Two women—one a straight-laced waitress, the other a naive housewife—leave town for a quiet weekend getaway. But after a deadly encounter with a rapist, the two become unlikely…and then increasingly confident…outlaws. Though a kindly police officer tries to convince the women to turn themselves in, their refusal to surrender to a future scripted by forces more powerful than themselves drives them to a shocking and iconic ending. Is their fate triumphant or tragic? Wes & Erin analyze Ridley Scott’s 1991 film, Thelma & Louise.
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Transcript
0:09 Erin: Two women, one a straight laced waitress, the other a naive housewife, leave town for a quiet weekend getaway. But after a deadly encounter with a rapist, the two become unlikely and then increasingly confident outlaws. Though a kindly police officer tries to convince the women to turn themselves in, their refusal to surrender to a future scripted by forces more powerful than the themselves drives them to a shocking and iconic ending. Is their fate triumphant or tragic? Today we're discussing Ridley Scott's 1991 film, Thelma and Louise. This is Erin O'Luanaigh and this is Wes Alwan and you're listening to Subtext.
0:57 Wes: And not all episodes of Subtext will appear here. subtextpodcast.com subscribe or by searching for us within the app itself.
1:12 Erin: Wes, I was really surprised to hear that when this movie first came out, it sort of divided critical opinion. Did you see that as well? Looking back at reviews and stuff, I didn't know that.
1:23 Wes: I knew there was some controversy over the portrayal of men.
1:28 Wes: Is that what you're talking about?
1:29 Erin: Yeah, that is what I was talking about. I guess some male reviewers and even some female reviewers had a problem with that portrayal.
1:35 Wes: Yeah, well, there are a lot of bad men in the movie.
1:38 Erin: Right. And some things I guess also that strain credibility, which we could talk about as we go along. But you know how outlandish or not outlandish the events of the film are, which I think kind of misses the point.
1:51 Wes: Yeah, well, why does that miss the point?
1:53 Erin: I think very few of these on the lam movies are about the circumstances that get them on the lam or that make them outlaws. What I mean by that is, of course, this is about the circumstances that make them outlaws to. To a certain degree, but about the minutia of exactly how and why they are now outlaws, why they can't turn themselves in, stuff like that. I think it's less about those practical concerns and more about the mindset of being an outlaw or what makes one step outside of society and why. And so I think that, like, the state of being an outlaw becomes more metaphorical than it is literal and is trying to express something about the way that people do things that they can't come back from and maybe why they can no longer come back from those things than any literal, like. Well, they could have just pled this, and they could have. You know, why didn't they drive through Texas and all this, all this other stuff? I mean, that's a plot conceit, which has an interesting resonance, and it provides a certain important backstory for Louise. But also, practically speaking, it's completely ridiculous that they don't just go through Texas, and Thelma even says that, but it's to keep them in the country and on the road and to keep the story going. So it's no big deal, I think.
3:13 Wes: I didn't feel like there were any real plot holes in the movie or there was nothing unsatisfyingly unrealistic to me in the plot or the psychology of it. I thought it was all well explained, you know, So I. I knew the screenwriter would have to do something. She had the task of convincing us that they couldn't just go to the police. Right. So that's the first item on the to do list as far as making the plot. Making the plot reasonable. And she did a good job of that, even if it's irrational, even if it's not something most of us would do. I think she convinces the audience successfully that these two people would rather run for various reasons. It's not just about the crime, of course. It's not just about the killing of Harlan, but it's about needing to run in the first place. Right. The running comes before the killing of Harlan. Notice that I'm not calling it a murder because Leave that open to interpretation. But so the running comes beforehand, and then that killing of Harlan kind of is a step towards their actual liberation. So they can use that as a reason now to not return, to go on permanent vacation, so to speak.
4:25 Erin: Yeah. So the whole thing starts with this idea that they're gonna go on a vacation and they're going on a fishing trip, even though neither of them, I guess, knows how to fish. And I find it interesting rewatching it, that the whole thing begins because they're both trying to escape men. Thelma is trying to escape her really hilariously terrible husband. And even Louise is trying to, I guess, make her boyfriend Jimmy jealous. He's been taking her for granted. And I guess she wants to get married, he doesn't want to get married. And so Thelma says something like, you know, when. While you're gone, he's gonna leave you 100,000 messages, and when you get back, he's gonna be kissing the ground you walk on. So for Louise, it's kind of a manipulation of Jimmy. For Thelma, she ultimately can't. She's so terrified of her husband that she can't even let him know that she's leaving and decides to take off and leave him a note on the microwave.
5:17 Wes: Yeah. You get the sense that Louise has this on again, off again relationship with Jimmy and. Right. Yeah. He's detached and not good at expressing his feelings, it turns out. And he's in a band and still doing that in his 30s. You don't get the sense that he has. Do you get the sense that he has other work? He's kind of just scraping by, trying to live his dream. So, you know, a case of maybe Arrested Development. There's no marriage, there's no kids. There's no kids for either of them, which I think is significant. We can talk about that later. And then Thelma. Yeah. Has a husband who's very irritated with her, which doesn't come out of nowhere, by the way. Right. So Thelma is not an unirritating person. And Louise is, in the beginning, always irritated with her and always playing a. You know, having to play kind of a mother figure to Thelma's impulsivity. But on the other hand, yeah. Darrel's a horrible and ridiculous person at the same time. So who is Daryl, exactly? Like, what is his deal? And there are some great moments that really characterize him. One of them occurs when he's rushing out to work and he stumbles over. Some people are doing some work on his house. Right. And he stumbles over the stuff in the driveway and gets angry at those people. And he's just gotten angry at Thelma for reminding him not to be late to work or whatever she's doing. And she's trying to be helpful. And I thought this is a person who gets irritated with people trying to help him. And then later on in the scene with the. With Hal, the detective played by Harvey Keitel, he steps in. Pizza.
6:59 Wes: He's upset about something, but Hal has to. Cracks a smile and can't take it seriously and said, I'm sorry, you're standing in your. Does he say standing in your pizza, something like that?
7:10 Erin: I think so, yeah.
7:11 Wes: So the other idea that occurred to me because of that, it's. He's kind of someone who tramples his own sustenance. Right. Whether it's food or his wife or the people who are actually building his house. These are all what ought to be sources of nurture or sustenance or however you want to put it. And that's what he can't put up with. So I find that very interesting.
7:32 Erin: That is really interesting, that tripping in the driveway is something I want to return to. But then. Then we have Louise as a. A waitress in a diner. And she wears that sort of, like, traditional waitress outfit which I actually looked up. Like, how long have women been wearing these things? And I guess since the sort of the mid-1800s with the Harvey girls. I suppose they've been wearing these sort of prototypical, you know, designed, I suppose, to look like a French maid outfit or to be similar to that. So that you give the patrons the sense that you're waiting upon them in a real subservient kind of way. But she's very motherly from the beginning. And she's, you know, as a waitress, makes me think of what you said about the pizza. Like, she's also. She's giving sustenance to people. Or at least she's giving advice as well. In the first couple minutes of the film, she's even taking on a motherly role towards the teenage patrons of the diner and telling them not to smoke. But curiously, because it ruins your sex drive.
8:29 Erin: Cut to her smoking in the back. This motherly inclination is apparent, I guess, in the fact that she's dishing out the food. And she's also, you know, taking care of Thelma, of course, through three quarters of the film, maybe two thirds. But that setup is really interesting of the two women having that phone conversation back and forth. Because we see Louise in that outfit that you know, sort of typically, maybe overly feminized, maybe even slightly demeaning, we could call it that outfit. And then we see Thelma in her just really terrible, very claustrophobic house. Everything seems to be layered with clipped coupons and magazine pages. It's even, like, tacked on top of the really loud wallpaper. Thelma and her husband, too. Like, they both almost seem, like, too big for the house. I don't know if you got that impression, but they were, like, both very tall people. And so with everything sort of, like, low around them, the low ceilings and everything, it's like they're busting out of it. And Louise is kind of guiding Thelma through it, telling her to, you know, hey, is he your husband or your father? Like, just tell him. And then Thelma tries to play that role of being probably what she thinks Daryl wants, which is, like, the supportive wife who comes and brings him the cup of coffee and he rejects it and is terrible to her. So we have this setup where they're both in these sort of maybe traditional female Roles, they're both kind of bigger than those roles, or maybe even kind of busting out of them in the case of Thelma. And then we very clearly see that Daryl is cheating on Thelma. He stays out late. She asks him why it is that so many people seem to want to buy cars late on Friday night.
10:13 Wes: So is it cars or carpets? I thought it was cars. And then I. Looking at this screenplay, it seemed like it was carpets.
10:23 Wes: And it's conceivably something that could have gotten changed in between the screenplay and the film. So I was confused about that.
10:30 Erin: And then Ebert, in his review, refers to him as a rug salesman. And I was like, wow, he really got that one. Because every once in a while he kind of misquotes something because I got the impression he does a lot of it from memory.
10:40 Wes: Okay, so it could be carpet, then.
