Thelma & Louise

‘Thelma and Louise’ has one of the most iconic endings ever, but it almost didn’t make it to the screen. This week Chris and Lizzie explore Callie Khouri’s relentless dedication to her screenplay, Ridley Scott’s reluctance to direct it, and why neither Geena Davis nor Brad Pitt were even close to first choice for their roles. Find out which alternate ending earned boos from a test audience and how ‘Thelma and Louise’ beat the odds to become a financial success despite almost no marketing budget. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lizzie Bassett?

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• 0:45Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:05Chris Winterbauer?

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• 1:56Speaker 02

  And action.

• 1:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone arguably the greatest ending in cinema history. I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett, who is going to be leading us on a debauched descent into Breaking Bad wonderfulness. Lizzie, I cannot wait to go on this buddy comedy journey with you. What do you have in store for us today?

• 2:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Chris, I have certainly one of the greatest movies of the 90s, perhaps one of the greatest movies of all time. I have Thelma and Louise. It is the 35th anniversary of this movie this year. It was back in May.

• 2:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, is it 91?

• 2:41Lizzie Bassett?

  It's 91.

• 2:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I don't know why I thought it was 92.

• 2:44Lizzie Bassett?

  I thought it was 90 for the longest time. We're both wrong. It's 1991.

• 2:50Lizzie Bassett?

  This movie is so good. I can't wait to get into it with you because the story behind it is really just as exciting as the movie itself.

• 2:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 2:57Lizzie Bassett?

  But first, Chris, don't we have a bit of an announcement? A little bit of homework, perhaps a book club?

• 3:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, my gosh, we do. Our viewers love homework, as we've learned. Lizzie loves homework, too.

• 3:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 3:10Chris Winterbauer?

  So this October, we're going to do something really fun. Well, we hope it's fun. So there are a bunch of literary adaptations being released in theaters this October. And so we are going to launch our first ever box office book club. And it's going to be filled with some classics, like Sense and Sensibility, and some maybe lowbrow bangers like Verity, which I'm very excited about.

• 3:34Lizzie Bassett?

  More than halfway through that one.

• 3:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the Colleen Hoover book. So this is going to kick off this October. We're making this announcement a month in advance to give everybody time to read these books, but we are going to be doing Verity to continue Anne Hathaway's summer and kickoff box office book club. Other Mommy.

• 3:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Can't wait.

• 3:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is an adaptation of the book Incidents Around the House. Sense and Sensibility to get our Austin on. And then Wildwood, the like a film, which is based on a book by Colin Malloy, perhaps best known as The Frontman for The Decemberists.

• 4:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 4:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Which I'm very excited about as well. So we have a children's YA book. We have a arguably smut novel with Verity. I'm just kidding.

• 4:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Have you started reading it yet? Because it doesn't even.

• 4:16Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I haven't started it yet.

• 4:17Lizzie Bassett?

  It's something else.

• 4:18Chris Winterbauer?

  It's something else. And then we've got a classic and we've got horror. So I'm really excited for the genre bending month of October. We were trying to think of something fun to do this fall with you guys before we kick off our Oscars coverage at the top of next year.

• 4:29Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what it is? It's hot horror.

• 4:32Chris Winterbauer?

  It's hot horror. There it is. And Other Mommy is not.

• 4:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Chris Winterbauer?

  So I'm excited about that.

• 4:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 4:38Chris Winterbauer?

  All right. Well, that's our announcement. So those will be starting on October 9th. We'll be dropping our Verity review.

• 4:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, join us.

• 4:46Chris Winterbauer?

  We look forward to doing box office book club with you guys this October.

• 4:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Do your homework. I'm doing it. I'm actually reading. What a treat.

• 4:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie relearned how to read.

• 4:54Lizzie Bassett?

  I did. Well, let's get into it because we have a lot to talk about with Thelma and Louise. So, Chris, what was your experience with this movie prior to today? And what was it like watching it for this podcast?

• 5:06Chris Winterbauer?

  This was a movie introduced to me by, I'm sure, my dad at some point in middle school, high school, always really liked it. Have not seen it in a while, though. And so rewatching it, it's, as you mentioned, it's a fantastic movie. I watched for the first time The Accidental Tourist last night.

• 5:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, nice.

• 5:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is very, very strange movie. I had never seen it before, but that's what Gina Davis won.

• 5:27Lizzie Bassett?

  She did.

• 5:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I am thrilled she won it because I think she deserved it for Thelma and Louise.

• 5:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 5:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I think this movie, I mean, look, Susan Sarandon's fantastic in this movie. She grounds the movie in a lot of ways, but Gina Davis steals this movie.

• 5:44Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 5:44Chris Winterbauer?

  She's so funny. When she shows up in the window of the cop car at the end, when Susan Sarandon is there, and she just gives the cop that funny smile, and then all of a sudden the gun comes out. It's so good. The cut to the CCTV footage of her doing the robbery.

• 5:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 5:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Is just laugh out loud. It's amazing. She's so good in this movie. She has such a wonderful arc. I think this movie is such a great intersection of performer, director, writer, cinematographer. I think not only are Davis and Sarandon pitched perfectly cast, I think Ridley Scott is exactly the right director for this material. I think he does a really great job with it. And I think Adrian Biddle, the cinematographer.

• 6:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, beautiful.

• 6:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Whose long lens work can maybe feel claustrophobic in certain instances, intentionally so. It actually compresses the American landscape in a really wonderful way where it both feels isolating when they're out, like Monument Rock and stuff like that, but then also very overwhelming when they're in these parking lots and they're surrounded by cars and people and whatnot. Just a couple of hot takes at the top. Danny McRide saw Christopher McDonald styling in this movie and said, that's how I want to look for the rest of my life.

• 6:48Lizzie Bassett?

  For the rest of my life, yes.

• 6:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Christopher McDonald is very funny in this movie.

• 6:51Lizzie Bassett?

  He's great.

• 6:52Chris Winterbauer?

  When she calls and he says, hey, Thelma, and then she hangs up immediately. They know is one of my favorite jokes. I do love that it's basically entirely shot around the Great Vine, north of Los Angeles. And they're just like, sure, it's Oklahoma, Arkansas, et cetera.

• 7:04Lizzie Bassett?

  It's actually a lot of Utah.

• 7:05Chris Winterbauer?

  And Utah, too. Yeah, for the back half of the movie.

• 7:08Lizzie Bassett?

  I will agree, though. It was actually distracting watching it this time. So I don't think I had seen it since living in California where I was like, well, that is not Arkansas.

• 7:15Chris Winterbauer?

  No, it is certainly not. There's one part where you can see downtown LA over the motel, if you look really carefully. But that's fine. There's a great Don't Worry Darling, I Forgot, references this movie. The wide overhead shot of the cars going into the desert.

• 7:29Lizzie Bassett?

  A lot of movies have referenced that shot.

• 7:30Chris Winterbauer?

  But here's what I would say. I would argue this is Ridley Scott's third best movie. I think you could make an argument it's his second best movie. And what I didn't realize is that this movie really is a kind of a high point in a relatively, not barren, but I would say less than stellar 20-year run.

• 7:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 7:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Right? So like he has The Duelist, which is very well received, then Alien in 1979, which is universally acclaimed.

• 7:51Lizzie Bassett?

  His best movie, I think.

• 7:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 7:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Unequivocally.

• 7:53Chris Winterbauer?

  And then I know Blade Runner is now considered a classic.

• 7:57Lizzie Bassett?

  No, but it was a stinker.

• 7:58Chris Winterbauer?

  It was a stinker at the time.

• 7:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Chris Winterbauer?

  And so basically between Alien and Thelma, you've got this kind of tough run. You know, Legend, Someone to Watch Over Me, Black Rain, which I liked, but none of them are big hits.

• 8:10Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 8:10Chris Winterbauer?

  And then you've got Thelma and Louise, and then you've got 1492, which was a big time flopper.

• 8:15Lizzie Bassett?

  You've got essentially nothing until Gladiator.

• 8:17Chris Winterbauer?

  And then nothing until Gladiator.

• 8:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Chris Winterbauer?

  And so on the one hand, Scott's so interesting. He's one of very few directors who I do think released a banger in six straight decades. I was trying to think of other directors who have done that, right? 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000, 2010, 2020. Right? So six decades. He's got Alien, he's got Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, The Martian, The Last Duel. Right? I think that counts. I would count The Last Duel. Anyway, but on the same token, there's a lot of like littered corpses.

• 8:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Where is the House of Gucci?

• 8:48Chris Winterbauer?

  No, House of Gucci is not there. But anyway, I was going through his list and I was like, I would maybe put Gladiator above Thelma and Louise. I don't know, but it would certainly be top three for me.

• 8:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think that's fair. It's a tough call between those two for number two. Alien is number one for me always, but.

• 9:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Anyway, I'll stop talking. I love this movie. I think it's so good.

• 9:04Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great. I, like you, had seen this probably in high school. I didn't remember it well. I remember not wanting to watch this movie because of the title, because I thought, oh, it's like a girly movie. I don't want to watch that. I didn't understand what it was at all. And I remember my mom being like, no, they're gonna.

• 9:21Chris Winterbauer?

  The cover makes you think it's going to be Steel Magnolias or something.

• 9:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly what I thought it was, and I didn't want to watch it.

• 9:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Lizzie Bassett?

  And my mom was like, you don't understand. It's a murder. It's a chase. It's Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen.

• 9:32Chris Winterbauer?

  It's Bonnie and Clyde.

• 9:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 9:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, but more fun.

• 9:36Lizzie Bassett?

  And I was like, fine, whatever. And I watched it and then of course I loved it. And you know, it was fun to see a very young Brad Pitt in this, which of course we will talk about, and he is great in this movie.

• 9:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Lizzie Bassett?

  You can tell that, you know, that's a movie star.

• 9:49Chris Winterbauer?

  He's such a wee man in this movie. He's like, he hasn't filled out yet, you know? It's so funny to see him, especially across Gina Davis, who kind of dwarfs him.

• 9:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you can tell that he's tall because he's at least the same height as she is. But yeah, he's very slender.

• 10:02Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he might be an inch shorter than her because I think he's wearing little cowboy boots in this one.

• 10:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Little cowboy boots are men's heels and I love that for men. Let them have it.

• 10:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I do. So are running shoes. My running shoes make me so tall.

• 10:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I, I enjoyed it very much, but I didn't really watch it again until we watched it for this. And watching it again now, I'm with you. I was so struck by Gina Davis's performance in this movie. This is such a hard role to not be annoying.

• 10:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Lizzie Bassett?

  It could so easily have gone in a very like maudlin, almost twee direction. I think, as we'll discuss, she was not the first choice for this. I think it was very smart to cast someone like her, who is more physically imposing in this role, because it actually helps. Because she is so beautiful and she is so sweet and funny and like kind of dim, you know, for about half the movie. But when she wakes up, it's like, oh yeah, if that lady's coming at the side of my cop car with a gun, I am fucked. Like, she's great. She's fun, but she's scary. And I just think that, you know, the turns that she takes in this movie, obviously it is Louise who is the one who fires the shot that kicks everything off. And yet it's Thelma who really, I think in a lot of ways, has the decision to make over the course of this movie.

• 11:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Because she doesn't have to go with Louise.

• 11:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, she changes.

• 11:19Lizzie Bassett?

  She changes the most.

• 11:20Chris Winterbauer?

  She's the one who arcs the most, even though Louise is arguably the main character in terms of the entry point. I think Louise is more the entry point for the audience.

• 11:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 11:28Chris Winterbauer?

  But we're watching Thelma change across the movie more.

