TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624421.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.8 KB | 80 lines

                                                                                CINEMA, Page 55

COVER STORIES

Moving into the Driver's Seat



    Callie Khouri was a bit embarrassed to tell her friends, back
in 1988, that she had begun working on a screenplay. After all,
in Los Angeles it often seems as though screenplays are being
written by everyone who can put a noun and a verb together, and
by some who can't. But Khouri felt she was on to something
special. She had grown tired of seeing women portrayed in
movies as passive partners, terminally ill victims or sex
objects. "I wanted to write something that had never been on the
screen before," she says. "As a female moviegoer, I just got fed
up with the passive role of women. They were never driving the
story because they were never driving the car."

    After consulting a few how-to books on screenwriting,
Khouri, a music-video producer who had made videos for Robert
Cray, Alice Cooper and the Commodores, started writing. Nine
months later, Thelma & Louise found its way to director Ridley
Scott and, through him, to MGM/UA. During the shooting, Scott
added much of the phallic imagery -- the huge trucks, the giant
cacti and a chemical-spewing plane -- that has riled some of the
film's detractors. He also cut scenes that portrayed the close
friendship between the two title characters, including one in
which each confides what she fears most (for Thelma, growing old
with a husband who doesn't love her; for Louise, growing old
alone). While Khouri laments the loss of such revealing moments,
she is pleased with the picture. "I think they did it really
well," she says. "I've been very lucky."

    Khouri, 33, originally hoped to make it in the movie
business as an actress. The third of four children born to a
surgeon and his wife, she grew up in Paducah, Ky., and went to
Purdue University, planning to major in theater. But, unhappy
with the roles for women in student productions ("I can't tell
you how many times I played a prostitute") and eager for more
freedom, Khouri dropped out after five semesters. She moved to
Nashville, where she worked as an apprentice at a local theater,
then supported herself as a waitress -- like Louise -- before
migrating to Los Angeles. There a job as a receptionist with a
production company introduced her to the world of music videos.
"I loved the work, but I was unhappy with what came out of it,"
Khouri says. "There was the dilemma of having very strong
feelings about women and then paying them to writhe to music."

    Some of that frustration helped fuel Thelma & Louise. "I
wanted to have it so that when you left the theater, you
respected the characters," says Khouri. She is annoyed by
critics who charge that her film provides poor role models for
women. "They don't really want to see women operating outside
the boundaries that are prescribed for them, misbehaving and
enjoying themselves," she says. Nor does she take kindly to the
criticism that the movie bashes men. "I certainly don't hate
men," says Khouri, who celebrates her first year of marriage to
writer and producer David Warfield this month. "Most guys don't
relate to the truck driver or the rapist ((in Thelma & Louise)),
and if they do, their problems are bigger than this movie."

    As for complaints that Thelma & Louise indulges in
gratuitous violence, Khouri believes they arise from a double
standard. Scores of action pictures show men pulling the trigger
and putting down women, she points out. "For men, they're
considered healthy fantasy." But when women are shown doing the
same things, Khouri argues, "they say it's a propaganda tool.
That's an absolute insult to the intellect of women. This is an
adventure film. It's a film about women outlaws. People should
just relax."


    By Janice C. Simpson