10:42 Erin: Yeah, yeah. But cars would be interesting, too, because she's never been out of town without Daryl. And obviously, like, the car is gonna be a huge factor. Yeah, it's really interesting. But anyway, so then it shows them packing, and we see also the difference in their personalities. But one of the things I picked up on during this viewing is the fact that later on, Daryl explains to the police why Thelma had a gun in the first place. We see her packing a gun, and we've just been told that Daryl's out late. Later on in the movie, he tells the police officer that he gave Thelma a gun specifically because he's out late so much because of his job to protect herself. And so basically, the whole reason why, you know, we have this. This gun at this. At the center of this story, which seems to stick out and to be the thing in a way that protects them, but also that ends up hurting them or putting them beyond or outside of the law. The whole reason why it's there. And Louise gets mad that Thelma brings it too. But the whole reason why it's there is because Daryl is cheating on Thelma and basically wants to probably ease his conscience a little bit by giving her something to protect herself with. And then Thelma justifies bringing it by saying that she's afraid of psycho killers. She repeatedly uses that term, psycho killers, up in the cabin. So there's a kind of a fear or an interesting sort of gender dynamic at the heart of why this gun is even there in the first place.
12:02 Wes: Thelma, in certain ways, is childlike and impulsive. Right. A lot of her behavior really propels the plot of the movie. So it's, you know, wanting to stop getting drunk, getting involved with this Harlan guy who Louise doesn't want her to get involved with because he's creepy, obviously creepy from the beginning. Robbing the store, holding the gun on the police officer, getting involved with JD and getting the money stolen. Pretty much everything that drives the plot forward happens because of something Thelma does. Even though Louise is the one who kills Harlan in her role as protector, this is really the motive force of the movie, is the behavior of Thelma. So when a husband gives a person like that a gun and he is also an asshole in a way, he's asking to be killed. That's really part of the significance of that. Especially if he's having an affair. I thought that was kind of ambiguous about, you know, he's staying out late. Yeah, I too thought immediately, okay, this is probably the implication that is that he's having an affair. But nothing ever happens with that. Right. That's just kind of a throw off. So you're left wondering about that. Either he's having an affair or he's just an incompetent carpet salesman who's staying late at the office for whatever reason. Either way, it's bad. And either, you know, he's mean to his wife and she should not be giving her a gun. And even if, even if he were the best husband there is, she's the kind of person that. For whom having a gun is just a. Is a bad idea.
13:41 Wes: And then with Louise, you know, I'm just thinking about the impulsivity versus the protector role and, and Louise is an interesting character because she's maternal and she's right giving advice to the young girls. You're too young to be smoking. And she's trying to rein in Thelma. But on the other hand, you get a lot of clear evidence that she's struggling with her own impulses and that Thelma, in a way is just a. She's living through Thelma. Right. So you could argue in a way that she's the driving force of the movie. So for instance, she's telling the girls that they're too young to be smoking. Smoking will ruin your sex drive. And Louise herself is a smoker.
14:24 Wes: So she's giving advice to young people that she can't take. And she's conflicted about whether or not to encourage them to be impulsive. Hey, rein in your impulses. Smoking is bad for you. But hey, you should have more sex. You're young teenagers.
14:41 Wes: So that conflict is the very first thing we get in the movie. And throughout the movie, we see Louise very neurotically chain smoking and looking very nervous and angst ridden. And I think we see that even before anything bad happens. In fact, you know, there's that great scene where Thelma does some. This happens before the saloon scene and the attempted rape or the rape where Thelma does some fake smoking, Right?
15:11 Wes: Says, what are you doing? And says, smoking. I'm Louise. Which is a very childlike thing. Right. And she's. She's identifying with Louise and she's imitating Louise. She's not going to do the actual thing. She's not going to actually smoke. So she's going to obey Louise's dictum. Right. The one she gave to the young girls. But on the other hand, she wants to fake it. It expresses an aspiration to be an adult, a child's conception of an adult. Right. As adults, we know this is actually the failure of impulse control to do something that's unhealthy like that. So it's more. It's more childish than you might think. But to Thelma, this is what being an adult means. And I'm going to imitate that.
15:48 Erin: Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say. Because she even later says that, you know, she married Darrel when she was 18. She'd been dating him for four years before that. And so there's a sense, too, that both Daryl and Thelma are both in a real state of arrested development. And playing at being Louise is like playing at being an adult for her. I love the scene, too, when they're packing and the difference in their personalities where this made me think of it because of the way that you describe Louise. But the fact that she puts everything in very neatly in plastic bags. She's, like, trying to. Trying to contain everything, you know, Whereas Thelma just, like, dumps the contents of entire drawers into her suitcase. Which, of course, will later be interpreted by Harvey Keitel's character as perhaps an indication that they knew they were going to be away for a long time. Which, of course, wasn't the case. It's just that Thelma's incompetent.
16:37 Wes: Well, on some level, it may be the case. Maybe. Maybe.
16:40 Erin: Right, right.
16:41 Wes: Maybe the detective is a bit of a retrospective psychoanalyst. Right.
16:45 Erin: Oh, total. Totally. Totally. That occurred to me.
16:48 Wes: What do you do when you put a gun in a suitcase and bring as much stuff as possible? Is she going on vacation or is she leaving her husband for good again? I think that their desire to run away permanently, of course, precedes the stuff that happens in the plot to make that necessary, at least to rationalize it.
17:04 Erin: Right, right. Yeah. I love that psychoanalyst angle, too. Cause he even goes through Louise's apartment. He sees those childhood pictures of her, and it's like he goes through her whole history, but just without her being there.
17:16 Wes: And at one point he'll say, I
17:17 Erin: feel like I know you.
17:19 Wes: Which is great, because he doesn't, because right after he says, I feel like I know you, he says something very stupid, which propels the plot forward to suicide, which is, you know, he brings up the Texas rape.
17:30 Erin: Right, right.
17:31 Wes: Despite the fact that he's kind of a good guy in the movie, he's also a completely inept negotiator.
17:37 Erin: Yeah. And I think that the failure of men throughout this entire film, you know, you can kind of look at it through several different angles, but they all underestimate or misunderstand or both these two women. So Daryl's failure of communication with Thelma will later become comic when they have him talk on the phone to Thelma. And Louise has warned her, you know, hey, if you. If you feel like something hinky's going on, the phone's probably being tapped, just immediately hang up. And all it takes is one word of him saying hello for her to just immediately hang up. This is really one of the funniest moments in the movie.
18:17 Wes: And I love the setup to that where the FBI guy before that is coaching him. Right. This guy Max, played by the same person who plays Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, which is great casting, but he'll tell him to act like he misses her. And then he says, women love that shit.
18:36 Wes: Which we know from the very beginning is going to be. And they should have thought of this is going to be so out of character that it's gonna immediately clue her in. And it's exactly the wrong thing to do. If they had been smart, just tell them, be yourself. And if that means being mean, that means being mean. So it's really inept for an FBI person to do that, but he's going with his inept intuitions about women. They override any expertise when it comes to law enforcement.
19:04 Erin: And it's funny because that moment even also indicates that men are inept at reading other men because they can't tell from the way that Darryl's acting that he and his wife don't have a great relationship. And therefore, they shouldn't be instructing him to be overly nice to her on the phone.
19:18 Erin: Meanwhile, Louise has anticipated everything that they're gonna do. She doesn't even hesitate for one second and immediately knows that the reason why Harvey Keitel's character knows that they're trying to make it to Mexico is because they must have captured JD or brought JD in, and Thelma must have told him where they were going during their. I think that's kind of a great moment because it just shows how smart she is that she so quickly figures that out without even a moment, not even a shot showing realization dawning on her face.
19:49 Wes: Right. She has better law enforcement instincts than the law. And that begins with killing Harlan. This extrajudicial judgment and execution.
19:59 Erin: Yeah, we should talk about that moment.
20:01 Erin: So Harlan comes over to them when they're at this honky tonk getting drinks. And the whole reason why they're there is because Thelma's begging for Louise to stay, because she's sort of playing at being a free woman and maybe living out some sort of teenage or young adult fantasy that she never got to live out with Daryl or because of
20:19 Wes: Daryl, she says, I never get to do stuff like this. She's kind of begging Louise. Like she would beg her mom or something like that.
20:26 Erin: Yeah. And I thought their outfits in this whole sequence were really interesting, too. Of course, they become the outfits that they wear for a good long time. But Louise, as she's. She's getting ready to go, puts on what. What almost looks like a cowboy kind of outfit. You know, it's like very. No nonsense. This sort of, like, it's feminine, but, you know, a sort of a long sleeve white shirt with a little jean jacket over it that has some embellishment on it that looks like a cowboy kind of get up. And Thelma, meanwhile, kind of looks like a cowgirl. Like, she's in that sort of, like, ridiculous white dress. So they're both wearing white, one of them in a more masculine outfit and the other in, like, a very hyper feminine. Which I think is kind of an interesting setup for this. So, you know, Louise is trying to reign Thelma in, and she just wants to, like, get up and dance to the music in her chair. And Harlan, we see him immediately see that Thelma is gonna be kind of an easy mark. She's drinking a lot. He comes over, calls them cupidolls. He asks them, like, what two cupidolls like them are doing there, which is obviously really infantilizing. And Louise blows smoke in his face, which is maybe my whole. My favorite moment in the whole movie. And that speaks to what you're talking about with that Sort of suppression of urges. You know, she's trying to ward this guy off and. Yeah, and.