• 11:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. Yeah, she deserved an Oscar for this. She did get a nomination, as did Susan Sarandon, but obviously neither of them won. But she was robbed. And I think, you know, as we talked about in Cutthroat Island, she was really, in many ways, robbed of, I think, the career she should have had after this point in time. So just as for Gina, I love this movie. I love Harvey Keitel. I just love him. This is a fun role for him. He generally, you know, outside of, I guess, this and the piano, there's usually something kind of sinister about Harvey Keitel. And this one flips the script on that. And also on Michael Madsen, which I appreciated seeing him.

• 12:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I did like Michael Madsen in this movie quite a bit, too.

• 12:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, he's in a more romantic role, which is nice because, you know, he always plays such a tough guy and he's very attractive. So I loved that. You know, this is easily one of my favorite Hans Zimmer scores.

• 12:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting. I had mixed feelings upon rewatching.

• 12:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Really? I loved it.

• 12:22Chris Winterbauer?

  I liked the ending cue quite a bit in the finale.

• 12:25Lizzie Bassett?

  You can just say they drive off a cliff, Chris. If anybody doesn't know that at this point, that is their fault.

• 12:31Chris Winterbauer?

  The kind of like neo noir electric guitar vibe, it felt a little dated to me at first in a way that I found, again, a little frustrating because other elements of the movie didn't. And I kept thinking of his score that he would do, I guess, maybe two years later for True Romance.

• 12:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 12:45Chris Winterbauer?

  For Ridley Scott's brother, which the "You're So Cool" cue, it's like the steel drums, or I don't know what it is, Callistas or whatever. I find that so timeless. And I also kind of love the buoyancy of that cue. And I wish there was a little more buoyancy in this soundtrack, because I just felt like I wanted to enjoy the fun and games of what they were doing with a little less of the noir elements in the soundtrack, but that's just me.

• 13:09Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what? I actually found myself really loving how much of a time capsule the score is. Especially because, at least for me, the style of this movie and the style of their clothes and everything is so nostalgic. And so, like, if I could look like anybody ever, it would maybe be Gina Davis by the end of Thelma and Louise. And so there is something about that that I actually found very comforting and I liked it. I liked his little (blows guitar riffs) throughout this.

• 13:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I mean, it's a, this is like a neo-western.

• 13:38Lizzie Bassett?

  It is.

• 13:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It's pretty incredible.

• 13:40Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, let's get into it. So here are the details as always. Thelma and Louise is, of course, directed by Ridley Scott. It was written by Callie Corry. Shout out Nashville, which I also watched to the bitter end. It stars Susan Sarandon, Gina Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, Brad Pitt, and more.

• 13:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Steven Tobolowsky.

• 13:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Steven Tobolowsky. Always love a Tobolowsky appearance. It was released in 1991 and the IMDB logline is, "An Arkansas waitress and a housewife shoot a rapist and take off in a 66 Thunderbird." Yes.

• 14:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Lizzie Bassett?

  That is it.

• 14:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Good logline.

• 14:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. All right. So our main sources for today are Off the Cliff by Becky Aikman, and interviews with, of course, Ridley Scott, Susan Sarandon, Callie Corry, Gina Davis, and GQ Hollywood Reporter decider, many, many more, plus a great making of article from Vanity Fair in 2013, as well as a 1991 Time Magazine cover article. All right, Chris, while it may be difficult for some youngins today to understand, Thelma and Louise wasn't just extremely radical for its time, it was kind of unheard of. To get a sense of where Hollywood stood on women in general, let's take a brief look back at where all of this started.

• 14:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, they stood on them.

• 14:49Lizzie Bassett?

  They stood directly on top of them and said, "You don't get up."

• 14:54Lizzie Bassett?

  So, but Chris, early Hollywood was not really a boys' club in the same way that it would later become.

• 15:00Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 15:00Lizzie Bassett?

  We've talked about this, but many, many women had seats at the table. They actually outnumbered men as stars. They also wrote, directed, and edited and produced films. You've got Dorothy Arzner, first woman admitted to the Directors Guild. She directed Paramount's first talkie, The Wild Party. Also, some of the earliest pioneer screenwriters were women like Anita Luce and Frances Marion. And then during the real peak of the studio era, 1930s, 1950s, you've got Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell. Like, these are the names that are the box office draws, not the men.

• 15:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Betty Davis.

• 15:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Betty Davis. How could I forget? She's gonna haunt me from the grave. But behind the scenes, things had changed pretty massively when the money started rolling in. The men heading up the studios didn't think women could handle helming major productions and also didn't want to give them any money. So from the mid 30s until the 60s, there were actually only two female directors really working in Hollywood. That is Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino. And it did not actually get better when the studio system collapsed. In fact, it got worse. In the 60s, movies like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Easy Rider, these all gave rise to the auteur era. Basically, all of the auteurs were men. As The New York Times's Judy Klemmssrud wrote in 1974, quote, "At a time when feminism seems to be in full flower, there is a dearth of good roles for women in American films.

• 16:15Lizzie Bassett?

  And when women do get parts at all, they are usually cast as prostitutes, empty-headed blondes, sex kittens, or neurotic housewives." This is, of course, in pretty stark contrast to the kinds of roles that, for example, Joan Crawford had been playing in the 30s and 40s.

• 16:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the women's pictures, and I don't mean that in a reductive way, but run of films, this was a very robust, you know what I mean?

• 16:35Lizzie Bassett?

  They were moneymakers. Mildred Pierce, Gaslight. I mean, like, some of these classics are very much led by women.

• 16:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, even just like, even the more outlandish movies like Notorious, you know, for example, like, those are cool roles.

• 16:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, totally. I like everything in Rosalind Russell's career was, you know, those kind of roles were completely dried up by the 70s. And by the way, from that same New York Times piece, the author wrote that male speaking roles outnumbered women's 12 to 1 at that point.

• 17:01Chris Winterbauer?

  12 angry men.

• 17:02Lizzie Bassett?

  12 angry men, 1 very angry lady.

• 17:05Chris Winterbauer?

  1 stenographer.

• 17:08Lizzie Bassett?

  And by the way, there was only one actress who was considered truly bankable in the 70s.

• 17:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Who was it?

• 17:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Barbara.

• 17:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Bab.

• 17:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Bab. Listen, Bab's raked in the cash.

• 17:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Bab's is great.

• 17:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Bab's is great. But between the late 60s and 70s, also only one woman was directing studio-backed films. We've covered her big time flopper that put her in director's jail. Who was it?

• 17:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Elaine May.

• 17:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Elaine May. That's right.

• 17:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Lizzie Bassett?

  By the 80s, there were now two women with real sway in Hollywood. Still Barbara, can't take her crown, and now Jane Fonda.

• 17:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:38Lizzie Bassett?

  They both had created their own production companies. They were pushing for more female artistic, financial, and political say in filmmaking. And also, both are raking in the cash. Barbra Streisand has A Star is Born, she has Yentl, Fonda had Coming Home. So as the 80s are rolling on, women are starting to try to re-enter the workforce at a different rate than they had in previous decades.

• 17:59Chris Winterbauer?

  One area, though, that women are still, I think, were at least still very influential.

• 18:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Editing.

• 18:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Editing.

• 18:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Chris Winterbauer?

  In the new Hollywood era.

• 18:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you know why.

• 18:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Patton Oswalt has.

• 18:08Lizzie Bassett?

  It's because, it's because men, yeah, Patton Oswalt's joke, it's because men just want to see it all out there and then the.

• 18:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Ah, shooting so much film, ah! Okay, you can go away now.

• 18:16Lizzie Bassett?

  It's the women's job to organize it into a story. Yeah, they kept them there in the dark editing room. And among these women who were excited to enter the workforce in Hollywood was a 29-year-old woman named Callie Corry. Now, Corry was born in 1957 in Texas. She grew up in Paducah, Kentucky. Her mother, Virginia, was an artist. She led the Paducah Art Guild. Her father, Eli, was a first-generation Lebanese-American and he was.

• 18:40Chris Winterbauer?

  I was gonna say it, that's a Lebanese last name. I was curious.

• 18:42Lizzie Bassett?

  He was the chief of surgery at the local hospital and the head of the regional medical association. So he was a big deal. And she really adored her parents. They had a great relationship. Her father was extremely driven and he very, very much instilled that in Callie. He really pushed her to believe that true satisfaction in life would come from success, from high achievement. But in 1974, when Callie was 16 years old, her parents traveled out of town to attend a wedding in Louisville. In the middle of the night, Dr. Corry turned to his wife and said, "There's something really wrong. Call an ambulance." And he died shortly thereafter from a cerebral aneurysm at only 47 years old. This really shattered Callie, understandably. She spent the rest of her adolescence in a period of deep depression.

• 19:25Lizzie Bassett?

  She initially enrolled in college to study landscape architecture, but she switched to theater, hoping it would kind of help her escape her own personal life. And instead, it really made her feel worse. She also saw zero good opportunities to write or direct. And so she figured, all right, I'll try acting, only to discover that the roles were quite slim pickings and were all too shallow or too sexualized. So she gave up. She dropped out of college. She moved to Nashville to see if there was anything she could sink her teeth into there. She did pick up work at a local theater and she waited tables at clubs. But she learned pretty quickly, most of the clientele at those clubs consisted of guys who would grab her ass as she delivered drinks. But she did, at one of those after-hours clubs, meet a young country singer named Pam Tillis. And this is the friendship that would eventually inspire Thelma and Louise.

• 20:09Lizzie Bassett?

  And Pam Tillis went on to become a very successful country singer, but she apparently, according to Callie Corry, was very similar to Thelma in a lot of ways. Very sweet, very funny. After four years working in Nashville's nightlife scene, Callie decided to head to LA to give acting the old drop out of college try again. So she got a job waiting tables at the Improv, which of course was the comedy club for stand-up comedians, everybody, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams. And while working in LA, she got a taste of the industry's underbelly. One night, when Larry David was walking her to her car after work, they were actually held up at gunpoint. And then just one night before, she and good old Pam Tillis had been jumped from behind after a party. So a double whammy and not even Larry David can save you. Larry David's not who you want with you.

• 20:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Larry David's reaction to getting held up would be so funny. Why ain't you taking her money? What's going on?

• 20:59Lizzie Bassett?

  They did take her money. She also couldn't help notice how few female comics there were, and also even fewer female screenwriters. According to Jim Velelli, her comic friend, quote, "Those early years in her twenties, being smarter than so many of the guys she was hanging around, and knowing it, I know she got hurt. She took a big honk of hurt and turned it into Thelma and Louise. I think she became a great writer because she lived some life." So she quit again and started over again, taking a receptionist gig at a company that made music videos and commercials. And this is where she met a producer named Amanda Temple. They became very close friends and producing partners. They worked on music videos for Motley Crue and Foreigner. But she still kept hearing her father's words ringing in her ears, that the key to her happiness would be success.

• 21:41Lizzie Bassett?

  And she didn't really feel like what she was doing at this point was success. It was the mid 80s and Callie would later describe this period as, quote, "A skanky time. It would have been less objectionable if I had had any creative anything, but I was just a facilitator." She also got a front row seat at this company in terms of seeing how women were treated on sets. Amanda Temple told Vanity Fair in 2013 about a casting session when, quote, "A particular director, a huge movie director today, who will go nameless, said, 'I want more girls with bigger tits, Callie, and less clothes. Callie doesn't suffer fools, and there were a lot of foolish people around in those days. Callie and I used to say, 'You get what you settle for,' and sometimes she would say, 'I'll show them one day.'"

• 22:19Chris Winterbauer?

  It might have been Michael Bay.

• 22:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Might have been. I feel like it has to have been Michael Bay.

• 22:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It seems like the only one that makes sense because he was doing music videos at that time. And in 2012, he's doing Transformers 7 or whatever, you know?

