Thelma & Louise

It's a good thing Mark isn't regional manager as he tries to figure out what makes Thelma & Louise such a cultural touchstone, how its 2nd act somehow makes a tragic ending feel so empowering, and what's so interesting about a young, shirtless Brad Pitt.

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Transcript

Hi everybody, and welcome to Mark Overanalyses Film! Today I will be overanalysing the all-timer kind of classic, Thelma & Louise. 

Before I begin, allow me to remind you that I am available for reading, script editing, and story coaching at Markoveranalysesstory.com. And also, if you enjoy this podcast, please do share and/or recommend it. It really would be a great help. 

Thelma & Louise was written by Callie Khouri and directed by Ridley Scott. 

I wanted to study Thelma and Louise because I watched it for the first time only a couple of years ago, and I was kinda shocked. It’s a funny kind of film to watch, because, a bit like, y’know, Casablanca or Citizen Kane, the film’s climax is so iconic that you almost feel like you’ve seen the film before you even start. Not only that, but that climax is so unusual and extreme that it almost overshadows the rest of the film. And I wondered if it might be an ok film that just has a great ending. And: I could not have been more wrong than to doubt Thelma & Louise. This film is brilliant, and as iconic as that ending is and as dramatic a statement as it makes, it is totally earned and all completely grounded in wonderful character-driven writing. 

So, that’s what I’ll be keeping in mind as, first, I look at the fundamental features of the protagonist, and then I go through the main story beats by looking at the sequences of the film. After that, I’ll talk about the main things I learned along the way.

So, let’s begin with the 5 Questions about the protagonist. 

Q1: Whose story is it? 

Or, who is the protagonist? Now, most of the time this is obvious, but sometimes it’s not. And if it isn’t, the most important question to answer is this: whose change defines the story? In other words, whose change expresses the central thematic argument? Now, I think this is Louise’s plot, but it’s really Thelma’s story. Hopefully, what I mean by that will become clear throughout, but essentially, I mean the tangible tensions of the story belong to Louise, but I believe the most significant change and the thematic argument of the story belongs to Thelma. And that, in my book, makes her the protagonist.

Q2: What is her life dream?
Life dream here refers to what it is that the protagonist wants or is aiming to do when the film begins and the story has yet to properly start. Now, really, all these women want at the start of our story is a weekend away from the men in their lives. Thelma needs it because Darryl is an asshole and a jackass, and Louise needs it because she feels Jimmy is taking her for granted and is perhaps not serious. 

Q3: What is her Want?

Want here is what the character is trying to achieve in Act II (or the middle) of the film, from the moment they really begin their journey until the moment they are at their most defeated. It’s really the central, tangible mission of the story and gives the story its shape. As such, it is a SMART goal, in that it is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. And here we can see why this film feels like such a two-hander, because the Want really belongs to Louise. Having shot and killed Harlan, Louise wants to evade the police and make it to Mexico and she wants Thelma to come with her.

Q4: What is her Need?

Need is the human quality or piece of wisdom that the character lacks at the beginning of the story. In other words, this is ‘the’ change that the protagonist needs to make. It is the lesson they learn or how they will be fundamentally different at the end of our story. Now, this is an interesting one, because, as someone once joked, could any film feel more different if it just ran for another 15 seconds? But even though this ending is on the face of it utterly tragic, the power of the storytelling convinces us, or convinces me at any rate, that it is not ‘just’ tragic. I feel like this is ultimately an expression of empowerment, autonomy, and freedom. And that’s why, as I’ll get into, I believe this is firmly Thelma’s Need and therefore her story.  

Q5: Does she get what she wants and/or what she needs?

Thelma and Louise do not make it to Mexico, but they do achieve autonomy and empowerment. In fact, they act on it in its most extreme and tragic sense. It’s that bittersweetness and ambivalence that makes this ending so good, and so iconic. We know what it means, and we know how it feels, but are we comfortable with its implications? It’s hard to say, and that’s real goddamn storytelling.  

Ok, now that I’ve attempted to answer the 5 key questions, let’s have a look at Thelma & Louise’s sequences. 

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The Sequences

There are traditionally, but not always, 3 acts and 8 sequences, or stages, in a film. A sequence is a combination of scenes that are tied together by having a single overriding dramatic question or tension, and they tend to be between 10 and 15 minutes in length. A good way to think about it is that every 10-15 minutes, the audience should be on some level asking themselves a different dramatic question. 