21:48 Wes: And then there's the thing about him being a funny uncle, right?
21:51 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. Like he's. Yeah, he's trying to set himself up as not a threat, even though everybody knows that uncles are traditional threat.
21:59 Wes: Is it Thelma who says, you remind me of my uncle or something like that, and then says something about him being a funny uncle or something like that?
22:08 Erin: Right. I find a lot of scenes with Thelma to be kind of frustrating now that I've seen the movie so many times. Maybe not at first, but it's frustrating that, you know, as soon as Harlan comes over, Thelma just starts offering up all this information, like the. I guess it's because of the fact that she's been so sheltered that she doesn't understand that this is a really dumb thing to do and also just an inappropriate thing to do when you first meet someone anyway, you know? And then Thelma says, like, to Louise that, you know, it's all your years of waiting tables that have made you jaded or something like that. Like, there's constantly this balance between them where Thelma will do something really outlandish and then she'll try to convince Louise that Louise is just being uptight, when really she's just following, like, a very logical intuition.
22:51 Wes: Louise says, can't you tell when someone's hitting on you? And then that's when Thelma responds with the jaded thing. And then Thelma gets her into a conversation where she says, why don't you tell Jimmy to get lost? Or something like that.
23:03 Wes: Mm. So, yeah, she fires back.
23:05 Erin: Yeah. So they go up and dance. And I. This time around, I listened to the band. I had the subtitles on for a while, so the lyrics of the song that they were singing were really popping out to me. A recurring line is the news is talking about a dragnet up on the interstate looking for a Cadillac with Tennessee plates. And then another line is, since I left California, baby, things have gotten worse. Seems the land of opportunity for me has gotten worse. So that was a great, great touch, especially the dragnet line.
23:35 Erin: So Harlan dances with Thelma, and she, by this time, has gotten drunk very quickly. And the way they're dancing, like, Louise is also asked to dance, and she gets up and is dancing very traditionally with this guy. Harlan is, like, holding Thelma with one arm behind her neck. And it just looks so aggressive, even just at the very beginning of the
23:54 Wes: dance, in identifying him as an uncle. Right. She's already, in her own way, figured out that something's wrong. Right. The implication is incest and that this is someone who's a predator, but she can't think about that or act on that. She seems to be attracted to bad boys, as she is with JD later on as well. People with some sociopathic quality to them.
24:15 Erin: Well, Harlan starts spinning Thelma too much and doesn't stop really, when she needs to stop. And he decides to take her outside for some fresh air. Meanwhile, Louise has gone to the bathroom. The actual rape scene I find really stomach turning. It's like, really, really difficult to watch. I mean, it's very violent. He hits her repeatedly. And Geena Davis just looks, like, terrible. You know, it's really, really bad. So anyway, Louise comes up with a gun and gets Harlan to back off. He's really apologetic at first, or he doesn't quite apologize, but he's, you know, makes excuses for himself, seems quite scared. And Louise says, you know, in the future when a woman's crying like that, she isn't having any fun in response to him saying, you know, we were just having a little fun. And it seems like that angers him. Like the fact that she lectures him almost gets him to drop this pretense of this. This, you know, backed down, sort of semi apologetic stance that he's taking. And in response, he gets angry and defiant. And it seems like it's that defiance, ultimately, that makes her shoot him. Because by that time, you know, he's backed away, his hands are up, and maybe it's defiant about what he did. It's also about the fact that he obviously feels like he can be defiant to a woman, even though she has a gun in her hand that she then shoots. But I'm interested in knowing what you think ultimately makes her pull the trigger in that moment.
25:41 Wes: One of the things that is interesting about the movie is that you can look at this from Louise's perspective as if she's reliving her own trauma. Right. And enacting a kind of revenge fantasy in relation to it. You know, like any movie, you could take it and take one of the protagonists and treat it as a kind of dream or an unfolding of their own fantasy. It's kind of a useful hypothetical to look at it like that because, of course, you know, what's driving it forward is the wishes and desires of the characters. And sometimes they're not. They don't quite understand them themselves, in Louise's case. Right. Like I said, that conflict between her own wanting to be Protective, but also wanting to encourage impulsivity with the girls at the very beginning. Right. Don't smoke, but do sex. That manifests itself in a way with Thelma. So she's not just being protective, but she's giving in. And she's also with someone that she knows can. She probably knows at some level that Thelma can get her into a lot of trouble and that the trip creates that opportunity. It's a really weirdly conceived trip as well. Neither of them really fishes.
26:52 Wes: But they're off to a cabin to do that. A kind of stereotypically masculine thing to do. Right. Instead of a girls trip. It's odd. And so you look for ulterior motives, like I said before, like just wanting to get out of there, wanting to leave, wanting to escape, wanting to become outlaws, but. Or in Louise's case, wanting to relive this trauma and change the outcome in some way, or at least avenge it. At least get some sort of justice out of it. So part of, you know, when you explain why she kills him. Well, you know, he says, I. I should have gone ahead and, you know, effed her. Right. So he says the worst thing you possibly can when you have a gun being held on you, Right. He says something that's likely to get you murdered because it's not just callous, but it's potentially humiliating. You don't, if you want to live, don't humiliate a person who holds your life in their hands. So I think that's well motivated as well, you can see. Even though when you, you know, I remember, remember first seeing this movie and being kind of shocked by that scene, I really didn't expect that it compromises one of the protagonists in a way, because it is murder of some sort, Right. You call it second degree murder, someone she didn't have to kill. But on the other hand, it feels on some level justified.
28:05 Wes: So it puts you as the audience in the. In a kind of quandary. And it, like I said, potentially compromising to the protagonist. So I think on either level, whether you're looking at conscious wishes or unconscious wishes, whether you're looking at her just reacting to Harlan's statement, or if you're looking at her reliving her own trauma in a different way, I think either of those explanations make sense and maybe they work together.
28:32 Erin: Yeah. I think part of the reason why this works too is just because of Sarandon's performance. She looks genuinely shocked by what she does. You know, it seems to come from a place that's Almost like beyond her ability to control that impulse and shoot him.
28:44 Wes: Well, she says to him, watch your mouth, buddy. Right. Right afterwards. After he's dead.
28:49 Erin: After he's dead, she lowers the gun and her hand is shaking and she looks shocked. And then Thelma is going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. You know, she tells Thelma to go get the car. And then in that moment when they're alone together, she does say that. She says, you know, watch your mouth, buddy. Which is like pretty ballsy thing to say in that moment.
29:07 Erin: So there's this strange, it's just such a complex moment when she shoots him and. Right. Right after. I do think it's really well motivated. However, like you also see in the circumstances of it how the script that they are anticipating is going to result from this incident if they go to the police is going to betray them. Like the fact that he, she makes him turn around, she shot him in the chest and Geena Davis like got away. I mean, she looked pretty banged up. But so because of that, because she's made him turn around and actually face her, she didn't, you know, shoot him in the back. In other words, like it's, it's not, it's a situation where he's, he's vulnerable and he had his pants down and she shot him. Obviously not while he was in the process of trying to rape Thelma.
29:56 Wes: Yeah. So it's not self defense.
29:58 Erin: No, no. And you know, I don't know how they could have spun that in order to, I don't know that he was then coming after me or, or like, you know, what they could have, how they could have lied in order to make that problem for them go away.
30:12 Wes: But, well, Thelma later on will say, why don't you just say, you know, you shot him while he was in the act or something like that.
30:19 Wes: So they, they do consider manufacturing some story about. Would that have worked? It's unclear.
30:24 Erin: Right. Yeah. And I guess, I guess if they shot him in the back, that would have been even worse because you could argue that he was going away, walking away from them. So maybe that wouldn't have worked either. But of course, the biggest problem that Louise immediately knows is the fact that, you know, there were a hundred witnesses that saw them, the two of them dancing together and saw the way that she was being with him. And people will say that she, you know, that she's making it up or that she deserved it because of the way she was acting with him or whatever, whatever the case may be. This made me think about, like, how this moment kind of motivates. Of course, it motivates everything else that happens in the film. But it seems to set up a pattern. Or even their leaving in the first place and not telling Daryl and Jimmy. Seems to set up this desire on their parts to not take on the established mode of behavior. Or not follow the script that women are supposed to follow in the face of the powers that be, namely men. So Thelma would normally have to get permission, I suppose, to leave Daryl. Though I don't think there's even a precedent for her going away without him. And though she's trying at the beginning to be subservient to him. And to follow the script that he wants. He's also, like, rejecting her for that. And getting angry with her for trying to be the good little wife or whatever. So she breaks that chain, I guess, by leaving without telling him in this really defiant act. And then when Louise shoots Harlan, I think it's. Again, it's a kind of an act of defiance. Because he's being defiant with her. And feels like he can say these things to her and not experience any comeuppance. Because I suppose he's expecting that she's not a threat to him. And that's why he can be defiant and say these terrible things to her. So, again, she kind of rejects that script, I suppose, by shooting him. And then for the rest of the film, they are trying to evade, again, coming under the power of the law, of the police, of men, of whomever who want them to behave a certain way. And basically, this has now set them on this path of refusal. Where they're not going to give in to any of those. They're not going to put themselves in a situation where they have to play the part and act out that particular script that men want them to. So this includes, like, they don't want to have to put themselves in a situation where Thelma has to justify her behavior with Harlan on the dance floor and be humiliated and all that stuff. In addition to Louise having to justify her having shot Harlan. And I think that continues in their relationships with men throughout the rest of the film. And ultimately, of course, in the final scene, too. That's, like, the ultimate rejection of just not wanting to go along with whatever the guys want them to do.