• 22:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Chris Winterbauer?

  And also, we know what he likes.

• 22:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Big tits and explosions. Sorry, excuse me. How could I forget?

• 22:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Exploding boobs.

• 22:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 22:42Chris Winterbauer?

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• 23:27Chris Winterbauer?

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• 24:12Chris Winterbauer?

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• 24:53Lizzie Bassett?

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• 25:38Lizzie Bassett?

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• 26:04Lizzie Bassett?

  So one night in the spring of 1988, Callie was driving home in the early hours after a brutal shoot. And all of a sudden, she said, quote, "Out of nowhere, I thought two women go on a crime spree." That one sentence, I felt the character arcs, I saw the whole movie. So she really infused Louise with her own kind of jaded sense of humor. She bases the character of Thelma around Pam, as we said. By the way, Callie said of Pam, she's one of the funniest people in the world and scattered. She'd borrow a pair of shoes and return one. And she finished writing Thelma and Louise six months later. And Chris, the industry response was silence.

• 26:40Lizzie Bassett?

  So Chris, can you explain what the Bechdel test is?

• 26:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Basically, it's a test to see if the women in your film have any interior agency slash interests outside of the men in your film. Basically, do two female characters speak to each other about something that is not related to the male characters in the movie?

• 26:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Bingo, that's it.

• 27:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Lizzie Bassett?

  That is the only qualifier for something to pass the Bechdel test, which seems like the bare minimum, right?

• 27:05Chris Winterbauer?

  You'd think.

• 27:06Lizzie Bassett?

  You'd think. But between 1985 and 1989, just over a third of movies passed the Bechdel test.

• 27:14Chris Winterbauer?

  A third of movies with major female characters or... Because part of the issue is there's just so few female characters, like you said, with good speaking roles to begin with.

• 27:22Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe it is a third of movies, period, because this does not have to be a lead character. It just simply has to have two women in it.

• 27:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 27:29Lizzie Bassett?

  They talk to each other about something other than a man. That's it. It's a very low bar.

• 27:32Chris Winterbauer?

  That's why in every one of my scripts, I put in a scene of two women talking about the bond market, just, just as a cutaway, so it passes the Bechdel test.

• 27:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Perfect. But even if the films did pass, which as we said, somewhere around a third of them at that point did, most movies at that point were still directed and written by men. So right away, this script is facing three major problems. Number one, the leads are women. They are specifically working-class women. They're speaking very critically about men. Also, the industry understanding at the time was that women will go to a guy's film, but guys will not go to a women's film. Number two, Callie hadn't written anything that had been produced at this point, and she had almost no connections in the film industry. So she's a totally untested.

• 28:12Chris Winterbauer?

  It'd be a hurdle no matter your gender.

• 28:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 28:15Chris Winterbauer?

  But certainly a bigger one if you're not, you know, a dude.

• 28:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 28:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Meaning, you don't have the boys' club to leverage.

• 28:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And then number three, what's maybe the toughest sell about this movie? Think about the end.

• 28:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, the characters die at the end of the movie?

• 28:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 28:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I mean, they basically decide, like, we want to go out on our terms rather than be taken in to custody by the patriarchy that we've been spurning at the end of it. I mean, look, the movie very smartly sets up all these men with guns at the end, you know? The men are... I know Madsen, it gets a bit of a redeeming moment, and Keitel's not a bad guy ultimately. But basically, it's just pointing out that this whole thing's rotten to the core, really.

• 28:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it's rigged.

• 28:56Chris Winterbauer?

  This whole society. It's rigged. It's rigged. We've got no shot.

• 28:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 28:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Let's go out on our terms.

• 29:00Lizzie Bassett?

  And Callie Corry was not about to change that.

• 29:03Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 29:03Lizzie Bassett?

  She was like,

• 29:04Chris Winterbauer?

  You can't.

• 29:04Lizzie Bassett?

  "This is the ending.

• 29:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm not changing it." And, you know, some people were quick to point out, "It could be read that it suggests that if women refuse to play by the rules of the patriarchy, the result is death." Which like, yes.

• 29:18Chris Winterbauer?

  That's kind of her point.

• 29:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 29:20Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like, it may not be a literal death, but it is a death of some kind.

• 29:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 29:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It might be like an emotional death, or a creative death, or a professional death, you know? But if you don't play by these rules, you will be squashed in some way, is what the movie seems to me to be saying.

• 29:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Susan Sarandon would later say, "It's the least compromising ending."

• 29:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Lizzie Bassett?

  You built this whole film to have these people not settle anymore, and then you'd toss them back into the system.

• 29:44Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also just like so poetic and emotional.

• 29:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 29:47Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so good.

• 29:48Lizzie Bassett?

  But of course, Hollywood studios would see it as a major commercial risk. It denies audiences their happy ending. So basically, this was going to be an absolute slog to get the script off the ground. But one person who really loved it was Callie's music video producing partner and Michael Bay's worst enemy, Amanda Temple. She encouraged Callie to start shopping it around. She agreed to help Callie produce it. And the plan, in their eyes, was pretty simple. They're like, "We're just going to make it a low-budget indie, and we're going to find some fool to give us $5 million," according to Callie Corry. So Callie and Amanda took turns hand-delivering pages to the studios and producers. And Chris, no one was interested. The feedback was always the same. They would say, "Why do I want to watch a movie about violent women? And then why do I want to watch those violent women drive themselves off a cliff? I don't."

• 30:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Some soft leads suggested that maybe, what if, hear me out here, what if they just drive over a ditch and land safely on the other side? Then we might be interested.

• 30:45Chris Winterbauer?

  It's the worst idea I've ever heard.

• 30:46Lizzie Bassett?

  So bad. I hope whoever said that is deeply embarrassed. But Kelly would not budge. You take the ending as is or not at all. She said to Slate in 2022, it's like they're going to spend the rest of their lives not being believed, being put in tiny boxes. They know what's going to happen. It's the same thing. We all know the story. There was not going to be any justice for them and they knew it and we knew it, just like we know there's no justice for Tom Robinson and To Kill a Mockingbird. They're always going to find a way to just make it hurt even worse. But Amanda and Kelly knew they had something special. However, every door was slamming in their face. So they started to wonder, what are we missing here? Maybe we need to go to someone and ask for some advice. So Amanda reached out to Mimi Polk Gitlin, who was a friend of a friend, and she was running Ridley Scott's

• 31:27Lizzie Bassett?

  production company, Scott Free. And they just reached out to Mimi and Amanda said, you're connected. Will you tell us if we're mad? I mean, shit, why are people not getting this? And some time went by, but after about six weeks, they got a call. And they didn't just get an opinion, they got a bit more than they bargained for because Mimi said, I love it. And so does Ridley Scott. Now, you mentioned this, Chris, but by the late eighties Ridley was in kind of a big slump. Arguably the biggest slump of his career. Blade Runner had flopped, so had Legend, Someone to Watch Over Me as well. Not to mention, as we discussed on Aliens, Fox just completely overlooked him for the sequel to Alien. He needed a win as a director. And as far as he was concerned, even though he did love the script,

• 32:11Lizzie Bassett?

  he didn't think that this was the thing that was going to give him that win. He said, quote, "It was very much not my thing. I tend to do action-driven things. I love period. This was about women talking about guys and what assholes guys can be." So he's like, I love it. I think it's great. I want to produce it. No interest in directing it.

• 32:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Actually, think of his generation. He is one of the few male major directors in Hollywood to direct a number of very, very good female-driven movies.

• 32:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he is.

• 32:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Candidly, many of which, what I like about it is it's incidental that the females lead, right?

• 32:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Alien, obviously, then G.I. Jane, Thelma and Louise have a bit more of a feminist angle, you could say. But then Hannibal, Prometheus, Alien Covenant, House of Gucci, you know.

• 32:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 32:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Ridley Scott, like, I don't think Spielberg quite has that. Scorsese definitely doesn't have that. You know what I mean? Coppola doesn't have that. He's kind of an outlier in this way.

• 32:58Lizzie Bassett?

  The thing about Ridley Scott that we're going to learn over the course of this episode that's so fun is that he is essentially an accidental feminist.

• 33:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 33:06Lizzie Bassett?

  He's like, he does it because he likes the story and he doesn't really discriminate about a good story. And if that good story means that you have a woman as the protagonist, he doesn't care.

• 33:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. It probably helps that he's not American in a way.

• 33:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe, although I have strong feelings about the way that Brits treat women. Spoiler alert, it's not better. It's just different.

• 33:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I guess I just meant like from a, the sort of box office conventions that studios are bringing to this, where they're just saying like, oh, women can't open a movie. You know what I mean? Like that sort of thing. I wonder if that might help.

• 33:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. They had blockbuster queen Jane Austen on their side, so they should know. All right. But he said, you know what? I would produce this. And Kelly and Amanda immediately thought, why? They were very confused about why Ridley Scott wanted to be attached to this movie. They were very concerned about the possibility of him wanting to direct this movie. Why do you think that might be? Is there anyone else with the last name Scott that maybe they had seen his movies and thought, no?

• 34:03Chris Winterbauer?

  His brother?

• 34:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 34:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Tony Scott?

• 34:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Tony Scott.

• 34:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Cause well, Tony Scott was in, let's see, he'd done Top Gun, Days of Thunder by this point in time.

• 34:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he'd also done Beverly Hills Cop 2, which had come out the year before and Kelly was apparently.

• 34:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, my God. I forgot he directed that.

• 34:18Lizzie Bassett?

  He did. And Kelly Corry was horrified by that in particular. She said, quote, "If this script ever makes it to the big screen, it would be a miracle if they haven't changed the title to Tits and Bullets." Good title, though.

• 34:30Chris Winterbauer?

  But, you know, I think the Scott brothers are very different in their sensibilities.

• 34:34Lizzie Bassett?

  They're extremely different. And what was happening is they were totally conflating Ridley Scott with Tony Scott.

• 34:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure. And at this time, Tony was more successful for this little bit of a run, I feel like, at least financially at the box office.

• 34:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Than Ridley.

• 34:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And now someone must have explained to them that the two brothers have, as you pointed out, very different styles. And once they went back and familiarized themselves more with Ridley's game, they realized he had a lot more to offer, but they were still concerned about how well he could really understand this story that was rooted in a female experience. Plus, Kelly Corry had very strong opinions about basically everything, including who would fill out the cast. She wanted Holly Hunter as Thelma, Frances McDormand as Louise. Not going to object to that.

• 35:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 35:14Lizzie Bassett?

  And she had someone in mind already to direct. Chris, who would she have chosen?

• 35:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Is it a female director?

• 35:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Well, it's her. She wanted to direct it.

• 35:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, she wanted to direct it. Okay, got it.

• 35:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Thought you were going to say like Penny Marshall or something like that.

• 35:28Lizzie Bassett?

  No, although that would have been interesting. No, she really wanted to direct it, which again, like, that's a tough, tough sell. This is your first script. You haven't produced anything. You haven't directed anything. So weeks passed and Kelly and Amanda were getting more and more nervous that their wishes would not be honored if the wrong studio or the wrong director got a hold of it. So Mimi Polk was like, listen, we are still very interested. I will get you a literary agent. So she set her up with Diane Cairns. And Kelly went into this meeting with the literary agent and she said, the ending will not change. I want the opportunity to direct and when a studio signs on, you will pay me half a million dollars for the screenplay. And Diane was like, okay.

• 36:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, maybe we can get two out of those three.

• 36:10Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly what she said.

• 36:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Lizzie Bassett?

  She said, quote, "At a time when most women had been conditioned to be more reserved, she had no problem plowing right in there." But yes, she managed expectations. She told Kelly, listen, you're going to have to compromise most likely on the directing clause. There's only really two women the year prior had made top 50 movies, Penny Marshall, who you mentioned, and Amy Heckerling.

