Thelma & Louise Revisited
Andrastewhite and myself are clearly destined to geeky supervillaindom. She wrote another scene for our threatened Trio subplot to Once More, With Feeling. Go and and admire hers here. Then read mine again. I'm narcistic like that.
Thelma & Louise I loved from the moment I watched it first in the cinema all those years ago, but had not seen for a while until aquiring the new DVD. So worth it, people. Not just because the movie is gorgeous, but because we get two sets of commentaries - Ridley Scott doing the director's pov, and on a separate track, Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis and Callie Khouri giving us the actresses and writer's pov. Both commentaries are fascinating, but because I know ide_cyan is more curious about the girls, I'll describe theirs first, then Scott's.
They were all recorded at the same time (which isn't always the case, alas, with commentaries), which makes for delightful interaction between the three women. They start out with the teasing and fun anecdotes and as the film progresses get into more serious territory. This had been Callie Khouri's breakthrough as a script writer - she had directed rock videos before - and originally she had wanted to direct it, too, but couldn't find the financial backing. Ruefully, she comments that even if she had she would never have been able to afford Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, and praises Ridley Scott's direction with one caveat - the only thing she would have done differently were the scenes with the trucker, because he comes across more as comedy relief than as genuinely threatening and molesting. (Scott comments on the trucker as well - see below.) The actresses both mention how good it was having her on the set; Geena Davis says that when she asked one detail about Thelma's backstory (did Thelma have a sister?), Callie Khouri came up with a complete 20 page life story of Thelma.
For Khouri, a crucial point of motivation was writing women who felt "complete" (a term she uses repeatedly); she had been frustrated by the love interest and mother parts the cinema usually offers (and here Sarandon and Davis agree that hasn't changed much post-Thelma & Louise). She reminisces that she so liked the character of Marion in Raiders of the lost Arc, and would have loved to see her further developed in the series, and felt so disappointed and betrayed when tough independent Marion was replaced by "someone afraid to break a nail" in the second movie. Of the post-T&L films, the one who spontaneously occurs to her with women who feel complete is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
They all agree that the accusation that T&L bashes males is ridiculous - from Harvey Keitel's character (whom Sarandon calls "a saint") to the rapist in the bar, you get the whole scala. What Sarandon in particular points out that there is a moral sense in this film which you don't usually get in male revenge movies; her character, Louise, slowly but surely unravels under the pressure of what she has done. Khouri says that the narrative wasn't about "women taking control", because they're not in control of their lives from the second of the shooting onwards, they have to improvise from moment to moment, but they are also not in anybody else's control anymore, either. She plotted the script from the ending backwards, and was incredibly relieved her ending was kept.
Khouri is also very happy with something that Scott mentions in his commentary as well - the outward transformation of Thelma and Louise from overdressed and full of make-up to sun-burnt and natural, and in fact much more beautiful, because that was how she had imagined it. At which point Davis and Sarandon drily comment that they agree but have to point out they needed in fact longer make-up hours for the later part of the film to achieve that tanned, wild and make-up free look.*g*
Anecdote-wise: apparently Davis got herself coached for a Georgian accent before learning that the movie actually starts in Arkansas!
As Scott does, they praise Christopher MacDonald (who plays Thelma's husband Darryl) for his comedic performance and gifted improvisation (apparently MacDonald adlibbed a lot). And they're full of compliments about Brad Pitt, whose small but important part as J.D. in this movie brought him international fame for the first time. In fact, they don't have a bad word for anyone except the critic who thought the cop's finger out of the air holes Thelma shot in the car was a phallic symbol…
Now to Ridley Scott's commentary. Which includes some reminiscences about some other movies of his like Alien or Blade Runner as well. (Talk about endings - Scott is still angry with himself for letting the studio add the fake happy ending after the previews showed the audience reacting negatively to his original one, which was in fact restored in the Director's Release version. "I should have stuck to my guns.") It's a visual-oriented commentary, and what he says about a European's perspective on America struck a nerve, because repeatedly I thought "Exactly!". For example, during an early night scene he points out it's not black but blue and full of lights and says he never got over that first impression of America - glitter. All those lights on the road. It was almost the same for me, only in my case it was all those lights of New York City, as seen from the World Trade Center where I went on the evening after I landed. But American glitter - exactly.