33:12 Wes: So in some sense, they're trying to escape from men. But they're also moving through the world of men, in a sense. Right? That's what they find themselves in, in one circumstance after another. A world in which they're vulnerable to men. What the killing does is it gives them a reason to really make their escape. Now it seems like it's an escape that they may haven't attempted before. There's one great line where Louise says to Thelma, every time we get into trouble, you plead insanity. I do a double take at that. What? Yeah, that's. That's a very surprising reveal in the movie. In a way. It doesn't really square with things. That the idea that they've done gotten into trouble before and that this isn't something entirely new. That's. That's very surprising in a way. It suggests, I think, that whatever trouble they've managed to get into, it hasn't been enough. It hasn't reached escape velocity. And this murder is escape velocity. The ultimate consequence of it is to push them forward towards liberation, which is really what happens in the movie. The. The whole progression is towards a kind of a spiritual liberation or a psychological liberation, despite the fact that it also involves suicide. We can talk about that. So, you know, if that's what it takes, that's what it takes to be. To be liberated. You know, maybe. Maybe that's what you have to do. But is liberation just an evasion of men that I'm a little more unclear on?
34:43 Wes: Yeah. And one of the reasons I'm unclear on it is the role of the police is very complicated. My favorite scene in the movie is actually where Hal and all the FBI officers arrive at Daryl and Thelma's house. So they set up shop at their home. Home becomes a police base, which is a really interesting. You know, it's not the first movie to do that, and not the last, of course, where the FBI camp out and someone's home. But in this case, it's a really interesting transformation. So. So one of my favorite scenes is that arrival because they're arriving out of the rain and they're kind of running up to the doorstep and laughing. Do you remember that?
35:23 Wes: It's this very innocent, playful. The thing that they're doing is they, you know, as they arrive to do their police work. It's a wonderful touch, and it's. I think it's an important one. Max will be eating a cheeseburger while they watch the surveillance tape of Thelma robbing a store. And they all watch a movie together. Right.
35:44 Erin: At one point, Penny Serenade. They watch Penn Serenade. Yeah. With Cary Grant and Irene Dunn.
35:49 Wes: Okay. All right.
35:50 Wes: So they're watching that movie, and then Daryl tries to turn the Channel to sports. And then they get upset and he has to turn it back. So you get these very. These touches that are kind of like sensitive guy touches. For some reason, the police and the FBI turn out to be more sensitive characters. And what I think is interesting about that is that in the police, they've generated something that in one way is persecutory, right? Because Hal has a very real interest in catching them. Despite the fact that he's worried about them and has warm feelings about them and wants to keep them safe. He also wants to catch them. And he'll make remarks to that effect that make that clear. On the other hand, despite the persecutory element, you know, the law enforcement guys are. The men who are. Have some actual curiosity about Thelma and Louise, about what makes them tick, what their motivations are, what's going on with them, where to find them, all those things that they should have gotten from the men in their lives. Right? Actual curiosity about them as people. Unfortunately, that's only something in this movie that law enforcement can provide. So there's an interesting ambiguity in the fact and what it means to be sought after by the police in this movie. You know, the other way I think of the police in this movie are when I saw the law enforcement arrive and they're coming in out of the rain and they're kind of boyish because they're playful, I thought, oh, the orphans are coming in out of the rain. These are the children that Thelma and Louise didn't have. Their departure, in a way, is a productive thing. It's a. You know, it produces these kind of men, children because that's the way they come off in some ways. Even though they're the better men in the movie, the better sorts of men. And they arrive at this home, the home is now filled with these children. They watch a movie, they eat a cheeseburger, they do things that. And the tone of the house changes. So instead of it being that just cluttered place that you mentioned and Darryl's tyranny, that scene with the movie, it suddenly becomes much warmer and much more homelike. So in the economy of the movie, Thelma and Louise becoming outlaws has a kind of integrating and organizing effect in the domain of the household. And that, I think, has something to do with the generation of. Of curiosity in these men. And also with, you know, it draws on the kind of men who can be. Whereas Daryl tramples on his own sustenance. The way I was thinking of it, these are guys who can enjoy the house and home Strangely enough.
38:27 Erin: That's really interesting. Yeah. I don't know if I would go so far as to call them good men, though. I mean, I think that Harvey Keitel is the closest to a good man, but even he laughs at that women love that shit line. He repeats it and laughs at the humor of that, which is kind of a disappointing moment. But the guys are like. One of them is reading Boudoir magazine. Yep. And that idea of those, like, dirty magazines or whatever is something that recurs in Ridley Scott's movies, actually. Like, I think of Alien, which we'll get to in another episode, I'm sure. But yeah, I think you're right. As much as it pains me that, you know, in a two hander.
39:01 Wes: Well, that's why I use the term better men.
39:04 Erin: Right, right.
39:05 Wes: And I think it's com. Like, yeah, they are complicated. Right. Like the eating of the cheeseburger. Doing the playing of the. Max is kind of a perverse character. He's childlike, you know, he's. He's not unlike the Ned Ryerson character in Groundhog.
39:18 Erin: Max is the. Is the Ned Ryerson guy.
39:20 Wes: Yeah, Max is the FBI guy, the main FBI guy. So. Played by the same guy played Ned Ryerson. So, you know, he's the one who says women love that shit. He's the one eating the cheeseburger during the playing of the surveillance tape. So, yeah, he does a lot of perverse and childish things and has that quality to him. And like I said, you know, they. They have that boyish quality in general. Yeah. Boudoir magazine, all that stuff. So that's why I use the term better. Right. They're the better sort of men in the movie. But I think that doesn't mean they're the ideal or that they're even. That they're the good men, so to speak. They're complicated.
39:55 Erin: Right. I think that Harvey Keitel is a good man. Tries to be, anyway.
39:58 Wes: Yeah, yeah. There are very deliberate complications of that. When he says something like, you know, someone says they must be very smart or very lucky. And he says something to the effect that brains are never enough and luck always runs out or something like that. So he's kind of gleefully anticipating their capture. That's why I think that motivation is never simply eradicated. He doesn't just simply become a, oh, I'm the completely nice guy. Now, those two motivations, the desire to see them safe and the desire to capture them, kind of live alongside each other without eradicating each other, but. Sorry, you were onto something with Them not being good men.
40:37 Erin: No, that's it. I was just going to express my surprise that in a movie called Thelma and Louise, your favorite scene has nothing to do with them.
40:45 Wes: Yeah, Yeah. I have a soft spot for the little boys, the orphans that Thelma and Louise have from a distance, taken in. Taken under their wing. There's the interesting juxtaposition of the cop who stops them, who is all superego, right? All enforcement, and he's irritable and rude. And then the trucker who's all ID and all, you know, there's Jimmy with his detachment. There's the boyishness and perversity of the FBI guys. The more paternal and caring role played by Keitel's character, J.D. who's exploitative Harmon, the creepy uncle Daryl, trampling his own sustenance. And then there's an old man. The old man may be the only kind of neutral male figure in the movie, but I tried to make a list of the men in the movie and how to characterize them and how to sort of how to characterize what is negative or not about them. It's mostly negative, and I don't know what to make of that. There's just a lot of different ways, I guess, that for men to be bad. Well.
41:53 Erin: And it's not nearly a complete catalog, but the character of JD I think is the most interesting. I know in some contemporary reviews when this came out that I read a couple of women reviewers were kind of incredulous that Thelma would invite this strange guy into their car so soon after what had happened to her. And he's really interesting because in a way, he's kind of a good guy, in a sense. I mean, he goes with whatever they want. So he's this great contrast to Harlan because he kind of demures when they. He's like, oh, no, it's crazy. Never mind. Like, you don't want me around. And then legitimately goes away, you know, I mean, he doesn't, like, try to use that as a false blind and then take advantage of them. I mean, he does when he's standing out in the rain and Thelma invites him in, but that's only because he kind of knows that she wants to invite him in and she has the option of turning him down. I think that's really important. That kind of restores the balance. Berthelma, of course, even though it's going to end up that he steals all her money. And I just want to talk about how frustrating that is, too. But even more frustrating is when they look in their wallet, or maybe Thelma looks in Louise's wallet to see how much money they have, and she says, $61. And she barely says it. And, you know, they're in the convertible, driving with the top down, and a bill flies out of her hands. And then she turns to louise and says, $41. That is the most frustrating thing in the world. Thelma just, like, can't. Yeah, she just can't get it together at all, you know, even against the wind. And even the moment that she first. This actually rhymed for me. The moment that she first meets J.D. she kind of trips over him and he's holding, like, a hose, I guess. And it really looked to me to be kind of similar, or maybe a deliberate rhyme with that scene when Daryl trips at the beginning and there's that guy with the hose standing.