• 36:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Women just really weren't directing, let alone a woman with no credits to her name.

• 36:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. It was like Penelope Sveras would be a couple of years out after this with Wayne's World and

• 36:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Rachel Tawley with Tink Girl in 95. Yeah, there's not a ton of big budget.

• 36:41Lizzie Bassett?

  No. Diane Cairns later explained what the odds were like for Kelly's movie. She said, "Just to write it and get it made, astronomical. To get it made well, impossible. To go through what this movie went through once in a lifetime, 10 lifetimes." But she was like, I'll try. And she started shopping the script around. Meanwhile, Amanda really urged Kelly to take the opportunity with Mimi Polk and Ridley Scott. She had taken the project as far as it could go and she knew that like it or not, they needed the weight of Scott Free behind the movie. And she actually agreed to step down as a producer on the film in order for Scott and Polk to take it on. This reminds me of, what's the name of the guy in that thing you do who lives in the back of his truck in the trailer? Who's like their first agent?

• 37:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah. I can't remember. Yeah. But yes.

• 37:26Lizzie Bassett?

  He bird dogs them and then takes them to the bigger. That's what Amanda Temple did, which is very sweet. So Kelly agreed and Amanda told her, Kelly, it's now going to be a Ridley Scott movie, which is a completely different animal than what we envisioned. It's going to get a lot of attention. It's going to be a movie that everyone is talking about. Now it was Ridley Scott's turn to find the director, which still wasn't him. He was like, I don't get the whole lady POV. Also, he is British and that actually felt to him like he should not direct this because this is so much about the plight of American women, which like, yes, that makes sense. But he knew who was perfect for the job. Chris, which director did Ridley want to put up for this movie?

• 38:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Tony Scott, his brother?

• 38:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Tony Scott.

• 38:09Chris Winterbauer?

  That's great. I love how he's like, with all my deep connections in Hollywood, I'm going to pick up the phone and dial my brother.

• 38:17Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. Ridley said of his brother, he was very good with women. He could make them really sexy because they had that kind of rapport with them. And he was hot then, so it would have been made easily. Okay.

• 38:27Chris Winterbauer?

  He's right about the last part.

• 38:28Lizzie Bassett?

  He is right about the last part.

• 38:28Chris Winterbauer?

  It would have gotten the movie made.

• 38:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. He's misunderstanding the point of the movie with the first part, but that's okay.

• 38:34Chris Winterbauer?

  My brother's going to make your woman so hot.

• 38:39Lizzie Bassett?

  And he also said, you know, Tony was very, very popular with people. People loved my brother more than me. And when asked why, he said, I don't know. He was more outgoing and sweeter. I'm not so sweet. That's an understatement.

• 38:51Chris Winterbauer?

  And that seems consistent with his directing style. There are some very funny stories from Russell Crowe about working with Ridley Scott, you know, on Gladiator that you can find, you know, but yeah.

• 39:00Lizzie Bassett?

  He's gruff. He's always got a cigar in his mouth.

• 39:02Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a little taciturn, not very talkative.

• 39:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Chris Winterbauer?

  But like incredible artist, amazing visual eye.

• 39:07Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Ridley Scott so much. I know that there's, you know, long swaths of mess in his career. I don't care.

• 39:13Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's just a workhorse. He's like in his eighties and he's putting out a movie a year. It's insane.

• 39:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Needs to calm down. Tony Scott seemed like the natural choice for Ridley Scott. But of course, for Kelly Corry, this was her worst nightmare. And I want to note, we are not shitting on Tony Scott's films. I love many of his movies that he directed, but I will say I do understand Corry's concerns about him for this particular movie.

• 39:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. As we mentioned, like True Romance would be just a bit after this.

• 39:37Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. That hadn't come out yet.

• 39:39Chris Winterbauer?

  I really liked True Romance, but I think it works because of Christian Slater's POV.

• 39:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what I mean? More. And like, I do think Patricia Arquette's somewhat underserved in that movie, even though I really liked that movie.

• 39:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. But if you're looking at what he had made to this point, I get where she's coming from. We should also note that unfortunately Tony Scott did die by suicide in 2012, which was awful. We lost him way too early. He was an extremely talented director, but not right for this. However, for now, they put a pin in the director conversation and they turned their attention to casting. So when Gina Davis received an early copy of Thelma and Louise, she at that point had just won an Oscar for The Accidental Tourist. And according to Becky Aikman's Off the Cliff, around this time, there were really only three or four meaty three-dimensional roles for women in any given year. And Gina was like, I'm not waiting around for one to come to me. I want this one. Gina said, "These were two completely filled out characters who were absolutely equal, who had so many colors and moments, and they had to transform themselves in four days into killing themselves

• 40:34Lizzie Bassett?

  and it had to make sense." So she was super determined. She cold called Kelly Corry. She went over to her house to be like, can we go over the script? But everybody thought Gina Davis. Davis was not really a strong candidate for an action film, which is, I guess, one way to view this movie. But Chris, knowing what we know about Gina from Cutthroat Island and from what she'd done before this, why do you think people were not so hot on her for this?

• 40:57Chris Winterbauer?

  First of all, I want to express this movie is, I think, both a quantum leap forward for her as a performer.

• 41:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Chris Winterbauer?

  And just in terms of how good the role is from The Accidental Tourist. It's funny that she wins Best Supporting Actress for The Accidental Tourist. It is a very unusual, novelistic, you know, late eighties movie. It is a William Hurt vehicle. I think you would describe everyone on the cast as neuroatypical or neurodivergent by today's standards. It's very twee. I really like elements of it, but candidly, her characters, even though it's a very good performance, it's pretty two dimensional. And she's, I don't know, it's like stiff is the wrong word because I think that's the style of performance that she's doing. But she's very tall, she's extremely thin. And I think that like she'd been really pushed into the quirk.

• 41:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 41:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Of her looks and her eyes.

• 41:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, think about Beetlejuice.

• 41:39Chris Winterbauer?

  And Beetlejuice, for example. I mean, she's arguably playing more straight in Beetlejuice than she is in The Accidental Tourist in some ways. But I think that like, I mean, she is rail thin in The Accidental Tourist. And I could see somebody thinking, oh, well, this woman's like, you bring her in as the kind of.

• 41:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Quirky love interest.

• 41:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Quirky love interest, the melancholic comedic relief in your movie driving an action film. I would imagine it's not dissimilar to how people felt about Bruce Willis coming off of Moonlight and going into Die Hard.

• 42:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. But Gina had her agent, David Edenberg, call Ridley and rally for her. But Ridley was like, sorry, too light. Because two other leading ladies had already snapped up the roles. Any guesses who these were? I'll tell you right now, they were big stars, much bigger than Gina Davis, arguably at the time. Both blonde, one very blonde, one sort of dark blonde.

• 42:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Late eight, early nineties. I don't know who, who, who?

• 42:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 42:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I should have guessed Pfeiffer. I never would have guessed Foster. I don't know why. I didn't think of Foster as blonde at the time, but I should have gotten Pfeiffer.

• 42:40Lizzie Bassett?

  She's, I would argue, dirty blonde in Silence of the Lambs.

• 42:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Pfeiffer's great. You know, we just watched Margot Has Money Troubles. And I gotta say, I thought Pfeiffer was the best part of that show.

• 42:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I loved her.

• 42:48Chris Winterbauer?

  I liked the show a lot. I thought she was so good. She's a really good actress.

• 42:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree, she is. I love Michelle Pfeiffer. God, she looks good. I don't understand how she looks like that. I would love to look like that now, and I'm 37.

• 42:59Chris Winterbauer?

  She's doing whatever Tony Goldwin's doing.

• 43:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, they're sitting in the same basement, attached to the same blood bags. Good for them. Now, this did not stop David Edenberg from calling Ridley Scott's office every single week to be like, have you heard about Gina Davis? What about Gina Davis? Gina Davis would like to be in this movie. But Ridley didn't give a shit because he was like, whatever. I have to figure out between Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer, who's going to play Thelma and who's going to play Louise?

• 43:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Because they both wanted to play Thelma. As you pointed out, this is the character who changes more over the course of the movie. They actually handled it pretty diplomatically. They apparently got on the phone with each other and worked it out. Who do you think wanted to play who?

• 43:34Chris Winterbauer?

  In the end.

• 43:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, who did they pick? I think they got it right. I will say that.

• 43:38Chris Winterbauer?

  God, I could see Pfeiffer going either way. I'm going to say Jodie Foster. Fuck.

• 43:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know why this is killing me. Jodie Foster, Louise, Michelle Pfeiffer, Thelma.

• 43:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Nope, flip it. Jodie Foster, Thelma, Michelle Pfeiffer, Louise. I think that's right. There's a hardness to Michelle Pfeiffer that Jodie Foster doesn't have. And I think.

• 44:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, see, I'm thinking about Clarice Starling. I'm like, no, I think Jodie Foster can do it.

• 44:04Lizzie Bassett?

  She's very sweet. I think actually Clarice Starling is a good indicator of Thelma, to be honest, because she is sort of wide eyed, but she's determined. I could see it. I think that's right.

• 44:14Chris Winterbauer?

  I know, I could see it both ways. That's why it was a hard choice.

• 44:16Lizzie Bassett?

  I think they would have been great in this, by the way. This would have been good casting.

• 44:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, also the Frances McDormand Molly Hunter version, which we like, don't exactly see in Raising Arizona, but kind of, you know, would also have been fantastic.

• 44:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Now Ridley and Mimi, obviously, they're stoked. These are two of the most bankable women in Hollywood.

• 44:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Huge.

• 44:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, this pairing is going to sell tickets. But Callie Corry, not happy. She did not want bombshells as her leads. She had written Thelma and Louise to look like everyday, working class women.

• 44:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I think Foster fits that.

• 44:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 44:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Personally.

• 44:44Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I think Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't.

• 44:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I understand the concern with Pfeiffer.

• 44:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 44:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 44:48Lizzie Bassett?

  And there was another problem, which is that even with two of the biggest stars in Hollywood attached, nobody wanted to fund this. So when The Odd Studio did express some interest, they almost all backed off when they found out about Callie Corry's $500,000 price tag for the script. Eventually, in July of 1989, the script did find its way into a pile that Becky Pollock, daughter of Sidney Pollock, was reading for her employer, Pathé Entertainment, headed by Alan Ladd Jr.

• 45:17Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. I forgot he'd have to Pathé.

• 45:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Laddie, back again. He loved it, Becky loved it. And he would come on as a co-producer and financier alongside Ridley and Mimi. And this was great for Callie Corry because Becky Pollock ended up being a huge ally. She was very insistent that they keep the ending the way that it was.

• 45:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats. And I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&M's, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy to make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispie treats and peanut butter M&M's. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog Q. Mars knows he needs a celebration too.

• 46:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited time Halloween offerings.

• 46:45Speaker 03

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• 47:22Lizzie Bassett?

  So this is great news. They have their female leads set, the producers are set. They still don't have a director. But luckily for Callie, Tony Scott had said, no, thank you, telling Ridley he wasn't sure he understood the characters because, you know, he had, quote, "problems with women." And we did a lot of digging to try and figure out what he meant by this. It seems he may have meant he didn't understand women well enough, but it also could have been a reference to his personal life, which was not going well at the time, thanks to an affair on the set of Beverly Hills Cop 2 and a divorce. Anyway, it was not going to be Tony. But it also wasn't just Tony who had a problem with this. As Ridley told GQ in 2025, nearly every director he approached had the same issues with the movie. He said, quote, "One of the four directors," he asked, "said, 'Listen, dude, it's two bitches in a car.' I said, 'Why are they bitches? Because they have a voice?'

