"Thelma & Louise," the Ridley Scott road movie that opened two weekends ago to solid box-office and rave reviews, is to the '90s what "Easy Rider" was to the '60s: an existential romp across two-lane blacktop that embraces key socio-political issues of the day.
The themes of Dennis Hopper's 1969 hippie odyssey were bound with the counterculture movement: peace, love, drugs and the freedom to be weird. In "Thelma & Louise," the issue is a different sort of freedom - the freedom to be a woman in a man's world. The film, starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, is a feminist manifesto out for a rollicking, wild ride."To me, being a feminist is being a humanist," Callie Khouri, the writer of "Thelma & Louise," declares in the June issue of Movieline. "It's just that as a feminist I put slightly more emphasis on women's place in the world and fighting for their rights. I don't want anybody to be limited. That's what feminism is about for me - getting rid of the limits."
Khouri wrote "Thelma & Louise" in 1988, inspired in part by Carolyn Heilbrun's book, "Writing a Woman's Life." At the time, the Texas-born, Kentucky-bred Khouri was working in Los Angeles as a rock-video producer. Ironically, among the groups whose clips she oversaw was Winger - a hard-rock MTV staple whose videos are rampant with leggy sex objects in lingerie.
Khouri, who had never written a script until she got the idea for "Thelma & Louise," showed her completed screenplay to a friend, who in turn showed it to Mimi Polk, who worked for Scott's production company. The man who made "Alien" and "Blade Runner" was looking for a change of direction, and the rest is history.
Needless to say, in the heady wake of "Thelma & Louise," Khouri has quit her day job.