43:50 Wes: Yep. From what I read, that scene in the beginning where Daryl trips is not part of the script. He just. He did that by accident and played along with it. But it fits his character, so. But yeah, so I thought, yes, the scene with JD Echoes that.
44:03 Erin: That's really interesting. I don't know if this is a common expression anymore, but in old movies, sometimes when they're describing, especially when a husband fails and has an affair, they described it as my foot slipped. And so I think that's kind of interesting that Daryl is leaving and he's gonna end up staying out late. Like, she's gonna later call him at 4 o' clock in the morning and he still won't be home. And then right before Thelma meets this guy that she's gonna have an affair with, she also trips under the same kind of circumstances. So it works out really well. But that I think his name is Christopher McDonald, that he tripped at the beginning is perfect.
44:38 Wes: But what's also interesting is that she's the one doing the tripping, but JD Is the one who's apologetic and says, did I do that or did I cause that? So he is thinking about his effect on her and is willing to take the blame for her tripping. Whereas, of course, when Daryl trips, he. He blames the. The workers and everything he does. Of course, he's, you know, he's the clumsy one, but he doesn't think about his effects on anyone. So. So JD at least can, for the sake of charming someone, pretend that he cares about his causal role in things.
45:13 Erin: Well, I. I think he kind of does. I mean, I. I think that someone having that reaction, it shows a certain amount of social understanding or a certain default Mode, which is. It indicates something, caring about that person. Even though we, we later learn that of course he's a thief and he's, you know, he has a lot of things that are wrong with him, there's still like a kind of a curious goodness there and a sense of deference to women, which is lacking from pretty much anybody else.
45:40 Wes: He's also really good looking.
45:42 Erin: Love to skip. Yeah, of course. No, but that moment happens, of course, when Thelma's coming out of the phone booth after she's just had a phone conversation with Daryl, which she later recounts to Louise in this really sarcastic way. Like she sort of imagines how the phone conversation should have gone and says to Louise, like, oh, I love you, honey. You know, all this, all this stuff that you know, of course they both know is bs. And it's from that moment on that Thelma decides to go to Mexico with Louise. So, you know, I guess the phone call was so disappointing that. And he was such a bully to her that she ultimately decides that there's nothing for her there and she wants to run away to Mexico and that. And then, you know, trips over JD along the way. So she's kind of, I guess, in this mindset now where she's. She's, I guess you could say, mentally divorced from him at this point and is in a perfect position to trip over J.D. in that moment.
46:40 Erin: Yeah. So then they have this. They go to the motel where Jimmy's waiting for Louise, and Thelma has her own encounter with jd, which is again, kind of. It seems like it's a kind of restorative for what's happened to her with Harlan. To have a guy who's deferential to her and who actually listens to her and seems at least in bed to care about her and to be charming.
47:05 Wes: Yeah. We get these alternating scenes. This is a lead up to the middle of the movie, which is disastrous, which involves the losing of the money. But in the lead up to that, you get all these alternating scenes where thelma is enjoying JD's company and Louise is enjoying Jimmy's company. Although it starts out a little shaky at first.
47:25 Erin: Yeah. With the worst proposal ever.
47:28 Erin: The non proposal proposal, which is preceded by kind of violence.
47:33 Wes: Right, right. It's a violent outburst, starts trashing the room.
47:39 Erin: Yeah. There's a curious moment there with Jimmy, too, where he kind of expresses regret for the fact that his career never took off. And he says something like, you know, do you think I'm happy playing Ramada Inns? And Louise responds, we Both got what we settled for. Which is something that she says to Thelma early on in the car when Thelma's complaining about Daryl, I think, and she says, you know, well, you get what you settle for. Hmm.
48:05 Erin: Yeah. So I don't know the significance of that line. It seems really interesting to me that it recurs and that Louise is interested in that idea that. What? That you're sort of responsible for your own fate, even for the things that. That happen to you that maybe aren't your fault, and the extent to which maybe, I don't know, maybe everything is your fault that happens to you in some way.
48:25 Wes: Well, they could have ended up with better boyfriend and a better husband. Right. They did settle for whether. Whether or not they just didn't, you know, Like, Thelma's too young to know better and ends up with this person, right? She's kind of stuck. Takes a lot of. It's a huge disruption, right, to say, all right, I'm going to divorce this guy. And so, yeah, so we all find ourselves stuck in that way. And then we have to ask, to what extent are we responsible for being stuck and for simply staying in it despite the enormous difficulties involved in extracting ourselves? And it's always risky, right? It's always a risky thing to do. Maybe what's out there is worse. So to settle or not to settle, right? To settle or to drive off a cliff, right?
49:10 Erin: And that's the problem, right, is that when they. You know, when they decide to live in this mode of not settling, that ultimately means that you have to die. That's the way it goes.
49:20 Wes: The ultimate freedom, Right?
49:22 Erin: You know, it's funny when. So when Thelma comes down to the restaurant. I love that scene with Louise and Jimmy. And then when Thelma comes down looking like she's either on drugs or crazy, and they. Louise has this realization that JD Was alone in the room, and, of course, the money's stolen. They run into the room and. And Thelma infuriatingly says, I've never been lucky, not once. Which is just like, oh, it's so annoying. Because of course, it has nothing to do with luck. She's just an idiot over and over again.
49:56 Wes: Yeah. Carelessness is a form of bad luck, Right?
50:00 Erin: Yeah. I mean, I guess the luck involved would be to be careless like that and to actually have it not work out for the worse. And then here, like, this is the moment, I think, when the roles switch, right? So. So Louise can't take it anymore. She's been, you know, she's been reduced to a childlike state now because of Thelma's incompetence. And now Thelma is going to have to take control.
50:25 Erin: And this is something that. That. That I'm really interested in this idea that you can only assume a kind of a mature role or the role of an adult or the role of a competent person when another person is incompetent. And you have to. You know, you can assume that role now. So Thelma now becomes like the mother and tells Louise not to worry about it and she's gonna take care of it.
50:49 Erin: But of course, she does so by getting them into even deeper trouble with the law and robbing a convenience store.
50:55 Wes: Yeah. So that's actually the way the second half of the second act begins. Right. So the very midpoint of the movie is the loss of the money.
51:02 Erin: And then I thought it was later in the film, but you're right. Yeah.
51:05 Wes: And then there's a shift in. In tone after that, because that's the. Right after that, the loss of the money and Louise crying and Thelma saying, don't worry about it. That's when we get a shift to the scene where the police are playfully running in from the rain and telling Daryl that they tapped the phone. And you have. Do you have a good relationship with your wife? And all that stuff. Women love that shit. But then when we go back to Thelma and Louise, we get that wonderful scene where Louise is just. Thelma goes into the store and Louise is smoking in the car. And she's looking at these old ladies, and there's that kind of look of desperation on their face, which I think the old man later on will similarly have the old man that she trades some of her jewelry for a hat. And then Thelma, of course, comes out saying, drive. And she's robbed the store. And of course, she's entirely used the script that JD Gave her about how to go and rob a store like a gentleman. And he says. What does he say? It's my opinion that experiencing robbery doesn't have to be an entirely unpleasant experience or something like that. And this really sets them on the path to complete liberation with Thelma taking over now.
52:16 Erin: And I guess, well, she has to kind of buy in. Louise has put something on the line by shooting Harlan. Right. For Thelma. And now. Yeah. And now Thelma has to do the same for Louise. So the role reversal works out with the smoking. Thelma is seen smoking in the car, and she actually, like, hands her cigarette to Louise as she goes in to rob the Convenience store.
52:42 Erin: That's important. Yeah. And then Louise is too distraught to smoke it. She smokes it for just a second, maybe, and throws it away. And then when Thelma comes out having robbed the store, Louise responds as Thelma did to the murder. So she repeats like, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. Over and over again in the way that Thelma was going, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. And we're not able to say anything else. So there was this sort of reciprocal investment, I guess you could say, in their being outlaws. So it's more balanced now, and they're both invested in this life of crime or rejection of society or whatever. So it's a little bit more equal.
53:19 Wes: Yeah. So Louise is reanimated by all of that. And you see that in her saying right after she robs the store and they're pulling out, she's telling her to slow down, but she also says, don't you litter. So Louise says that to Thelma, which I think is great. Then they have that interaction with the truck driver. And then after that, Louise gets the hat for trading it for some jewelry. And there's this discussion again of how they're really in trouble now, and there's no way to explain it away. And I think that's when Thelma says, well, you can just tell them that he was in the middle of raping me when you shot him. And Louise has some response to that. And then Thelma says, wow, the law is really some tricky shit, or something like that. Part of what's interesting about that is the kind of newfound lack of giving a shit. I guess there's a kind of flippancy now in Thelma's tone. And maybe you could call it courage or boldness or something like that. That will actually only increase as the movie goes on.