• 48:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Another said, 'Oh, it's small,' to which I said, 'No, it's epic.'" And I started talking about how the proscenium, the landscape, was the third big character in the movie and that the film is an odyssey. I didn't realize that while I was interviewing these guys, I was talking myself into it. So he finally decided to sit down and talk to an actual woman, Callie Corry, to be specific. And she walked Ridley through what was driving the script, the cat calls, the harassment, the casual disrespect. And apparently, all of this came as quite a surprise to Ridley Scott, as though it were his first time hearing about what many women go through on a daily basis. And he, for his part, encouraged Callie to add in more humor, take the edge off in a couple of places because they did have to sell tickets and they didn't want to shut out 50% of the potential audience. And she agreed. It sounds like at this point, they actually really got along well and the notes were good.

• 48:51Lizzie Bassett?

  So the summer of 89 came and went and they still didn't have a director. Ridley considered Chris Mangas, Kevin Reynolds, Waterworld, Tim Hunter, but none of them felt like they could capture the humor. He also talked to Jonathan Kaplan, who had just done The Accused. He said no because he didn't want to be typecast as a director who covers sexual assaults. However, there was one variety of director that it seems Ridley Scott did not consider. A lady.

• 49:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Women.

• 49:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. He would, to his credit, later admit that maybe he should have looked at Catherine Piccolo, which it's like, yes.

• 49:22Chris Winterbauer?

  She actually, she had done Near Dark, you know, at this point, but she makes a lot of sense.

• 49:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 49:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Near Dark makes a lot of sense. Whether it had been a man or a woman heading into this, that is also a neo-Western genre road trip movie with interesting commentary on gender.

• 49:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. Oh, Ridley. According to Sue Williams, who worked with Ridley, she said, quote, "Ridley is very fair minded as far as women making it in the workplace, but at the same time, he's got the attitude of, I'll get my buddy to do it. He's three quarters of the way toward feminism."

• 49:51Lizzie Bassett?

  By fall of 1989, he had finally locked someone in. It was Richard Donner, who we have talked about on both The Omen and Superman.

• 49:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Interesting. I could see it.

• 50:01Chris Winterbauer?

  And he had done Goonies, I guess, a few years before this.

• 50:04Lizzie Bassett?

  But there was a problem. He came as a package deal. He wanted his wife, Lauren Schuler Donner, to share producing. And Ridley and Mimi said, no.

• 50:11Chris Winterbauer?

  They were producing together at this point. I think they had their own production shingle. They were doing TV, they'd been working with Amblin, so.

• 50:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. At this point, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster were like, we can't keep waiting around for this. So they went off to do Silence of the Lambs and Love Field. And now they're back to square one. They have no leads, they have no director. But of course, by then, word about this movie had spread across Hollywood. Every actress wanted to be part of this movie. Annie MacDowell, Kim Basinger, Meg Ryan, Cybill Shepherd, all interested. Alan Ladd Jr. apparently liked the idea of Cher, but Ridley Scott didn't think she was funny enough. Ridley, come on, incorrect.

• 50:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, what's interesting is, I would say Gina Davis's styling and performance in The Accidental Tourist evokes Cher a little bit. And so I could see a Cher world.

• 50:53Lizzie Bassett?

  100% I could see a Cher world.

• 50:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Sharon Madonna.

• 50:56Lizzie Bassett?

  No, get Madonna out of there.

• 50:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I know, but it just would have been funny.

• 51:00Lizzie Bassett?

  It never would have been made because Cher would have probably slapped Madonna at some point and they would have had to cancel the movie. So two major movie stars, these are both fully blondes pitched themselves to Pathé as a package deal, skipping the usual agency route and setting up the meeting themselves. Chris, any guesses for these two? They would shortly after this movie, only a year after, star together in a film that we have not yet covered. Big movie stars, both blonde.

• 51:25Chris Winterbauer?

  They would star in a movie together in a year?

• 51:27Lizzie Bassett?

  1992.

• 51:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know, Lizzie. I'm blanking.

• 51:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn.

• 51:33Chris Winterbauer?

  I almost said Meryl Streep and I was not going to say Goldie Hawn, but what did they star in together in 1992?

• 51:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Death Becomes Her.

• 51:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, that's right.

• 51:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 51:40Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great movie.

• 51:41Lizzie Bassett?

  So they were actually looking for their movie together, which they find with Death Becomes Her.

• 51:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, and I feel like it was Streep proving she can do comedy too, you know? She's so funny in that movie.

• 51:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I love that movie. Ridley, though, was not sold. He felt that Goldie Hawn was too old. She was around 43 or 44 at the time.

• 51:58Chris Winterbauer?

  God, she looked young.

• 51:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:59Chris Winterbauer?

  To me.

• 52:00Lizzie Bassett?

  She looks amazing. And Meryl Streep, he also wasn't sure that she could play a working class woman, which I'm also like, did you watch Silkwood?

• 52:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Silkwood?

• 52:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Where she plays Karen Silkwood, but whatever.

• 52:10Chris Winterbauer?

  But also like Kramer versus Kramer and some other stuff, too.

• 52:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Kramer versus Kramer, she's very elegant and

• 52:17Chris Winterbauer?

  I know.

• 52:17Lizzie Bassett?

  That may be actually what he was thinking more of when he thought maybe not.

• 52:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, okay.

• 52:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Very blonde, very beautiful nose. We love Meryl. So he said, no. And he was also finding reasons why literally every other director in town was wrong for the job, probably because at this point, he wanted to do it. He told Vanity Fair, quote, "I was, in a way, a very good choice to do it. I'd never had trouble letting women tell me what to do. All the years I'd run my company, I'd found that women were the best men for the job. Scott Free LA was run by a woman. Scott Free London was run by a woman. I could sit around and analyze the foolishness of men, since men are fundamentally the children in any relationship." Thank you, Ridley. So he said, fine, I'm directing this movie. And at this point, I think everyone was like, finally, Jesus Christ, now let's get our leads together. So both Callie and Ridley worried that too much star power might get in the way of what this movie was really about.

• 53:06Lizzie Bassett?

  So they went back through some of the less obvious casting choices. And of course, right in front of them was a months-long stream of missed calls from Gina Davis's agent. So Ridley met with Gina and she came so prepared and desperate for the role of Louise.

• 53:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 53:22Lizzie Bassett?

  She wanted to play Louise because she felt like it would move her into more mature, grounded acting territory.

• 53:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I mean, Thelma feels more like a half step from some of her other work as opposed to

• 53:32Lizzie Bassett?

  It's the better part, but yeah.

• 53:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Even though I think it's, again, a quantum leap, you know, but yes, I can understand if she wants to go against type.

• 53:39Lizzie Bassett?

  And Ridley was like, great, you'll play Thelma. He felt that with her height and her goofy glamour, she was better suited for that role. I do agree with him. And for Louise, he wanted someone who was tougher and less glossy, so he turned to New York casting director Lou DiGiammo. Sorry, sir. Who had worked on films like The Godfather and The French Connection. And Lou is who put forth Susan Sarandon. Ridley really liked that her sort of cynicism would contrast against Gina's kind of wide open expressiveness. But Susan was one of the few actresses in Hollywood who hadn't even heard of the script. She'd been living in New York. She was pretty jaded after being overlooked for an Oscar for Bull Durham,

• 54:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Lizzie Bassett?

  which she felt had really personally destroyed her. And when Ridley Scott sent her the script, she didn't really get it. She didn't really see it as a feminist film. She did see the power of the ending. She said, quote, "Actually, I said to Ridley, I hope we're not going to shoot this and then you test it and then we end up in Club Med. If I'm going to play that part, I want to make sure I know where it's going." And he said, "I can tell you that you will definitely die. I'm not sure about Thelma. You may push her out of the car at the last minute." And so she's like, as long as I die, fine. But she had a couple of bones to pick. She hated the proposal scene, which at this point was like very romantic. She also was not comfortable accepting the role of someone who shot a man. It didn't matter if he was a rapist. She said, quote, "It's a huge thing to take another life. I'm not interested in doing a revenge film. I'm not interested in being Charles Bronson or Arnold Schwarzenegger."

• 55:01Lizzie Bassett?

  However, the timing of the shoot was convenient. It would take place in the summer of 1990, which meant that her kids could come along without missing school. And she needed a gig, so she was in. Ridley's happy. Callie's happy. The studio is not happy. They felt like these two were not big enough names. Now, Scott did manage to win over Alad Lad Jr. by reminding him, I was right about Sigourney, wasn't I? Because of course he had had to push for her.

• 55:23Chris Winterbauer?

  And she was a much, just to be fair to Davis and Sarandon, Weaver was a true no name at the time of Ailing.

• 55:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, these two are not no names.

• 55:30Chris Winterbauer?

  These two are not no names at all.

• 55:32Lizzie Bassett?

  No. So pretty much immediately, Susan Sarandon and Gina Davis got started on very serious driving and shooting lessons, according to Susan Sarandon, while the rest of the male roles were being filled out. Now, for the role of Hal Slocum, Ridley really wanted a tough guy like James Caan. And they actually tried to get James Caan and then they realized, we don't want to work with James Caan. So they landed on Harvey Keitel. For Daryl, both Dan Aykroyd and Bill Pullman were considered. But Gina Davis had in mind her ex-boyfriend, Chris McDonald, who she had left upon meeting and getting engaged to Jeff Goldblum, but they were still on good terms. Although wires got crossed and apparently the casting director invited McDonald to read for Harlan, the rapist.

• 56:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I mean, he could have done it.

• 56:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, but he showed up. He was like, I'll take what I can get at this point. Ridley Scott was like, absolutely not. I am not having her ex play the person who assaults her. So he gave him the part of Daryl, which was what she intended from the beginning.

• 56:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 56:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Interestingly, they had a couple of musicians read for Jimmy, including Dwight Yoakam and Huey Lewis.

• 56:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Huey Lewis makes sense.

• 56:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Dwight Yoakam could too. Dwight Yoakam's a very good actor, although I think we know him best as being scary from like Sling Blade, but he is good.

• 56:41Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I was thinking, yeah.

• 56:42Lizzie Bassett?

  He can be sweet too, though. Ridley had actually originally wanted Michael Madsen to play Harlan, but Madsen said no because he didn't want to get typecast. He wanted to play something different and so they offered him Jimmy. Now, the last major role to cast was, of course, J.D. And every 20-something guy in Hollywood was trying to get this part.

• 57:01Chris Winterbauer?

  River Phoenix, I'm sure was maybe considered.

• 57:05Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, I didn't see him, but everybody else. So Dermot Mulroney auditioned, but he made a critical error, which was that he brought his wife, Catherine Keener, along and she massively outshone him and was actually cast as Hal's wife, which was later cut in the edit, but she was in this. Mark Ruffalo read, as did Dylan McDermott. Brad Pitt auditioned, but Ridley Scott felt that he looked too young. He was around 26. It was a real slog. Everybody was too broody. Nobody was hot enough. Apparently, for one audition, a 28-year-old actor came in with heavy eyelids and sideburns. He overacted intensely. He was hunching, fidgeting, gnawing on a toothpick. Everybody in the room was like, God, this guy is terrible. Get him out of here. It was George Clooney.

• 57:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 57:46Lizzie Bassett?

  So after sitting through a bunch of duds, Ridley settled on Billy Baldwin.

• 57:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 57:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's fine. And the shoot was set for June 11th of 1990. Now, apparently Ridley and art director Nora Spencer drove across the country through Nashville, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma to try and scout locations. And halfway across Texas, Ridley said, what the fuck are we doing here? It all looks the same to me. We can do this in the valley and I can go home every night. I can find the Grand Canyon in Utah. To which I say, Ridley, it doesn't look the same.

