Thelma & Louise is a road movie from 1991 conceived and written by Callie Khouri, co-produced and directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Geena Davis as Thelma, Susan Sarandon as Louise, and Harvey Keitel as a sympathetic detective trying to solve crimes that the two women find easier and easier to commit. Michael Madsen plays Louise's boyfriend and Christopher McDonald plays Thelma's controlling husband. Brad Pitt (in his first significant role in a major Hollywood film) plays a robber on parole who befriends Thelma on the road. The film was released on May 24, 1991.

Plot

The film follows the women as they head out in Louise's green 1966 Thunderbird convertible for a two-day adventure which starts horribly but then sees them change from victims of circumstance into icons of feminism.

At a roadside bar, a man gets Thelma drunk and attempts to rape her in the parking lot. However, Louise shoots the attacker, killing him. Subsequently, the two women are concerned that the authorities won't believe Thelma and they decide to evade the law.

Louise is determined to reach Mexico but is unwilling to do so via Texas, despite the fact that they are in Oklahoma. This is later revealed to be because she was raped there and the attacker wasn't convicted.

During their travels, they encounter a young robber on parole (played by Brad Pitt) who gives Thelma tips on how to conduct successful robberies and then seduces her, only to steal Louise's savings. This shortage of cash results in Thelma conducting an armed robbery at a convenience store.

Another character they encounter is a truck driver who repeatedly makes obscene sexual passes at them. They pull over to demand an apology from him, but he refuses and they shoot his tanker truck, which explodes.

In the end, with the police on their tail, Thelma and Louise are cornered at the Grand Canyon. Rather than be captured or killed, they drive off the cliff into the canyon. The film ends with a freeze frame of the car in mid-air at the height of its arc, so that the audience never sees their fall. End credits begin over a montage of their happiest moments together during the weekend.

Cast

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

Trivia

• Almost all of the second half of the movie was filmed in the area around Moab, Utah. The Grand Canyon scenes were filmed just north of Dead Horse Point State Park.

• The film shares plot line and visual elements with other road movies, particularly the 1979 movie Messidor by Alain Tanner.

• The freeze frame at the end of the film, where Thelma and Louise are not seen falling into the canyon, is reminiscent of another film that ends similarly: George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

• Khouri won an Academy Award for a Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen; Scott, Davis, Sarandon, cinematographer Adrian Biddle, and film editor Thom Noble were nominated for Oscars. The film also resulted in Scott being nominated for a César Award for Best Foreign Film and a DGA Award.

• The British Film Institute published a book (ISBN 0851708099) about the film in 2000, as part of a Modern Classics series.

• Most of The Simpsons episode "Marge on the Lam" is a parody of the movie. Marge Simpson and a divorced mother almost drive a blue convertible into a chasm but Homer Simpson and Chief Wiggum fall in instead.

• Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn wanted to make a movie together and one of the scripts they considered was Thelma & Louise.
• Cher was offered the role of Louise, but turned it down.
• The sequence where Darryl slips and falls over the builder's supplies as he was leaving for work was unscripted, as Christopher McDonald genuinely lost his footing. Despite this he remained in character and yelled at the workmen and drove away. Ridley Scott apparently liked the result, and so it remains in the film.
• Fito Paez was inspired by the film to compose a song called "Dos dias en la vida" (Two days in life), featured in the album "El amor despues del amor".
• Singer/songwriter Tori Amos wrote Me and a Gun after watching this movie, being stirred to write about her own experience with sexual assault and telling no one about it for 6 years.

• The original Thelma and Louise were to be played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster, Ridley Scott was going to produce, and Callie Khouri (the screenwriter) would be directing. In the end, the pitching took so long that Pfeiffer and Foster were no longer available, and Scott had been persuaded to direct it himself.

External links

Road movies | Buddy films | 1991 films | Cult films | Films featuring a Best Actress Academy Award nominated performance | Films directed by Ridley Scott | Fictional feminists | MGM films | Zen films

Thelma & Louise | Thelma et Louise | Thelma & Louise | テルマ&ルイーズ | Thelma and Louise | Тельма и Луиза (фильм) | Thelma & Louise | Thelma ve Louise (film)