54:22 Erin: Yeah, that transformation when Louise gives her jewelry away and when they kind of get into that sort of garb where they kind of strip down and become these. I don't know what you would call it. Like these sort of creatures of the road maybe, is really, really interesting. I love the quieter moments, too. Like, I love the moment when they go through Monument Valley in the dark. Yeah, they're both kind of smiling. It's like being in the back of the bus in the Graduate or something, only they keep smiling. You know, they know that they've done something now that's, you know, beyond help, but they're kind of happy about it. And when Louise gets out and looks around at the sunrise sort of Wordlessly. And there's a real change in them. And then, of course, the cop who pulls them over, one line that really stuck out to me in that when Thelma really becomes this real professional and pulls a gun on the cop and gets him to get in the trunk, they're both very apologetic to this guy, and I love the way that he crumbles and just cries like a baby with this real tough guy who just becomes such a wimp, even though it's clear they're not going to really hurt him. Thelma explains, three days ago, she never would have done this, but. And then you kind of expect her to say, but, you know, you wouldn't have believed what happened to me. Or like, you know, something crazy happened. And now. Now we're past the point of return or something like that. And instead she says, three days ago, we never would have done this, but if you met my husband, you'd understand. Which is really interesting because that means that she switches the kind of the locus of. Where the break with, you know, polite society was not at the moment of the attempted rape, of course, but kind of like where. Where I was sort of forced to go with my whole script idea, which is at the beginning, when she first leaves him, when she first goes on the trip in the first place. So it was like the whole trip was destined to turn out like this. Not just because of that one event, it's because of the fact that Daryl's a jerk and Jimmy won't commit to Louise and they had to do this in the first place.
56:21 Erin: It was a really interesting idea.
56:23 Wes: Yeah. And this is the point in the movie where, too, we get this evolving relationship with the detective, Hal, Harvey Keitel's character, because the scene before just backing up a little bit. There's the call with. I think this is the first call where Louise talks directly to Hal. So at a gas station. And so basically, that's where Thelma will call and she'll hang up immediately because she can tell that her husband is not behaving normally. And then Louise calls back and talks, you know, says, you know, let me talk to the police. And. And Daryl's like, what do you mean, police?
56:57 Wes: And. And that's where she gets the information, you know, that's where she hears Hal talk about Mexico. So she knows Thelma's slipped up with JD and all that stuff. And she'll say, you know, you got to stop talking to people and being so open. We're fugitives now. Let's start behaving like it so cut from that scene to the back to the house where the FBI guys and Hal are watching a movie together. You know, that old movie. And the line that we hear is, let's get married. And then we come back to Thelma and Louise. And I think it's Thelma who says, I've always wanted to travel. I just never got the opportunity. That's the first scene where we really get the sense that they are now on vacation. Right? They are truly on vacation, and they are truly enjoying the scenery and enjoying being on a road trip. So the reason why I mentioned the movie scene again, too, is you. Just as their liberation, kind of like I said before, their increasing liberation kind of corresponds with a increasing sense of hominess on the side of the law enforcement. And what I kind of read again is little boyness. Orphan. Orphanness.
58:07 Erin: Yeah. Those two scenes of recreation on both sides.
58:10 Wes: Yeah. Yeah. So after that I've always wanted to travel thing. We get the trucker, and then. And then Thelma is laughing about Harlan and the look on his face when she got. When he got shot. And Louise doesn't want to talk about what happened to her in Texas. And then they do the whole thing with the police officer. But, yeah, as we move on, we get this development of the relationship between Hal and Thelma and Louise where he wants to bring them in. And there's a second conversation between Hal and Louise where he says, I almost feel like I know you, and do you want to come out of this alive? And Louise responds, I'll have to think about that. Then he says something that reminds me of Jimmy in a way, because Jimmy had said, you know, one of the things that was weird about Jimmy's whole proposal is that he seems like he's just afraid of losing her, and he's not actually that into her. And he says something like, I don't want to lose you. And here Hal says, I'll do anything. I don't know. It's a really weird thing for him to say, you know, I'll do anything to you guys to just. To give up. Give yourselves up. And then he moves into this whole thing where I know what's making you run. What happened to you in Texas? Which is precisely the wrong thing to say, right? And leads her to hang up the phone. But the tap has already been achieved. He's set them up for this tragic ending. I'm just thinking out loud, but what I'm trying to get at is the interesting caring, paternal quality there. But the. You know, again, the ineptness with which
59:43 Erin: he executes that, that's really interesting. And that makes me see actually something about Harvey Keitel's character, that is, which is, for Jimmy, as Louise says, it's about the thrill of the chase. It's not about his actual love for her. It's about the fact that when he fears that she's getting away, he wants to come back and chase her. And that's when his interest in her is renewed. So one wonders if this is just another form of Harvey Keitel chasing after two women that he can't have, but from a procedural standpoint rather than a romantic one, which is a really interesting idea. You know, what does that say about these men? That their interest in these women is only when they. They fear them running away, when they fear that they're getting outside of their grasp.
1:00:30 Wes: I think Hal really does care about them. You know, there's that scene where he's interrogating J.D. right, and says, you know, these are two girls that had a chance.
1:00:40 Wes: Which is an interesting way of putting it in light of, like, what Thelma says about her not being lucky. So, you know, he's going to. He's going to hold JD Personally responsible if anything happens to them. And he says lots of other things to that effect that should persuade the audience that he actually does have a soft spot for them and cares about them. But I also think, you know, like I was saying earlier, I think the other desire simply to capture them lives on alongside that. And maybe that's a dilemma within. That's an ineradicable part of romantic relationships. Maybe, you know, there's the kind of objectifying, capturing, chasing element. And often that's the more. Right. Sexual side of things. And then there's the. There's the more caring, affectionate, attached part. And it may just be that both of those inevitably live alongside each other.
1:01:34 Erin: Yeah, this is a common theme in battles of the sexes or whatever, this idea that men want the chase, and then they are unable to figure out what to do with the women they've caught once they've caught them, so to speak. This is obviously true of Daryl. Like, he married Thelma, doesn't know what to do with her. You know, Jimmy is only interested in Louise when he's chasing her, but they obviously don't have anything sustainable in the long term because of the fact that she has to keep retreating from him. And in the same way, in a more legal way, Keitel knows that, like, what is he going to be able to do for them once he's Caught them. He knows that the situation is going to get out of control. At the brink of the Grand Canyon there, he kind of predicts that that's going to happen because he's warning people not to let things get out of control. But he can't. You know, even if that weren't to happen and he did successfully catch them, so to speak, or literally, he can't ensure that nothing bad is going to happen to them because once he catches them again, he's not going to be able to have a relationship with them that is nurturing and caring. They're going to be in the hands of the law.
1:02:40 Wes: Well, also. Right. He's not FBI. He's helping the FBI. And after he helps them get that tap, I mean, he's in a way, being used. So after he helps him get that tap, Max says to him, well, you know, we can't use you anymore. That's it. You're done on this case. Now we take over and we do our thing. And Hal's pleading with them to not get the girls killed by doing stupid stuff.
1:03:04 Erin: Right? Yeah. And this is one of the interesting things to me, too, about this movie is this idea that, you know, mental don't know how to coexist with women. Right. The men seem to be able to coexist with each other in those police scenes.
1:03:20 Erin: But there's even a question of whether or not Thelma and Louise are really coexisting. Well, I mean, there's some great scenes that we get of them, you know, kind of driving in the car to the music and all that. But there's. I don't know. I was thinking about this in relation to, like, the Bechdel test and all that stuff. Thelma and Wiese is considered, like, you know, one of the movies that passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. And many, many movies do pass this. This test. Well, and not too many, obviously, which is part of the problem. But anyway, this is. This was a test developed really in a cartoon. It wasn't ever meant to be any kind of litmus test based on something that Virginian Woolf wrote in her essay, A Room of One's Own. Basically, a movie must have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something besides a man. And a surprisingly small number of films, you know, relatively speaking, pass this test. And again, it's not. It's not a particularly reliable or even useful indicator of how well women are portrayed on screen or even whether a movie is, quote, unquote, feminist. Sometimes it may not even be particularly interesting or revealing. But it's entered the cultural consciousness to such an extent that it's, you know, become important now. But anyway, you know, I wonder if, though this movie is seen as being something that passes this test with flying colors. I wonder if it passes the Bechdel test, sort of according to the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it. Because the women are, you know, the choices that they make. Yes. Are in defiance of this script that they don't want to engage in. But it's almost like, you know, they're tracing the edges of what these men sort of expect them to be doing and how they're expected to behave. But they're still sort of leaving the resultant outline that's sort of highlighting the men's bad behavior. Their behavior is still, I suppose you could say, fundamentally reactionary. Though they do talk to each other about something besides men. When they do, it's. It's because of circumstances that they find themselves in as a result of their relationships to men or the situation they find themselves in ultimately because of men. And. And that's the point of this movie, of course. But it's also just a little sad. And one doesn't. I don't know. On the one hand, I don't want something cliche that shows, you know, the two of them camped out somewhere talking about their childhoods and what they were like as little girls with each other, you know, because that's a sort of obligatory female bonding scene. But on the other hand, it is a little sad to me that the police officers get these bonding scenes and Thelma and Louise bond in action. And I certainly don't question their relationship or fail to understand them as characters. But, you know, the minute they're alone, JD Comes into the picture. You know what I mean?