• 58:17Chris Winterbauer?

  There are none of these hills in Oklahoma.

• 58:19Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 58:20Chris Winterbauer?

  This makes no sense.

• 58:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't care, but yes.

• 58:23Chris Winterbauer?

  It is definitely a British man's interpretation of the American South.

• 58:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 58:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Like Delta area, basically.

• 58:31Lizzie Bassett?

  It's just so funny because Arkansas has a very particular landscape that looks like nothing in this movie.

• 58:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Forested, for example.

• 58:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep, forested, hilly, but not particularly mountainous.

• 58:43Chris Winterbauer?

  The sheer number of shots that take place in the middle of the day with the sun out where it is pouring rain are very funny. Like, there's like, run the rain machine. Run the rain machine.

• 58:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Because it's not raining in California.

• 58:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Lizzie Bassett?

  They also initially had wanted to shoot at the Grand Canyon, but that was off the table because the park service's PR lead was like, no, you're not going to have a movie about women driving off the cliff in this. They actually tried to use First Amendment rights to say they didn't need government sign-off to film this in a national park, to which the government said, the fuck you say? And then they gave up because Ridley Scott was like, I don't even want the Grand Canyon. It's too big. So they settled on Canyonlands National Park on the Colorado River in Utah. So with just two days to go before production was scheduled to start, everything fell apart because William Baldwin jumped ship for Backdraft.

• 59:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Backdraft.

• 59:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And since Pathé hadn't locked in his contract, he was able to walk. So the casting team sent a distress call to every agency in town. Ridley had Gina Davis come back to read with the four strongest contenders. Robert Downey Jr. was one of them. I think he was probably very good, but Ridley Scott did feel that he was just too short compared to Gina Davis's six feet tall for it to really work. And finally, they got down to the fourth name on the list and it was Brad Pitt.

• 59:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Is that why they had him grow out his stubble in this movie? Because he looked too young?

• 1:00:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I think so, because he really felt like he looked too young. In the audition, he said to Brad Pitt, "I want to see a real sociopath." And Pitt later admitted, "I was fresh out of Missouri. I had to go home and look up what the definition of sociopath actually was."

• 1:00:13Chris Winterbauer?

  He does do the accent. I found his accent was very natural in this movie.

• 1:00:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, because he's from Missouri. He's a Missouri boy.

• 1:00:20Chris Winterbauer?

  But Keitel, on the other hand, I was like, just don't have him do an accent.

• 1:00:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:00:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I found his accent so distracting in this movie.

• 1:00:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, you are not from Arkansas, sir.

• 1:00:28Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 1:00:28Lizzie Bassett?

  But of course, the chemistry with Gina was undeniable. She became very flustered in that audition and she actually pushed Ridley to, quote, "Hire the blonde one," which is of course Brad Pitt.

• 1:00:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's fun because it's a reversal of expectations in that he's arguably more attractive, right? He becomes the sex object in a really fun way.

• 1:00:45Lizzie Bassett?

  He's very, very hot in this movie. So hot, so charming. And I love, I love how kind of weasely he lets himself be in this, too.

• 1:00:52Chris Winterbauer?

  He's super weasely.

• 1:00:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Hot weasel.

• 1:00:54Chris Winterbauer?

  But they do a good job. He hides the ball and also he doesn't feel physically intimidating, which I think is important.

• 1:01:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:01:01Chris Winterbauer?

  I worry that Billy Baldwin, right with the Michael Madsen scenes, they're always a little charged with him and Susan Sarandon because he's a big guy.

• 1:01:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, because he's a little scary.

• 1:01:09Chris Winterbauer?

  But J.D. doesn't seem scary. It seems like Gina can take him and that's how you know her guard's going to get down. And it's such a fun contrast.

• 1:01:15Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great.

• 1:01:16Chris Winterbauer?

  I like that.

• 1:01:17Lizzie Bassett?

  On June 11th, 1990, the shoot kicked off. It was scheduled to last 12 weeks and it began with the scene where Gina Davis rolls out her suitcase. Now, she had spent a year pursuing this role. She had taken dialect coaching. She had had all of her lines written out phonetically to be able to nail the accent. And Susan Sarandon didn't do jack shit. And she's like, I don't need to. On day two, they filmed the western bar scene. This is the scene before the assault. It was shot at the Silver Bullet in Long Beach, which you can still go to, although it's now known as the Cowboy Country Saloon. And fun fact, the dance that they're doing in that scene is called the tush push and it was choreographed by Patsy Swayze, Patrick Swayze's mom.

• 1:01:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 1:01:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:01:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Funny, the tush push is now most known as a football play run by the Philadelphia Eagles amidst many other teams.

• 1:02:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Interesting. I bet you anything it started as a line dance, but I don't know that for sure.

• 1:02:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no, no, definitely. This is years later. I'm saying the football thing is very modern.

• 1:02:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it.

• 1:02:10Chris Winterbauer?

  The use of that name.

• 1:02:10Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't care about football, but thank you.

• 1:02:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, to loosen the performances, Ridley gave each actress earphones that was blasting music so they could kind of shout their lines across the table. I really like the effect that that has on this scene. It actually feels like a much more believable bar scene.

• 1:02:26Chris Winterbauer?

  We studied this scene in my sound class in film school and

• 1:02:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 1:02:30Chris Winterbauer?

  one of my teachers worked on this movie in the sound department and they talked about that and using, you know, something like a thumper, for example, which does like a low frequency beat for everybody to move their heads to that they can then cut in post.

• 1:02:40Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really good. So often you see situations where everybody is, you know, talking quietly across the table to each other and there's just random dancing in the background.

• 1:02:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Or they're on a plane and they're like, hello, where are you going today?

• 1:02:51Lizzie Bassett?

  No way. Hi. Also, both women persuaded the prop guy to swap in real tequila. They wanted to have a little bit of sense memory. So they're doing all these takes. They think they're taking all these shots and they're like getting rip roaring and having a great time. And afterwards they asked the prop guy, they're like, how much did you, do you think we drank? And he's like, a third of a shot. They were like, oh, okay. Now, the assault scene with Timothy Carhart was understandably very difficult to shoot. And Susan Sarandon really pushed back on her firing the gun and killing him afterwards. She still felt this was very unnecessary. But Ridley Scott stayed true to Callie's script and he was like, I'm sorry, this has to stay in. So they kept it.

• 1:03:28Chris Winterbauer?

  There's no movie without it, unfortunately. You know, you do need it.

• 1:03:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. I don't know what her argument was without that. You have to do it. The first week wrapped on schedule and on budget without any major hiccups, as did week two and three. So one month in Ridley Scott was feeling pretty great. The sex scene between JD and Gina was a huge success and apparently Ridley Scott spent most of this spraying Brad Pitt's abs with Evian and oiling him down.

• 1:03:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 1:03:52Lizzie Bassett?

  And all three were very proud of what they had made, which they felt was a sex scene from the female POV. And I agree. I think it's really great.

• 1:03:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's well done. Also, you know what I think it actually accomplishes really well? Sex is fun.

• 1:04:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is what Thelma is experiencing for the first time.

• 1:04:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I like that they're not so preoccupied with making it sexier, sexual in like a pornographic way. It's just like,

• 1:04:13Lizzie Bassett?

  No, it's fun.

• 1:04:13Chris Winterbauer?

  This is a good time.

• 1:04:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Let's have a good time. Let's enjoy each other.

• 1:04:16Lizzie Bassett?

  And also, you know, of the two of them, the one who was far more exposed in that scene is Brad Pitt.

• 1:04:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, totally. Yeah.

• 1:04:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Next, it was time to film the proposal scene and Callie Corry was very often on set. She felt very strongly about this. She had written it as a really tender moment for Louise. It had roses, champagne, like a love song and then a sort of mock exchange of I do's. And Susan Sarandon was like, I do not do that. She said the scene was going to let all the air out of the film, that it would ease the tension so much, they wouldn't be able to recover from it. She was also like, why am I driving off of a cliff if I've just had this moment of hope, basically? And Michael Madsen agreed. He was like, I just don't think that Jimmy is this kind of guy. And he didn't think that Louise had anything to do with a guy like that. And Ridley Scott was like, I see your point. He was open to cutting it, but then they couldn't do that because they needed something to intercut with Thelma and JD's scene.

• 1:05:05Lizzie Bassett?

  So the three of them together reworked that whole sequence on set. And I really love where it landed. Callie Corry did not.

• 1:05:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:14Lizzie Bassett?

  She didn't think Louise would ever be with someone volatile who would flip a table and Jimmy was meant to be one of the more sympathetic characters. And this really outlines the major dynamic problem between Callie Corry and Ridley Scott, which is that she wanted her script to be honored to the letter. And I get it.

• 1:05:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:30Lizzie Bassett?

  She'd poured so much of herself into this. This is the first thing she's ever written and gotten produced, but definitely she had a lot of difficulty relinquishing control when it came to what was being filmed on set. According to Ridley, quote, "Every scene was a bloody debate." Meanwhile, he was also debating with Susan Sarandon, who was very fiercely protective of her character's integrity and also of Gina Davis. She was particularly pissed when she heard that Ridley Scott had asked Gina to do a topless shoot with Thelma throwing her top off the back of the car, feeling free and liberated and wild. And the ever agreeable Gina had turned to Susan for her opinion and Susan said, oh, for heaven's sake, can you think of any reason why you should? And Gina Davis was like, no.

• 1:06:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Susan said it was exploitation, marched over to Ridley Scott and made it very clear Gina Davis would not be taking her shirt off. The two did develop a lifelong friendship and bond that continues to this day. It was very sweet. But for the most part, it sounds like both women felt very respected on set and had a very good time. Ridley Scott, grumpy as he may be, did a pretty good job at letting the female perspectives on set be heard. He also kept things on time and on budget. They spent about $115,000 on five vintage Thunderbirds. Each were tricked out. Some were kept intact. Others were rigged for camera mounts. He actually operated the camera from a side mount for at least one of the first car speeding scenes. But they also caused problems. One of them apparently caught fire and of course, some were eventually driven off a cliff. But Susan Sarandon had a different bone to pick.

• 1:06:54Lizzie Bassett?

  She really wanted one of the cars, but Ridley Scott gave them all to his sons. She was pissed. She did really love driving in this movie, though. She said, it was really fun, especially in the desert. What I learned is that you do your best acting when you're really just trying to drive a car and not thinking about anything else, just hitting your marks. I was driving pretty fast by the time we finished the movie.

• 1:07:13Chris Winterbauer?

  There are one or two shots where you, it's a couple of dudes in wigs that you can kind of pick out that are pretty funny.

• 1:07:19Lizzie Bassett?

  For sure.

• 1:07:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, in early August, the crew arrived in Moab, Utah. And by now it was stinking hot, plus the town of Moab not known for its exciting party scene. And they were pulling 15 hour days. In addition, they had the hardest scenes ahead of them when Thelma and Louise lock the state trooper in the trunk of his car, blow up the truck and drive off the cliff.

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• 1:08:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Ridley's vision was set and the storyboards were locked in. But again, Susan, Callie, Gina, and now Alan Ladd Jr. had opinions of their own about the remaining scenes. I'm sure Ridley Scott is loving this. So first up, the

• 1:08:33Chris Winterbauer?

  So I don't make movies of women?

• 1:08:35Lizzie Bassett?