Act I has our first two sequences, and the first one is always pretty much “life as it is”. Thelma and Louise is very traditional in this sense. We are immediately shown these two women in their natural habitats, engaging in their present way of being, and exhibiting their coping mechanisms for that way of being. Louise is working hard as a waitress in a diner and killing her sex drive with cigarettes, while Thelma is a chaotic housewife. Now, like so many great films, Thelma and Louise immediately defines its protagonist by giving her a problem and showing how she solves it. So, while Louise nags Thelma about not telling her lout of a husband Darryl about the weekend trip, Thelma herself is clearly defined for us as being almost childlike and passive. She either can’t or won’t confront her husband about what she wants or about his awful, bullying behaviour. At least, not yet. []

But eventually, the two ladies take off on their road trip, after we see how clean and controlled Louise is, and how chaotic Thelma’s packing is by contrast. Of course it isn’t long before Thelma gets impatient, and starts whining to Louise to stop somewhere so that they can get a drink. The fact that Louise relents is, arguably, our inciting incident: or, the event without which our story as it is would not happen. If Louise had not agreed here, well, their lives would be very different. Of course, we don’t know that yet, but we’re going to spend the next 10 or so minutes wondering some version of the question: “Will Louise be able to get Thelma to leave the bar?”. We have our first main tension, and so at minute 10, we enter sequence II. 

So, Thelma and Louise hit the bar, and you can see not only the balance of their friendship, but also just how much these two need and deserve this break. But there’s a difference: Louise is still wanting Jimmy to call and hoping, basically, that he’ll settle down already. Thelma is, in many ways, far more trapped. And it’s pretty clear that Thelma is so thirsty for any genuine fun and excitement because she’s for all intents and purposes been locked in a cage for years. Now, unfortunately, she seeks that fun and excitement with Harlan. Interestingly, in the screenplay, Harlan is described as: “in his late 40s, heavyset, his face is shiny in the neon light”, but I think it’s way more effective that he looks the way he does here. He doesn’t look desperate or gross in some way, but he is those things. In the scene description, it also says that he’s “copping feels” as he brings Thelma out. Now, he’s got his hands on her hips, but it’s subtler than it reads on the page, while still causing us to think “Oh God no. Thelma, don’t go out there with him.” And that makes the turn all the more horrifying. With Thelma alone and vulnerable, Harlan reveals the horrible, angry bastard that he really is. And kind of incredibly, he doesn’t even bat an eyelid when Louise tells him to stop. The only thing that does stop him is the feel of cold hard steel. And even when that does stop him, he is so emboldened that he talks back to a clearly emotional Louise as she saves her distraught friend. And so, whether you think it’s justified or not, Louise murders him. She tells Thelma to get the car, and so suddenly our two heroines are on the run. We now wonder our main central tension of “Can they escape the law?”, and so at minute 21, we end Act I and we enter Act II.

Act II always begins with sequence III, the first attempts to solve the problem. And practically, we’re wondering in the short term “Can Louise figure out a plan of escape?” But more broadly, if you had a problem to solve, the first thing you would do, most likely, is try to solve it the way you normally try to solve problems. That’s what you’re comfortable doing, and it’s the thing that does not require you to change. And so it is here. In shock, Thelma begins to act like a child, becomes passive, and allows herself to be totally dominated by Louise. She even tries to call Darryl. While she’s doing that, Louise finally gets through to Jimmy, and there’s just the slight threat that she might be tempted back into the world of men as she asks if he loves her. For now though, she organises with Jimmy for him to send her money and then continues to tell Thelma what to do. 

But these first attempts always give way, because the problem presented by the film is always so novel and so significant that the coping mechanism of the protagonist is insufficient to deal with it. So, at the end of this sequence, the protagonist always takes their first unconscious move towards their need. As such, at minute 38, we finally have a moment of full recognition from Thelma. Realising that her husband is completely incapable of even a passing interest in her as anything other than his housemaid, Thelma tells Darryl to go fuck himself, then immediately bumps into completely-average-looking drifter JD []. This works so well here as a first unconscious move, as meeting JD is both an expression of Thelma’s burgeoning independence and the very thing that will lead directly to her character’s midpoint, her single biggest step towards her need before the climax of the film. So, with this step taken, she immediately turns to Louise and asks “So, how long before we’re in goddamn Mexico?”. She is in. 

Louise has a plan to get money, and a partner, so we have a new tension, as we wonder if they will be able to collect Louise’s money. But there’s one last thing to note here. It’s not just our main characters that are following our overall story shape, it’s also their pursuer Hal. As our main characters are initially resisting where this story is going to take them, so is Hal. The waitress tells him that these girls did not murder Harlan. But, just as Thelma and Louise take their first real steps towards their eventual climax, so does the cop. Talking to his boss, Hal is told to get the FBI involved. And so, we have two women who are just beginning to truly express their independence, and a system that is casting its net to catch them. You can hear it, can’t you? This is going one way. And so, we enter Sequence IV: the first of two greater attempts to solve the problem. 