1:06:24 Wes: They don't get to watch an old movie together.
1:06:26 Erin: Right, Right. Yeah. And then the truck driver is another way that they bond. So, again, it's very relational to the men. I wouldn't change any part of this movie. And certainly it's the point that everything that they're doing is a kind of a reaction. But maybe I'm wishing that there was a reaction.
1:06:43 Wes: Plus, now you have me trying to imagine what things would look like if they could somehow have escaped the world of men and simply enjoyed a real vacation. Right.
1:06:55 Wes: I mean, I think part of the problem with the Bechtel Test is just that everyone's concerned about love. And what are movies about except sex and violence? Ultimately, love. And there's always ambition Right. And work. But that's trickier. But yeah, you know, as you, as you point out, because they're. The antagonist in this movie is kind of men in general. Right. And the nominal antagonist, Hal, is also a, an ally in a weird way. It's like a man against nature type of movie, except it's women against men. Women trying to survive in the harsh environment of a male world.
1:07:35 Erin: Yeah. And I think that's really important. I think what I was trying to get at with that sort of half baked tracery metaphor is that they're, by skirting men, they're creating basically like a negative, you know, they're creating a negative image of something that men have already created. They're not creating a new image, presenting a new relationship for themselves that isn't just a response to the world that men have created. However, you know, at the same time, that's the point of this whole film. So we can't ask it to, you know, halfway through become some sort of version of like two women on a desert island just like hanging out and having fun. The point is the point for point rejection of that male idea which, you know, exists just in response to the blueprint that men have already created. So it's going to be informed by that blueprint if they're going to reject it in that way.
1:08:32 Wes: Yeah, they're on the run. And what does evasion mean? Part of the complexity of relationships between men and women, I think, is that evasion is often taken to be a sign of an invitation. Right. Women being evasive is part and parcel of the courting ritual and is, you know, in the form of coyness or it's, it's. So men might get the idea that that is designed to produce desire. The whole concept of femininity is tied up in this very idea that evasion is not actually evasion, which makes women's lives very complicated because you get, if you say so, predatory people. Yeah. Mansplain this to you. Okay. Because it gets, you know, it, it creates a lot of honest misunderstandings on the one hand, but then it also, it's the basis for a lot of predatory and even criminal behavior Right. On the part of men. And so to move beyond that to the position where evasion really is evasion. Right. So they want to, you know, throughout the movie they're trying to escape from men. So in that way. Right. It's, you know, as you say, reactive. They're trying to escape from their boyfriend or husband, they're trying to escape from law enforcement, trying to deal With a cop or a trucker or Harlan or whatever. But at some point, evasion, an escape can also mean a desire for autonomy. Right? So men might misread evasion as, you know, an invitation when what it really means is they don't. They want you to fuck off or they. Or it has nothing to do with you. And it's a expression of autonomy. And that is something I do think they get to in this movie. There's the point where Thelma says, you know, something has crossed over in me. I think this is after the final conversation between Louise and Hal where it's. Strangely enough, it's Thelma who says to Louise, you know, don't give up on me. Because you think Louise is the one who has more to lose ultimately. But Thelma says, don't give up on me. And then Thelma says, something's crossed over in me and I can't go back. And Louise says something to the effect that he says. They say they're going to take us dead or alive or something like that. And Thelma says, gosh. So again, this kind of very flippant, unconcerned way of dealing, you know, in the face of that danger, there's no longer anxiety, but you get a sense of liberation. So, you know, at some point, one of them says, everything looks different now. And it's almost as if something, you know, we have something to look forward to now. And then get more scenes of them driving with. Enjoying music. And then they have that final run in with the trucker where they destroy
1:11:16 Erin: his truck the best.
1:11:18 Wes: And then of course, they're gonna get to that famous ending. But yeah, I think in that moment, just reflecting out loud on the. The extent to which is this is ultimately reactive. But my hunch is that ultimately, yeah, something in evasion is just about autonomy and is. Is not actually reactive. It's about. So the word evasion is no longer even appropriate, although it may be maybe read that way by other people, especially about men who are pursuing you if you're a woman. In this case, it becomes just an expression of the desire to enjoy freedom, which can mean a lot of different things. It doesn't just mean freedom from men or freedom from women. Or it can mean the kind of freedom that we enjoy in our work or in driving down the road and looking out the window and enjoying the landscape. The sorts of things that they. They do get to do in the movie. Enjoying a real friendship. Freedom, I think, is implicated in that autonomy.
1:12:15 Erin: Right. So that would lead us to the last scene in which we could argue whether or not that is the ultimate expression of freedom. This is something we've talked about, of course, with Hedda Gabler, and thus whether the ending is a positive or a negative. I mean, it's silly to say because it's suicide. But, of course, the choice to end the movie on an upbeat note and to end it on the freeze frame of the car.
1:12:42 Wes: Right. It's not really suicide if they're just frozen forever. I mean, come on.
1:12:45 Erin: Right, right. That's true. That's true. Yeah. To capture them in that kind of triumphant moment before the reality of hitting the ground and exploding. Yeah.
1:12:55 Wes: Well, was this Ebert one of Ebert's criticisms? I forget who. Someone said they didn't object to the freeze frame, but they thought that it shouldn't have happened so quickly.
1:13:04 Erin: Yeah. In fact, Ebert lopped off half a star just for the fact that he thought it was. Yeah. It didn't provide enough of an earned catharsis that they should have held onto that shot longer, which I totally agree.
1:13:17 Wes: Yeah, I agree with that as well.
1:13:19 Erin: It just immediately goes into yet another clip montage. I feel like I'm watching so many movies lately with clip montages of the highlight.
1:13:26 Wes: Well, it reminds me of the Dukes of Hazzard, you know, when they used to. When they were in the middle of a jump or something. That would freeze it. Unless I'm misremembering that.
1:13:36 Erin: Well, when I first saw this film.
1:13:37 Wes: Yep. And then these two good old boys move.
1:13:41 Erin: When I first saw this film, I was relatively late in my film education, and I watched the last scene, and I was like, oh, it's Jules and Jim, which is another movie I hope we'll cover on the podcast at a certain point. But in Jules and Jim, of course, Katherine drives off the road with an unwitting person in the passenger seat. He doesn't know that she's going to drive off and exact this. It's an act of revenge, and we actually see the result of it. So it's far more tragic. But this idea of driving off a road as an act of revenge, or we can argue whether or not revenge is the motivation here, but I think it's very clearly supposed to hearken back to that film.
1:14:24 Wes: Yeah. I wanted to say about the ending, I find, like, any discussion about whether it's a good or bad thing to be kind of irrelevant, because at that point, the movie has kind of transcended the story as well. We've kind of drove off the cliff of the actual narrative line right along with them. Because what's thematic has become so strong within the movie that the theme of liberation has become so strong that it kind of bursts the boundaries of the story. And it's impossible not to read it kind of allegorically at the end.
1:14:58 Erin: Right, right.
1:14:59 Wes: You don't do that through the whole movie. You know, throughout the movie, you just enjoy the narrative on its own terms. But at the very end, there's kind of a transition to it being more allegorical or completely an expression of the theme. And so, yeah, I think you have to look at it simply as a metaphor for liberation. You have to look at that driving off of the cliff as an expression of a certain kind of psychological state, which is something uncomplicatedly positive. But maybe I'm, you know, maybe I'm just too jaded. Not jaded. Jaded isn't the right word. But. But, you know, maybe the average person is going to look at that and. No, they're dead now. No, but it doesn't do that for me.
1:15:41 Erin: No, not for me either. It's funny because I think there kind of were two vastly different ways to read this back in 91. You know, on the one hand, you have certain reviewers who are like, this is glorifying suicide or who even said the final moments disqualify it from being a feminist movie. Because it's basically saying that, like, if you're gonna be a free woman, you have to die.
1:16:04 Erin: And then on the other hand, you have, you know, one of the things that I saw in an interview, I think, with Susan Sarandon and Gina Davis, just this little tiny 10 minute interview that they did for the. I think the 25th anniversary of the film was Sarandon said that she kept getting offers from studio executives to do a sequel to the movie. And she was like, how are you gonna.
1:16:23 Wes: That's hilarious.
1:16:25 Erin: So that was really funny.
1:16:27 Erin: She was like, are we gonna be ghost ghosts? Like, you know, so. So it seems like on the other hand there was just this like, rejection, total rejection of the reality of the. Of the end.
1:16:37 Wes: Fade in. A convertible plummets off a cliff.
1:16:42 Wes: A hundred feet before reaching the bottom, a parachute deploys.
1:16:46 Erin: Yeah, right, right. She was like, how are, how are you going to get out of that? Or. Or are we going to come back as ghosts and like, teach people how to rebel against men or, you know, like, what, what is the story in
1:16:59 Wes: that fade in hospital room, two women are in traction and completely covered by bed.
1:17:06 Erin: Yeah, right, right.
1:17:09 Wes: I can't believe we live through that. Neither can we?
1:17:15 Erin: And the whole movie is what, a courtroom procedural.
1:17:18 Wes: If we suspend our disbelief. Yeah, right. It'll be a courtroom.