And then all the telegraph posts on the highways, which are now disappearing, or the combination of a hotel swimming pool and trucks driving on the road, or the line dancing which he saw for the first time in the bar where they filmed and promptly incorporated in the movie. It's so exotic if you're from Europe. Scott says he never settled down in the US but kept switching to and thro to keep that European perspective, because that way he hopes his way of viewing the US landscape and people will remain fresh. He adds that the score is by a German, Hans Zimmer, and the guitar is played by a guy from Suffolk (and Scott himself of course is British), and yet the final product is quintessential American because if you aren't yourself, you long for the mythical America in your head.
Referring to his background of starting with TV commercials, he calls it the best film school ever (there's an element of "TV commercial director and proud of it!" here, probably because there was much snobbery about it back when Scott started in feature films, before the aesthetics he used influenced in turn dozens of other movies), except for working with actors, which he had to learn anew when going into features. Says there is nothing worse than an actor who thinks the movie is dumb and only does it for the money (tempting to speculate whom he might be thinking of here - Brando comes to mind, but then Scott also famously didn't get along with Harrison Ford who to this day isn't reconciled to Blade Runner), and nothing better than an actor who really thinks about her or his part and brings their own creativity on board. One has to give them room for it, of course.
His observations on Thelma and Louise themselves are mostly, but not always, the same as those of Khouri, Sarandon and Davis. The main differences: he thinks they have a mother and daughter dynamic at the beginning (with Louise as the mother), which switches after the J.D. incident so that Thelma is the mother, whereas the three ladies don't use the term at all. The other difference is in his recounting on why they changed the scene between Louise and Jimmy at the hotel. He remembers that it was supposed to be a goodbye love scene, complete with sex, and thinks they changed it because Louise already knows that no matter what happens, this relationship is over, and wouldn't want to raise Jimmy's hopes that way. Khouri remembers that she originally wrote it as an impromptu marriage love scene but without the sex, and Sarandon remembers that by the time she talked with Scott about it, there was sex in it, but that they changed the scene because a) Louise was quietly unravelling and had her big emotional outburst ahead once she and Thelma would discover the money was gone the next morning, and a love-plus-sex-scene would have interrupted that process, and b) two competing sex scenes wouldn't have been good. "And Thelma had to get laid," Khouri agrees with a smile in her voice.
About the trucker: Scott says "would you believe the guy went on and played Hamlet" and adds that the actor told him after this role (i.e. the leering trucker, not Hamlet), he would never get another date. "Which might possibly have been true." Afterwards, he heard from many women similar things happened to them, which amazed him. He says it's important that Thelma and Louise blow up the truck as payback but do not harm the trucker himself; they DON'T want to kill (or physically hurt) anyone else. Not during the trucker scenes but earlier in the movie Scott reminiscences that he loved working with Callie Khouri, and he, too, says there was just one thing they disagreed on. He does not specifically name it as she did but says it was going for comedy in some scenes. Which in his opinion was the right thing to do because a) you need some laughs in a film like this and b) said laughs mean more audience, and you want this film to reach as many people as possible.
His vocabulary and comparisons are quite English - "constablery" for the police chasing the women at the end, for example. Also comparing Brad Pitt's character J.D. to the legendary highwayman Dick Turpin "who charmed the necklaces of the ladies". He doesn't think J.D. went to the hotel room to Thelma with the intention of robbing her, that was a split decision once he saw the money, but once he saw it, that was it. Scott usually calls the characters by the actor's names - i.e. Harvey, Brad, Chris - but not Thelma and Louise themselves, except when he talks about specific shots (as when Thelma is seen reflected in the car's mirror near the end, "that is one of my favourite shots of Geena", not Thelma). Otherwise it's "I love what Thelma does here", or "Louise is still the mother here", but "Harvey of course tries to understand them".
All in all a great movie, and two great commentaries. And the DVD offers yet more - a documentary which is still ahead of me!
Lastly, supporting my future geeky supervillain destiny are some quizzes:
What Type of Villain are You?
mutedfaith.com.
And also:
How Would YOU Take Over the World?
On the other hand:
You are an Orthodox Snapeist.
You take Canon!Snape at face value -- like JKR
says, Snape is "a deeply horrible
person". You like to write/read stories
where he's portrayed as supercilious, unfair,
often undignified, and sometimes downright
cruel. You may accept some partial
explanations for his behavior when they're
offered in canon, but you're still pretty hard
on him, and don't like to let him off the hook.
