & Louise at allmovie
• Thelma & Louise at the TCM Movie Database
• Thelma & Louise at Rotten Tomatoes
• Thelma & Louise at Box Office Mojo
• Thelma & Louise at The Numbers