num_pages: 320
description: You've always been crazy - says Louise to Thelma having just outrun the police in a car chase and locked an officer in the trunk of his own car. This is just the first chance you've had to express yourself. In 1991 Thelma and Louise the story of two outlaw women on the run from their disenchanted lives was a revelation. Suddenly for the first time here was a film in which women were in every sense behind the wheel. It turned the tables on Hollywood instantly becoming a classic and continues today to electrify audiences as a cultural statement of defiance. But if the film's place in history now seems certain at the time its creation was a long shot. Before Geena Davis Susan Sarandon and a young up-and-coming actor named Brad Pitt got involved Thelma and Louise was just an idea in the head of Callie Khouri a thirty-year-old music video production manager who was fed up with working behind the scenes on sleazy sets. At four a.m. one night sitting in her car outside the ramshackle bungalow in Santa Monica that she shared with two friends she had a vision: two women on a crime spree fleeing their dull and tedious lives--lives like hers--in search of a freedom they had never before been able to realize. She knew in that moment that she had to be the one to write it. But in the late 1980s Hollywood was dominated by men both on the screen and behind the scenes. The likelihood of a script by an unheard-of screenwriter starring two women in lead roles actually getting made was remote. But Callie had one thing going for her--she had no idea she was attempting the almost impossible. And she pulled it off by dint of sheer hard work and some good luck when she was able to get the script into the hands of the brilliant English filmmaker Ridley Scott who saw its huge potential. With Scott on board a team willing to challenge the odds came together--including not only the stars Davis and Sarandon but also legends like actor Harvey Keitel composer Hans Zimmer and old-school studio chief Alan Ladd Jr.--to create one of the most controversial movies of all time. In Off the Cliff Becky Aikman tells the full extraordinary story behind this feminist sensation which crashed through barricades and upended convention. Drawing on 130 exclusive interviews with the key players from this remarkable cast of actors writers and filmmakers Aikman tells an inspiring and important underdog story about creativity the magic of cinema and the unjust obstacles that women in Hollywood continue to face to this day.
language: English
title: Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge
publisher: Penguin Press