  You do, sir. Most of your movies have them. So first up, the police radio shooting scene. Now Ridley worried that men were not going to see this movie unless it had action and comedy in it. So he was always looking for scenes to lighten things up. I understand where he's coming from. I like a lot of these sequences. So he thought it would be fun to have the women terrorize a family man cop. I agree. I think the sequence is very funny. Now, Callie Corry had actually written the scenes that an older Mexican man in a truck ended up rescuing the cop. But Ridley Scott was actually being driven to the set from his rental house one day when he happened to see the guy that you see in the movie.

• 1:09:10Chris Winterbauer?

  The cyclist.

• 1:09:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:09:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Lizzie Bassett?

  With dreads, smoking a J, neon outfit, pedaling a bicycle. So Scott was like, stop the car. He got out and hired the guy.

• 1:09:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Because he loved the randomness of it, felt that it was the perfect addition to the scene.

• 1:09:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's fun because it's unexpected.

• 1:09:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I thought it was so funny. I loved it.

• 1:09:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, especially because like, we've seen the Mexican-American guy with the truck with like the chickens in the back who comes across, you know?

• 1:09:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 1:09:33Chris Winterbauer?

  We've seen that scene 100 times. Like this version where he blows the smoke into the hole.

• 1:09:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Bullet hole.

• 1:09:38Chris Winterbauer?

  We have not seen.

• 1:09:39Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing.

• 1:09:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It's very funny.

• 1:09:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I love it. I'm team Ridley on this. Again, Callie Corry was not happy, but he pressed ahead. He was getting pretty fed up with her constant two cents and he started limiting her set visits, feeling that he had given her the time of day before the shoot, but now it was his set. She really did not see it that way. She said, quote, "There were a lot of people who wanted to be the final authority on this movie and I make that really difficult for people. I don't think you can look at Ridley and say this is definitely his movie if I'm in the picture or Susan or anybody else. It's so much mine." Again, I get it, but at the point when you have handed this off to a director, you do need to back off to a certain degree. That's just my opinion. I'm not saying don't voice your opinions, but I don't know. I mean, what do you think? You've been a director and a writer.

• 1:10:21Chris Winterbauer?

  I ultimately do believe that there needs to be one decision-making authority.

• 1:10:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:10:26Chris Winterbauer?

  I do believe, obviously, like you said, solicit the opinions and whatnot, but if it's getting disruptive enough that you're losing time on set, I can understand the need or desire to

• 1:10:35Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the thing.

• 1:10:36Chris Winterbauer?

  restrict access because at a certain point, and actually I think what Ridley does very well, especially in this movie is it seems like he actually has said, look, I'm going to leave a lot of your performances to you, Gina Davis and Susan Sarandon. I'm going to be more focused on like bringing this to life visually in certain ways. I'm going to be focused on, you know, how can I make sure it remains accessible to certain parts of the audience? I actually think there's a pretty good delegation of powers already on this movie.

• 1:10:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. And also like, he didn't change that much. When you look at the couple of things that he changed.

• 1:11:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. That's my point.

• 1:11:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Now, while tensions were simmering a little bit on set, things had boiled over quite a bit more back at the studio, specifically in Pathé's marketing department, which had no clue how they were going to sell this. It was apparently all anyone could talk about. Greg Foster, who worked in market research, told Becky Aikman in Off the Cliff, quote, "Your traditional young male moviegoer was not going to watch a couple of women in their mid to late 30s kick ass and shake up. And a huge amount of the movie takes place in a car with two ladies talking." But of course, the biggest issue by far was the ending. Ridley Scott had it in his contract that he got to shoot that ending and both he and Alan Ladd Jr. were committed to it. But the marketing department knew that it was a major risk financially and so they all agreed that they needed a backup. They cycled through a bunch of alternate endings, including Thelma and Louise getting

• 1:11:49Lizzie Bassett?

  15 years in prison or the death penalty, or maybe an escape to Mexico, or maybe Louise does just push Thelma out of the car at the last minute. None of those work.

• 1:11:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I think the only version that I could even see, and I don't think it works as well, but I'm like, the only version that you could say maybe could work could be something where Keitel helps them abscond to Mexico. But then what sucks is you've undermined the message of the movie because you've then handed the power back to the male character, you know, in the end, and they have to be, quote, rescued.

• 1:12:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 1:12:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And so you can't do it.

• 1:12:20Lizzie Bassett?

  No. And so they're kind of all noodling these ideas. Meanwhile, Ridley had one major scene to tackle, which was, of course, blowing up the tanker truck. The marketing team really wanted this because they wanted to be able to sell it as an action movie.

• 1:12:32Chris Winterbauer?

  It's the most Looney Tunes moment in the entire movie. It is very funny, but it's like-

• 1:12:36Lizzie Bassett?

  And you know what? I enjoy it. But yes, it is.

• 1:12:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 1:12:38Lizzie Bassett?

  He directed Marco St. John, who played the trucker, to be as crude and repellent as possible. Calli Corry, of course, really hated this because he came across as a caricature.

• 1:12:47Chris Winterbauer?

  He does.

• 1:12:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with her on this.

• 1:12:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Lizzie Bassett?

  But at this point, she didn't have any real power on set. Susan Sarandon, though, did, and she objected to some of the things that they had Louise saying in this scene and also doing. They had her jumping up and down afterwards, like it was a victory beat. So she is the one who added, how would you feel if someone did that to your mother, your sister, or your wife? And part of that dialogue. And on August 20th, when they had basically landed on the version of events that they were going to film, they had one $79,000 tanker to blow up. And of course, timing was everything. Now, St. John had turned down a stunt double, and he was standing about 50 yards away from the truck.

• 1:13:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's him.

• 1:13:22Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great shot.

• 1:13:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a great shot. Ridley Scott said, all right, so I'm going to say, ready, steady, go, and the blast is going to happen on go. And St. John's like, okay. And so he stands there and Ridley Scott goes, ready, boom, and blew the truck up. So-

• 1:13:39Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what they did to Alan Rickman on Die Hard with the fall at the end.

• 1:13:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So his reaction is very real and very surprised. The marketing team watched the dailies and they were, of course, thrilled.

• 1:13:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Just do that 100 times for the trailer.

• 1:13:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Quick, someone bring in Michael Bay. Now, around this time, Ridley Scott also decided that he needed to go back and reshoot the rape scene. He felt that it was not violent enough, what they had captured, and he wanted to justify the remainder of the movie. It was a difficult decision. Both Gina Davis and Timothy Carhartt had a really hard time with it. She apparently walked off set because she was so upset. He felt really terrible, Carhartt did. He called her and apologized. I will say, though, I appreciate that he did this and didn't shy away from how uncomfortable and violent that assault was. I think it was necessary.

• 1:14:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree.

• 1:14:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, the last week of August rolled around. The car chase scene was complete, and it was time to shoot the final sequence. And Alan Ladd Jr. checks in with Ridley Scott, and he's like, all right, what's the alt ending that you've chosen? And Ridley's like, we never thought of one. And that was that. They didn't film anything else.

• 1:14:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Good.

• 1:14:41Lizzie Bassett?

  They could only roll cameras at Dead Horse Point State Park with very strict conditions. They could only do it when rafting trips weren't passing through for obvious reasons, because you don't want to smoosh the white water rafters. And they had to clear the wreckage of the cars away afterwards. And the schedule was really tight because of this. They had four days to shoot the final sequence. Also, cast and crew had other commitments, other movies lined up. If they ran over, it was going to cost more than $600,000, and they had around 30 shots to squeeze into that four-day window. Also, nobody was really sure that the car stunt was going to work, even though Ridley Scott had directed several car commercials. He didn't know if it was going to behave the way that it needed to, which of course is launching upwards in that very, like, heroic

• 1:15:23Lizzie Bassett?

  moment versus just kind of teeter tottering face-first into the canyon. And they hadn't tested it, and they only had three vehicles available for the launch. So they stripped them down to make them as light as possible. They removed the engines. And what they actually did was they used a cable and pulley system pulled by a speeding Jeep, which I assume was going in the opposite direction, that would send the car forward and kind of slingshot it into the air.

• 1:15:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Off a ramp.

• 1:15:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, off a ramp. So they spent a whole day working on this. They spent hours setting everything up. They let it rip, and Chris, the car just goes, pff, yeah, barely clears the edge, tips at an awkward angle.

• 1:15:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Like the tank in Raiders of the Lost Ark, just like tipping over the clip.

• 1:16:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Tipping over and crashed down like a boulder. It was obviously a major fail. So they had to try again the next day. They set the whole thing up. They wait for the perfect light around 4:00 PM, and this time, they got it. And they didn't even have to launch the third car.

• 1:16:15Chris Winterbauer?

  And Susan said, that was for me? And he said, nah, it's for my sons.

• 1:16:19Lizzie Bassett?

  He also shot a few extra bits that could be plugged in for an alternate ending, including a few more angles of the car as it falls, the state troopers gathering at the canyon's edge, and Harvey Keitel's character picking up the Polaroid, Thelma and Louise, took at the start before staring out over the canyon. And then, of course, the last thing that they filmed was the two of them holding hands when Louise presses down. And with that, production wrapped.

• 1:16:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Do you know if the kiss was scripted?

• 1:16:42Lizzie Bassett?

  It was not. That was an addition by Susan Sarandon.

• 1:16:45Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I was wondering. Good for you, Susan. It's a great moment.

• 1:16:49Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing.

• 1:16:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing. Now, in September of 1990, Ridley moved to London to begin post-production, and he cut Thelma and Louise with British editor Tom Noble, who had just won an Oscar for Witness. I love Witness. And of course, worked with Hans Zimmer on the score. But back in Los Angeles, the studio was still like, ah, we don't know what to do about this thing. Mimi Polk was pushing for a freeze frame of the car midair, but Tom Noble felt that that was too close to the ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which of course-

• 1:17:16Chris Winterbauer?

  That's fair. That's true.

• 1:17:17Lizzie Bassett?

  It's fair. The movie had already been compared to. So in Noble's edit, the car actually crashes all the way into the canyon, and you see Harvey Keitel run to the edge and grab the Polaroid. And Mimi Polk did not like this. But in October of 1990, Thelma and Louise had its first test screening at the Cineplex Odeon Cinema in Illinois, one of Laddie's favorite places to test middle America. And things started out pretty well. The audience was gasping and cheering at all the right moments, and then came the final scene, and the room fell silent because Ridley Scott had gone rogue. He had snuck in an alternate ending for the test screening, a brief last shot lasting a few seconds of the two women still driving the car, surviving the fall, as a metaphorical survival, or so he intended.

• 1:18:01Chris Winterbauer?

  No, Ridley, no. That is, I, okay, like, this is very artsy, but come on. Like, we're literal. We are literal Americans. We cannot, like, oh, they're alive? What?

• 1:18:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Alan Ladd Jr. literally stood up and yelled, what the fuck is that?

• 1:18:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I would too, honestly.

• 1:18:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, the audience's excellent score was just 11%, which was well below the 25% average. And the producers are like, something's really wrong. We don't know what to do. Alan Ladd Jr. is like, we have another preview in San Francisco in a couple of days. Cut that shit out of the end of the movie, leave everything else as is, and see what happens. And of course, he was right. The must-see rating doubled to 49%. Audiences wanted exactly what Calli Corry had fought for the whole time. But meanwhile, Pathé was coming apart. Giancarlo Peretti, the Italian financier who controlled the company, was under massive financial pressure. He had defaulted on a bunch of loans, and Credit Lyonnais had accused him of financial wrongdoing. We've covered him before.

• 1:18:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Don't they merge with MGM at this point? Doesn't Pathé get absorbed by MGM or something with Credit Lyonnais?