1:17:22 Erin: You can handle the estrogen.
1:17:25 Wes: That's awesome. Yeah.
1:17:29 Erin: But I read it as metaphorical. I also read it as kind of a metaphor too, for those studio executives in the 90s. I mean, you know, so, okay, so this is probably the only major, like, female road buddy movie. And, you know, one would expect that this was really successful, that it would produce a bunch of copycats of two women on the road and kind of a buddy movie.
1:17:53 Wes: Are you thinking about Boys on the side now or.
1:17:58 Erin: No, I mean, you know, major Hollywood doing its Hollywood thing, which is something works and then they're gonna repeat it until everybody hates it. And it didn't really spawn a movement as a result of this.
1:18:10 Wes: Oh, sorry, I thought you were going the other direction. Yeah, okay.
1:18:13 Erin: No, no, no, I'm saying it didn't. I mean, I could think of that. Or Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, which is hardly a. I love that movie, don't get me wrong. And there is a road element to that movie, but it's neither exclusively a road movie nor is it at the caliber of Thelma and Louise Divine.
1:18:30 Wes: Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood. Is that another one?
1:18:32 Erin: Oh, gosh, that's terrible. And it's also not 2002. Yeah, yeah, that came much later. I think it's written also by Kali Khoury.
1:18:41 Wes: Oh, that is as well.
1:18:43 Wes: The same writer.
1:18:44 Erin: Same writer.
1:18:44 Wes: Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah.
1:18:46 Erin: But I'm not sure that that's a road movie either. Like, I'm talking about like a two hander, you know, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, kind of. And it reminds me of that Failure to spawn imitators. Reminds me of a story that I've often heard told about the movie First Wives Club. I don't know if you've seen that from 96 with. It's a great. It's just a really fun kind of cotton candy comedy with Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton.
1:19:13 Wes: Oh, yes, I probably did see that at some point, but I have no memory. Memory of it.
1:19:19 Erin: It's quite funny. It's really, really enjoyable. And it was notable at the time for. For the fact that they were, you know, at that point, middle aged actresses who could be in this movie really without men or with men as the villains or, you know, the whole point is, I don't want to get into it, but basically they were first wives of these men who Then discarded them and got new models, so to speak. And they were exacting revenge. And what those three women talk about a lot in interviews is the fact that they enjoyed making this movie so much. They loved hanging out with each other. And then it was, they were told, nobody is going to want to go see this movie because these three middle aged women can't carry a movie. It's crazy. No one's going to go see it. And movie came out, it was super, super successful, made tons and tons of money, everybody loved it. And the three of them wanted to go back and do a sequel. And they were met with the same resistance from studio executives saying, nobody's going to want to see this movie. Nobody wants to see three middle aged women make a movie. And they said, well, you know, we have the proof that people do want to see this. And they were shut down. And there was never a sequel. And there was never, you know, again, it didn't spark a series of films of imitators that followed, which I find really, really interesting. So it's almost, I don't want to put too fine a point on this, but these films, you know, after the sort of new Hollywood era of the 60s and 70s in which everything sort of shifted to these male centric stories where women were either non existent or totally side characters, any attempts from that point on, even in the 90s, which is a relatively good time for women in movies to have women helmed productions are kind of like suicide attempts. And now this kind of movie would never be made. It's completely gone. Or if it is, it's, you know, maybe Greta Gerwig would make something like this and it would be released to, you know, a handful of theaters and get some Oscar buzz. But it's a curious thing because it makes me step back and look at this in the trajectory of Sarandon's career especially and maybe as a larger metaphor for Hollywood or for women in the movie business. I don't know. I think there's a lot there. Geena Davis was 35 when this movie was filmed. Sarandon was 45.
1:21:32 Wes: Yeah. Sarandon's character is supposed to be in her 30s. Actually, I was just looking at the screenplay. Sarandon, as we mentioned, was born at the age of 42 and then never aged. She's been 42 all her life and will always be.
1:21:47 Wes: You know, more than being a film about women, it is a film that. In which the portrayals of men are very consistently, overwhelmingly negative. And even the good guy, I think, is complicated. So there's no hero. For a lot of people who watch this, you know, I understand the whole, the whole thing, you know, the critical reaction of people who, you know, wanted to say, oh, this, you know, this is. This movie is male hating. Right. This is just women getting off. It's like a revenge fantasy for women about what they would do to men if they, if they had a chance. Which I get. I get some of that. I just think it depends on how you read it, right? You can read it that way or you can read this as circumstantial. You can read this as, you know, aren't men terrible? Aren't all men terrible? Or you can read it as, don't these two women run into a lot of bad guys?
1:22:38 Wes: Or somewhere in between. I think if the movie can only be read as a aren't men terrible? Sort of complaint, that compromises the movie, in my view. But I don't feel the need to read it that way or to view it that way. I think it compromises the movie because it becomes unrealistic. Anything that unrealistically vilifies a group or subtracts real. Too much complexity. But if the thesis is that there are a lot of bad men out there and that there are certain universal truths about what men and women find unpleasant in each other or what women suffer in society, although I think there's also, you know, there's always a corresponding what men suffer kind of thing. I think both men and women are subject to certain cultural restraints. They're very different. And the suffering, on average, the kinds of suffering women and men do, there are lots of differences, but they're both there. So I don't know if I've explained that very well. What I'm trying to say is I'm trying to express my ambivalence about a movie that can simply be read as a complaint about men, but I don't. Or some kind of simplistic complaint about men. But I don't ultimately see the movies this way. And I brought that up because I was just trying to think about to the extent to which a movie like this can be. Is viable. Right. You know, financially, whether it's in 1992. Is that when it came out or currently one 1991?
1:24:01 Erin: Yeah, yeah. I just think that people. People don't ask these questions about male centric movies, which are most movies. You know, I don't think this is a. A movie about how terrible men are at all. In fact, I think Kallie Khoury has said that, you know, these women are meant to be antiheroes and that she felt as though Louise's shooting of Harlan was really not justified. So I think it's not that simple. And I think that to see it as a man hating movie is a big simplification and a big misreading. But you know, Lord knows how one dimensional and terrible women can be in male driven films, which is, you know, as I said, most films. So who really cares? I guess in male driven films, women run the gamut.
1:24:45 Wes: Well, to the extent that that happens in any film, I think it compromises the.
1:24:49 Erin: I agree. But yeah, I think that men that we see in this movie exist. To put several of them in the same movie is harsh and it makes a statement, but it doesn't really strain my credulity at all.
1:24:59 Wes: Well, Thelma is just very unlucky, so she runs into lots of bad men.
1:25:05 Erin: Yeah, it doesn't strain belief for me. But I think that movies like this, you know, there used to be a market for what was sort of condescendingly called women's pictures. And there used to be care taken for providing entertainment to female audiences. That would be the kind of thing that they would want to see. The closest approximation I can call upon at this moment is, you know, a Bette Davis or a Barbara Stanwyck film where the men are secondary, they're often villainous. Women triumph over them with their dignity intact. And you know, this kind of thing is very, you know, it's cathartic for women. And I don't mean to put that in a. In a kind of a condescending way. I don't think that those movies need be unartistic either. You know, they're often very well made films and very beautiful films. But this kind of thing was a. Was a, you know, a genre, a mainstay genre of the 30s, 40s and into the. Into the 50s and the disappearance. I mean, you know, what we're seeing now, just the business model that Hollywood is running on, which really originated with the blockbusters, starting with Star Wars, I guess, is just a elimination of movies of all genres, really. We're seeing them being cast off as Hollywood streamlines into repetition and decadence as it goes with these huge blockbuster movies which are gonna be inoffensive for international audiences and make as much money as possible along the same lines as whatever the previous hit was. And so, you know, the first thing to go, I guess, were these dramas that specifically appealed to women. I don't think they have an exclusive appeal to women. I think that thelma and Louise or a Bette Davis movie should appeal to any thinking person who enjoys a well
1:27:01 Wes: told story as it did to the FBI.
1:27:03 Erin: Exactly. Yeah, it's a shame is all I'm saying. I don't think that there is anything particularly shocking about the way this movie. It's almost as though people like forgot how women's pictures were always made and quotes around women's pictures that term how they were always made. And then in 91 saw Thelma and Louise and were like what? This is. People hate men in this movie. Yeah, it seems to me to be a kind of collective amnesia because so many years had passed since the last female driven film of this nature.
1:27:37 Wes: Yeah, well, okay, on that note, I think that's a good way to wrap things up.
1:27:41 Erin: All right, thank you, thank you.
1:27:45 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. I just wanted to say that if you're listening to this on the feed for the Partial Examine Life, you're not yet subscribed. And if you like us, a rating or review would help a lot. You can also find [email protected] [email protected] Sometimes we continue talking about the topic for that week. Sometimes we'll discuss what else we've been reading, writing, and thinking about. When the time comes, we'll be responding to listener emails, and sometimes we'll talk a little bit about ourselves. Subscribing will also get you the occasional full bonus show and several prequel episodes that I did with various guests. Send your feedback and episode requests to lettersubtextpodcast.com you'll also find us on Facebook at Supxt Subtext Podcast and on Twitter joysubtext. And once again, thank you for listening.