The guy's a nasty, unwashed git -- it says so
in the books!
What kind of Snapeist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
But... aside from Harry, he's the most interesting character to me!
Thelma & Louise I loved from the moment I watched it first in the cinema all those years ago, but had not seen for a while until aquiring the new DVD. So worth it, people. Not just because the movie is gorgeous, but because we get two sets of commentaries - Ridley Scott doing the director's pov, and on a separate track, Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis and Callie Khouri giving us the actresses and writer's pov. Both commentaries are fascinating, but because I know ide_cyan is more curious about the girls, I'll describe theirs first, then Scott's.
They were all recorded at the same time (which isn't always the case, alas, with commentaries), which makes for delightful interaction between the three women. They start out with the teasing and fun anecdotes and as the film progresses get into more serious territory. This had been Callie Khouri's breakthrough as a script writer - she had directed rock videos before - and originally she had wanted to direct it, too, but couldn't find the financial backing. Ruefully, she comments that even if she had she would never have been able to afford Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, and praises Ridley Scott's direction with one caveat - the only thing she would have done differently were the scenes with the trucker, because he comes across more as comedy relief than as genuinely threatening and molesting. (Scott comments on the trucker as well - see below.) The actresses both mention how good it was having her on the set; Geena Davis says that when she asked one detail about Thelma's backstory (did Thelma have a sister?), Callie Khouri came up with a complete 20 page life story of Thelma.
For Khouri, a crucial point of motivation was writing women who felt "complete" (a term she uses repeatedly); she had been frustrated by the love interest and mother parts the cinema usually offers (and here Sarandon and Davis agree that hasn't changed much post-Thelma & Louise). She reminisces that she so liked the character of Marion in Raiders of the lost Arc, and would have loved to see her further developed in the series, and felt so disappointed and betrayed when tough independent Marion was replaced by "someone afraid to break a nail" in the second movie. Of the post-T&L films, the one who spontaneously occurs to her with women who feel complete is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
They all agree that the accusation that T&L bashes males is ridiculous - from Harvey Keitel's character (whom Sarandon calls "a saint") to the rapist in the bar, you get the whole scala. What Sarandon in particular points out that there is a moral sense in this film which you don't usually get in male revenge movies; her character, Louise, slowly but surely unravels under the pressure of what she has done. Khouri says that the narrative wasn't about "women taking control", because they're not in control of their lives from the second of the shooting onwards, they have to improvise from moment to moment, but they are also not in anybody else's control anymore, either. She plotted the script from the ending backwards, and was incredibly relieved her ending was kept.
Khouri is also very happy with something that Scott mentions in his commentary as well - the outward transformation of Thelma and Louise from overdressed and full of make-up to sun-burnt and natural, and in fact much more beautiful, because that was how she had imagined it. At which point Davis and Sarandon drily comment that they agree but have to point out they needed in fact longer make-up hours for the later part of the film to achieve that tanned, wild and make-up free look.*g*
Anecdote-wise: apparently Davis got herself coached for a Georgian accent before learning that the movie actually starts in Arkansas!
As Scott does, they praise Christopher MacDonald (who plays Thelma's husband Darryl) for his comedic performance and gifted improvisation (apparently MacDonald adlibbed a lot). And they're full of compliments about Brad Pitt, whose small but important part as J.D. in this movie brought him international fame for the first time. In fact, they don't have a bad word for anyone except the critic who thought the cop's finger out of the air holes Thelma shot in the car was a phallic symbol…
Now to Ridley Scott's commentary. Which includes some reminiscences about some other movies of his like Alien or Blade Runner as well. (Talk about endings - Scott is still angry with himself for letting the studio add the fake happy ending after the previews showed the audience reacting negatively to his original one, which was in fact restored in the Director's Release version. "I should have stuck to my guns.") It's a visual-oriented commentary, and what he says about a European's perspective on America struck a nerve, because repeatedly I thought "Exactly!". For example, during an early night scene he points out it's not black but blue and full of lights and says he never got over that first impression of America - glitter. All those lights on the road. It was almost the same for me, only in my case it was all those lights of New York City, as seen from the World Trade Center where I went on the evening after I landed. But American glitter - exactly.