• 1:19:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Basically. So, long story short, Pathé is a total financial disaster at this point, and he pulled all of the money that was earmarked to promote movies like Thelma and Louise. It did come out that, yeah, he had bilked Credit Lyonnais out of like $1.4 billion. He was eventually found guilty of perjury, tampering, misuse of corporate funds, and fraud. Whoopsies. And he hadn't paid the processing lab. So according to Mimi, the negative was held hostage. We couldn't even get access to the film to color time it, which meant that they had to postpone the release date from March of 91 to the last weekend of May. And apparently, Alan Ladd Jr. had to write personal checks to keep some things afloat. So at this point, they really needed word of mouth because they didn't have any ad money. They also couldn't pay editor Tom Noble at that point.

• 1:19:50Lizzie Bassett?

  He had to bail. And so Mimi Polk stepped in and managed the final cut, and she is the one who restored the freeze frame ending of the car in midair.

• 1:19:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:58Lizzie Bassett?

  So Thelma and Louise finally premiered on May 24, 1991, at the start of a very crowded summer.

• 1:20:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I was going to say, that's the disadvantage of going May, is you're entering summer season, and if you don't have a marketing budget, you're going to get crowded out.

• 1:20:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. But it went up against Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, City Slickers, and more. And despite all of that, despite no ad dollars behind it, Thelma and Louise was a financial success. But its label as a so-called man-hating revenge fantasy led to massive amounts of debates and think pieces. It even inspired a University of Texas anthology of scholarly essays and a University of California collection of monographs. In 1991, Times Richard Schickel rounded up the varying hot takes in a five-page cover story. Mary Lucy, a lesbian activist in Los Angeles, said Thelma and Louise is, quote, "the first movie I've ever seen which told the downright truth." Joe Leo, a social commentator, called it, quote, "a peon to transformative violence, an explicit fascist

• 1:20:54Lizzie Bassett?

  theme." Kathy Bell, a Houston environmental communications specialist who was once married to, quote, "a redneck control freak, found the courage to dump him after a liberating weekend trip with a girlfriend," said, quote, "it was like seeing my life played before my eyes." New York Daily News columnist Richard Johnson said it justifies armed robbery, manslaughter, and chronic drunken driving as exercises in consciousness raising and is degrading to men with pathetic stereotypes of testosterone-crazed behavior. Now, seems that most of the women felt pretty favorably about it, although not all of it. Sheila Benson, a Los Angeles Times film critic, did call it a betrayal of feminism. But I do think it's interesting that all the men are like, this movie is wholly irresponsible. Which Calli Corey was like, this is so stupid. She pointed out, you know, go watch a Martin Scorsese movie and get back to me.

• 1:21:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Like, this is so much less violent than most of the stuff that's out there. But Thelma and Louise kept growing in popularity all summer and ended up making $45 million at the box office on around a $16 million budget. It did great.

• 1:21:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Very good.

• 1:21:53Lizzie Bassett?

  It earned six Oscar nominations, including for Scott as director, Adrian Biddle, who you mentioned for cinematography, Noble for editing, and Susan Sarandon and Gina Davis, of course, both for Best Actress. But it was Calli Corey who won for Best Original Screenplay.

• 1:22:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I'm glad both were nominated for Best Actress. Do you know who won Best Actress that year?

• 1:22:14Lizzie Bassett?

  It is Jodie Foster for Silence of the Lambs.

• 1:22:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, interesting. The one thing I was going to mention was I wonder if strategically it would have been better, and I know it would be unfair in a sense, but to put Gina Davis into Best Supporting Actress.

• 1:22:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe.

• 1:22:25Chris Winterbauer?

  And then put Sarandon into Best Actress, so they're not competing against one another. But that would kind of be gaming the system because they really are both Best Lead Actress. It's a two-hander.

• 1:22:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, Supporting Actress category that year was way less stacked. It's Kate Nelligan, Prince of Tides, Juliette Lewis, Cape Fear, Jessica Tandy, Fried Green Tomatoes, Mercedes Ruhl, Fisher King, and Diane Ladd, Rambling Rose. So, yeah.

• 1:22:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I just wonder, and also because I feel like they crowd each other out a little bit in Lead Actress. I mean, Foster probably would have won, you know what I mean, either way.

• 1:22:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Chris Winterbauer?

  But anyway, just an interesting thought.

• 1:22:54Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm not mad about Jodie Foster winning that. I do think she deserves it for Clarice. But Gina Davis, also wonderful. Calli Corey, shortly after, won a seat on the Writers Guild of America board, and she advocated for writers to be allowed to visit the sets of their movies. She was mostly pleased with how Thelma and Louise turned out, about 75 to 80% happy, by her own estimate. But the success around the film pulled her away from other projects, and she had a hard time getting as passionate about anything else the same way. She worked as a script doctor for a bit. She wrote something to talk about. She tried to direct, but Lasse Hallström got the job instead. And of course, she would go on to marry T-Bone Burnett. If you don't know who he is, look him up. And Calli, of course, created the TV show Nashville in 2012, which I absolutely loved enough to see the cast live in concert.

• 1:23:37Lizzie Bassett?

  And because we are talking about Nashville, I do have to say how heartbroken we were to hear about Hayden Panettiere's passing. She is so, so good on that show. She is the best part of that show. And she turned in truly iconic performances, obviously on Nashville, but also on Heroes, many, many other shows and movies. She was taken way, way too soon. So, rest in peace, Hayden, and our condolences to her family. In 2016, Susan Sarandon and Gina Davis reunited in Cannes for the film's 25th anniversary and asked whether Thelma and Louise could be commissioned by a major studio today. Sarandon responded, "Maybe as an animation." She said, quote, "I don't think the studios have had an epiphany about women in film because after Thelma and Louise, it didn't happen, and that movie made a lot of fucking money." She's right, it did.

• 1:24:23Lizzie Bassett?

  And that wraps up our coverage of Thelma and Louise. So, Chris, what went right?

• 1:24:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, thank you, Lizzie. A wonderful story for a wonderful movie. I'm going to choose Gina Davis. I have not seen every movie she's been in, but of everything I've seen, I think she is pitch perfect in this movie. And I think Sarandon is phenomenal, but I agree. I think Thelma is the role that is such a tightrope walk. And I really believe her every step of the way. She is such a chameleon in this movie, in a sense. I love the wallflower to John Dillinger sort of arc that she goes through. And I think that's also a testament to the writing. But she's a phenomenally talented actor.

• 1:25:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Who brings both the drama and the comedy. She has some of the funniest moments in the movie. And then at the end, when she suggests, what if we keep going?

• 1:25:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also one of the most heartbreaking moments of the movie, maybe the most. And so, again, after watching The Accent on a Tourist, and we just did Cut Through an Island, and I think she's so good.

• 1:25:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, all hail Gina Davis summer.

• 1:25:25Chris Winterbauer?

  All hail Gina Davis summer, all hail Thelma and Louise.

• 1:25:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Well, I'm going to give it to two people because I can't just choose one, and that is Ridley Scott and Calli Corey.

• 1:25:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34Lizzie Bassett?

  I understand that they were at odds during certain parts of this. I understand that neither was particularly happy with the other in terms of, you know, the push and pull. However, they created something wonderful. She stuck to her guns with the script, and it obviously paid off. She chose to make something completely unmarketable, basically, because she knew that people would want to see it, and she was right. And Ridley Scott read it and knew that that was the case, too, and honored really almost all of her wishes. And it sounds like Ridley Scott does do a good job of listening to the people that he works with, as grumpy as he may be, and we know he's grumpy. But I really appreciate him. I appreciate the movies that he makes. And to your point, he has made some of the best movies with female protagonists because it's not about them being women.

• 1:26:17Lizzie Bassett?

  And I understand that this one is, you know, in terms of the subject matter, but he has a way of treating women as people in the movies that he makes. And I really appreciate that. And I love, I love Ridley Scott. I love him. And I love Calli Corey. So, that's my What Went Right.

• 1:26:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I think to the point that she made about it's 75 to 80% of what I wanted it to be. I think any of us who are lucky enough to work in movies or have the opportunity to direct or write, what we always have to remember, too, is the possibility that actually 75% of what we wanted it to be actually may be the best version of the movie.

• 1:26:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:26:48Chris Winterbauer?

  That was ever possible. Because 75% of what you wanted it to be, plus 75% of what Ridley Scott wanted it to be, plus, you know what I'm saying, 75, it actually becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

• 1:26:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:26:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I think this movie is an example of a movie that takes the best of what everyone has to offer, and they all elevate each other really well.

• 1:27:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. Chris, if people would like to support this podcast, how can they do that?

• 1:27:09Chris Winterbauer?

  When you're going to drive off a cliff with your bike, you should listen to What Went Wrong as you're doing it. If you're interested in supporting this show, first of all, you're listening, you're supporting it, we really appreciate it. Number two, you can leave a rating and review on whatever pod catcher you're listening to us on. That really helps us with visibility. Number three, hit, follow, or subscribe on whatever pod catcher you are enjoying the show on, so our episodes drop every Monday and occasionally Friday for you guys to listen to. Number four, we are now offering bonus episodes and an ad-free RSS feed on Spotify, Apple, and Patreon. For $5 a month, no matter which platform you sign up through, you get at least one bonus episode a month, typically two. These are usually reviews that are covering new movies, conversations between me and Lizzie.

• 1:27:52Chris Winterbauer?

  You also get an ad-free RSS feed, so every episode will hit your feed with no ads. However, if you are on Apple, it takes a few extra hours to load, so it may not show up until the afternoon of the Monday that the episode drops. Again, we can't do anything about that, but if you'd like to send some hate mail to Tim Cook and the folks at Apple.

• 1:28:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, feel free.

• 1:28:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Feel free. If you want to go the extra mile, if you want to jump over the proverbial financial cliff with us, you can sign up on Patreon for our Full Stop tier. $50 a month gets you a Thelma and Louise shout-out just like one of these.

• 1:28:26Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, David, hit me with some of those sweet Hans Zimmer guitar licks. And everybody, gather round real close so I can give you a smooch before we drive off the cliff together. Adrian Pang, Korea, Alex Barrett, Angeline Renee Cook, Ben Schindelman, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, C. Grace B., Chris Liel, Datem3, David Friskelanti, Darren and Dale Conklin, Mzodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G., Film It Yourself, don't make me do it for you, Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, The Cast and Crew of When a Trip to Brown Town, Half Greyhound, Lizzie Bassett is pretty damn fabulous, too.

• 1:29:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, thank you. James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, JJ Rapido, John D. Wilshere, Jory Hillpiper, Jose Emiliano Salto Del Giorgio, Karina Kanava, Kate Ellington, Amy Elgenschlager McCoy, Lena LJ, Lousy Susan, Lydia Howes, Mandy Rarleson, Mark Bertha, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate Ashley, Nate the Knife, Pete Reed Peterson, Rosemary Southward, Rural Jur, Sadie, Just Sadie, So Man Chinani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson, and the Provost family. The O's, well, now they still sound like O's. Thank y'all. All right, thanks for jumping off the cliff with me, Chris.

• 1:29:55Lizzie Bassett?

  And fun fact, I'm actually about to go get in the car with my best friend.

• 1:29:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I know.

• 1:29:59Lizzie Bassett?

  And go on a weekend road trip. So, let's hope it goes better than this one.

• 1:30:04Chris Winterbauer?

  You're going to call David and just go, "Hey, Lizzie," and you're going to say, "You know."

• 1:30:07Lizzie Bassett?

  He knows, click. All right, Chris, what do we have coming up next? Oh, I'm sweet but a psycho, a little bit psycho.

• 1:30:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Ava Max, we are doing Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which I am extremely excited to talk about.

• 1:30:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Me, too.

• 1:30:21Chris Winterbauer?

  All right.

• 1:30:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Bye.

• 1:30:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Bye.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched and written by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krebsaw.