As the gloomy winter marches on, I find myself falling deeper and deeper into the depths of full blown netflix addiction. (Do yourselves a favor and when your best friend offers you his account login and password, kindly DECLINE.) But if the urge presses on, curl up on the couch with your best gal pal and watch Thelma and Louise, one of the greatest movies of all time. Prep yourselves with this article from
Vanity Fair - Thelma & Louise: 20 Years Later. Two badass chicks in high waist denim and cutoff tees taking NO prisoners...it doesn't get much better than that.
Photo © MGM/the Everett Collection.
What do actresses Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Jodie Foster, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn have in common? They were all considered for the roles of Thelma or Louise in the now classic film released 20 years ago this May. Vanity Fair’s Sheila Weller takes a look back at the making of the landmark movie that defined the careers of Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, and introduced a young actor named Brad Pitt.
Two actors were slated for the role of J.D. before Pitt was cast, Weller reports. “Ridley [Scott] had been one of my favorites since I sneaked into Alien as an underaged teen,” Pitt tells her. He auditioned “with high hopes,” but the part went to Billy Baldwin. When he dropped out to take a role in Backdraft—another film that Pitt tried for and didn’t get—the part went to a television actor. When that J.D. left to go back to his series, Pitt got another chance to read for the part, this time with Geena Davis. “I did fine with the first few guys,” Davis tells Weller, “but the last one was so cute I kept messing up my lines. I’m dying because I’m thinking, He’s great, and I’m ruining his audition. I kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry!’ But he’s so chill: ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s all good.’” Weller reports that as Scott and the casting director were weighing the pros and cons of every guy but Pitt, Davis couldn’t resist jumping in: “The blond one. Duh!” she exclaimed.
“That scene, right there, is the beginning of Brad Pitt! Bingo!,” Scott tells Weller, of the moment when J.D. holds Thelma’s hair dryer like a gun and delivers his bank robber speech. Pitt is modest when he recalls the scene to Weller. “I flatlined that day,” he says. “It was Geena’s performance that made mine. Her ability to be carefree and comfortable in each take led the way for me.” Davis tells Weller that Scott knew their sex scene was Pitt’s big star-making moment. “He kept saying, ‘Muss his hair up a bit. Wet it down. Just a second—give me some spray,’” she tells Weller. “And he personally sprayed Evian on Brad’s abs! I’m ‘Uh, Ridley, I’m the girl in the scene, O.K.?
Geena Davis gives Weller some insights into how she and Sarandon were able to stay cool during the roadhouse scene. “We asked the prop guy, ‘Do you have any real tequila? Because it’s easier to act if we taste alcohol,” she says. “So we pounded back quite a few, and we’re laughing between takes and both feeling, We’re so drunk! This is great!” Michael Madsen, who played Jimmy, reveals that Pitt had his own ways to chill. “I walked out of the motel in the morning, and Brad would be out smoking a joint,” he tells Weller. “We got stoned together a couple of times. Every actor finds his way to make it work; that was his thing.”
According to Weller, when screenwriter Callie Khouri set out to make what she thought would be a low-budget indie, she imagined Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand in the leads. Once Ridley Scott got involved (initially as producer only) Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer became attached, then he set out to find a director. Mimi Gitlin, Scott’s producing partner, names three of the four considered: Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) Kevin Reynolds (Waterworld), and Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon). Scott recalls how one of the directors dismissed the film saying: “Listen, dude, it’s two bitches in a car,” another said, “Oh, it’s small,” to which Scott replied, “No! It’s epic!”
By the time Scott—at Michelle Pfeiffer’s urging, Weller reports—had made the decision to direct the movie himself, his two stars had moved on to other jobs; Foster to Silence of the Lambs. “Meryl and Goldie called me and said, ‘Can we come in and meet?’” says Alan Ladd, Jr., then chairman and C.E.O. of Pathé Entertainment. “They read the script; they loved it, thought the parts were great. Meryl thought that, at the end, one of them—Thelma or Louise—should live. Of course, we didn’t particularly agree with that.” Scott tells Weller: “I had a long chat with Meryl, who would have played Louise, and I found her absolutely wonderful.” But Meryl had a movie conflict. As for Hawn: “I’m very fond of Goldie,” Ladd says, “and she was a big star at the time. But I didn’t think she was right for the part.”
All the while, Geena Davis was gunning for the part of Louise. “Geena was pursuing me like crazy,” Scott tells Weller. “That’s right!” Davis says, “I had my agent call Ridley every week for almost a year.” Davis recalls finally meeting Scott. “We had an hour’s worth of notes on why I should play Louise,” she tells Weller. “I launched into a passionate monologue, and at the end of this long discussion Ridley says, ‘So-o-o, you wouldn’t play Thelma?’” Davis says. “I realized that it actually isn’t Louise I should play; it’s Thelma,’ and I launched into that spiel.” Scott wouldn’t make up his mind until he found the other woman and until he did, Davis continued to think of herself as Louise, Weller reports.
“I live in New York,” Susan Saradon says, explaining why she wasn’t aware of what was, in the late ‘80s, the hottest script in Hollywood. That is, until Scott sent it to her. “Susan had the authority, the sensibility. She was Louise,” he tells Weller. When Scott and Sarandon met with Davis, movie history was made. “Pretty much the second Susan walked in the room, I was, Are you kidding that I could play Louise?” Davis says. “Susan was so self-possessed, so centered and together.”
xo, Cory
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