And then all the telegraph posts on the highways, which are now disappearing, or the combination of a hotel swimming pool and trucks driving on the road, or the line dancing which he saw for the first time in the bar where they filmed and promptly incorporated in the movie. It's so exotic if you're from Europe. Scott says he never settled down in the US but kept switching to and thro to keep that European perspective, because that way he hopes his way of viewing the US landscape and people will remain fresh. He adds that the score is by a German, Hans Zimmer, and the guitar is played by a guy from Suffolk (and Scott himself of course is British), and yet the final product is quintessential American because if you aren't yourself, you long for the mythical America in your head.
Referring to his background of starting with TV commercials, he calls it the best film school ever (there's an element of "TV commercial director and proud of it!" here, probably because there was much snobbery about it back when Scott started in feature films, before the aesthetics he used influenced in turn dozens of other movies), except for working with actors, which he had to learn anew when going into features. Says there is nothing worse than an actor who thinks the movie is dumb and only does it for the money (tempting to speculate whom he might be thinking of here - Brando comes to mind, but then Scott also famously didn't get along with Harrison Ford who to this day isn't reconciled to Blade Runner), and nothing better than an actor who really thinks about her or his part and brings their own creativity on board. One has to give them room for it, of course.
His observations on Thelma and Louise themselves are mostly, but not always, the same as those of Khouri, Sarandon and Davis. The main differences: he thinks they have a mother and daughter dynamic at the beginning (with Louise as the mother), which switches after the J.D. incident so that Thelma is the mother, whereas the three ladies don't use the term at all. The other difference is in his recounting on why they changed the scene between Louise and Jimmy at the hotel. He remembers that it was supposed to be a goodbye love scene, complete with sex, and thinks they changed it because Louise already knows that no matter what happens, this relationship is over, and wouldn't want to raise Jimmy's hopes that way. Khouri remembers that she originally wrote it as an impromptu marriage love scene but without the sex, and Sarandon remembers that by the time she talked with Scott about it, there was sex in it, but that they changed the scene because a) Louise was quietly unravelling and had her big emotional outburst ahead once she and Thelma would discover the money was gone the next morning, and a love-plus-sex-scene would have interrupted that process, and b) two competing sex scenes wouldn't have been good. "And Thelma had to get laid," Khouri agrees with a smile in her voice.
About the trucker: Scott says "would you believe the guy went on and played Hamlet" and adds that the actor told him after this role (i.e. the leering trucker, not Hamlet), he would never get another date. "Which might possibly have been true." Afterwards, he heard from many women similar things happened to them, which amazed him. He says it's important that Thelma and Louise blow up the truck as payback but do not harm the trucker himself; they DON'T want to kill (or physically hurt) anyone else. Not during the trucker scenes but earlier in the movie Scott reminiscences that he loved working with Callie Khouri, and he, too, says there was just one thing they disagreed on. He does not specifically name it as she did but says it was going for comedy in some scenes. Which in his opinion was the right thing to do because a) you need some laughs in a film like this and b) said laughs mean more audience, and you want this film to reach as many people as possible.
His vocabulary and comparisons are quite English - "constablery" for the police chasing the women at the end, for example. Also comparing Brad Pitt's character J.D. to the legendary highwayman Dick Turpin "who charmed the necklaces of the ladies". He doesn't think J.D. went to the hotel room to Thelma with the intention of robbing her, that was a split decision once he saw the money, but once he saw it, that was it. Scott usually calls the characters by the actor's names - i.e. Harvey, Brad, Chris - but not Thelma and Louise themselves, except when he talks about specific shots (as when Thelma is seen reflected in the car's mirror near the end, "that is one of my favourite shots of Geena", not Thelma). Otherwise it's "I love what Thelma does here", or "Louise is still the mother here", but "Harvey of course tries to understand them".
All in all a great movie, and two great commentaries. And the DVD offers yet more - a documentary which is still ahead of me!
Lastly, supporting my future geeky supervillain destiny are some quizzes:
What Type of Villain are You?
mutedfaith.com.
And also:
How Would YOU Take Over the World?
On the other hand:
You are an Orthodox Snapeist.
You take Canon!Snape at face value -- like JKR
says, Snape is "a deeply horrible
person". You like to write/read stories
where he's portrayed as supercilious, unfair,
often undignified, and sometimes downright
cruel. You may accept some partial
explanations for his behavior when they're
offered in canon, but you're still pretty hard
on him, and don't like to let him off the hook.
The guy's a nasty, unwashed git -- it says so
in the books!
What kind of Snapeist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
But... aside from Harry, he's the most interesting character to me!