I’ll talk about this more later, but notice how the behaviour starts to change here. Now, when Louise refuses to drive through Mexico, Thelma really pushes her on why she’s never spoken about what happened to her there. Louise is not for turning, but we soon see that the women, so emotionally distanced but a few minutes ago, are now bopping and singing along together in the car. Then, with Louise softened up a bit, Thelma finally convinces her to pick up JD. As the drifter asks about Thelma’s home life, she takes another step towards her need by admitting that Darryl is an asshole and that most of the time, she just lets it slide. Now, we’re about to move into a second sequence within this stage of the story, so notice that once again, Hal also takes another step forward. He talks to Max, the FBI’s agent in charge, and having visited Louise’s house and spoken to Darryl, he’s learnt a lot. But soon, Louise discovers not only her money, but also Jimmy awaiting her at the motel. She’s answered our sequence tension, so we now wonder “Will Louise be able to truly say goodbye to Jimmy?” And so, at minute 49, we enter sequence V: Thelma & Louise’s gettin’ it on sequence. 

 Now, this is the sequence which leads to the midpoint of the film, and so, things are really going well for the characters here. First, they now have the money. Second, a man who Louise couldn’t even contact at the start of our story has now followed her across two states to be with her. Third, Louise is convinced that the only reason he pursued her was because she might be with another man. But Jimmy puts his money where his mouth is and proposes. Fourth, a soaking wet virile young buck arrives at Thelma’s door looking for her company. True, it’s plain as muck Brad Pitt, but she decides to let him in anyways. As you may recall, at the first unconscious move, Thelma told Darryl to go fuck himself before bumping right into JD. Here, under the guise of playing a game, JD removes her wedding ring before the two of them get it on. But crucially, you’ll notice that when it’s becoming a little too much for her, Thelma asks JD to stop for a moment and he duly obliges. When he does, Thelma then jumps his bones. Thelma is getting to have empowering, pleasurable sex on her terms. This is clearly a huge change for her, and it’s little wonder that from this point on especially, she cannot go back. 

And so, the following morning, our sequence tension is finally answered. Jimmy asks: if Louise won’t come back with him, maybe he can go with her? The power dynamic seems to have substantially shifted. And Louise still refuses. And it’s hard not to think that Louise saying goodbye to the man she wanted to build a life with so near to our midpoint is a kind of foreshadowing to our climax. As Jimmy leaves, a Thelma in the grip of post-coital bliss practically floats in. And with our sequence tension answered, at 66 minutes into a 120 minute runtime, it’s time for Thelma & Louise’s midpoint. 

Now, in a film as good as Thelma and Louise, the midpoint of the film will almost always do at least two things. One: it is defined by the protagonist making their first conscious move towards their need. Two: it foreshadows the climax of the film. So, learning that Thelma left JD alone with 6600 dollars, Louise immediately realises what is happening. They burst into the room to discover both JD and the money gone. They have been screwed over once again. But note: in sequence III, about 30 minutes ago, Thelma would have collapsed and gone passive, while Louise would become dominant and controlling. This time, Louise collapses and Thelma, in her most significant moment of change, takes full charge of the situation. [] And note: this film has something of an ambivalent climax. With the women unable to escape the world of men, Thelma tells Louise to take the ultimate act of individual empowerment. And our midpoint is exactly the same. They have been screwed over by a man, which is terrible, but it sparks Thelma into embracing her need to express her autonomy, which is great and empowering. That is a goddamn midpoint!

So, Thelma and Louise now enter Sequence VI: the honeymoon sequence. The Honeymoon Sequence is so called because, now acting in accordance with their Need, things generally start to go well for our characters for a while. Unfortunately, this is also the sequence that tells us how this film is going to end. So, no sooner has Thelma and Louise made this big step than the cops do the same. They reveal that they are going to catch Thelma & Louise by tapping Darryl’s phone. Again, notice how the shape of their pursuit matches the overall story shape. Now, there’s a couple of scenes here that I have to say, I find really interesting in their opaque nature. When the cops tell Darryl they’re going to tap his phone, Max the FBI Agent suggests that Darryl should tell Thelma that he misses her, cos “women love that shit”. The table laughs this off, but there’s an interestingly dark connotation left hanging in the air by it. In the following scene, Thelma stops at a store and a dazed, shell shocked Louise sits and waits in the car. And I’m fascinated by what happens here. Louise notices two older women staring from behind a window out at her. And the woman at the centre of the frame, well, looks a little odd and both women very much look like a prisoner in their own home. In response to seeing these older women, Louise begins to apply some lipstick… but then stops, and throws her lipstick away. Soon, Louise will follow this up by trading all her jewellery for a practical cowboy hat. It’s never explained why she does this, but the fact that it’s triggered by these two older ladies is highly evocative filmmaking. But first, we discover just what Thelma is doing in her honeymoon period: robbing a store. It turns out hooking up with JD near her midpoint also taught her how to be an outlaw. And Thelma really puts her finger on the point: she’s found her calling, and it’s the call of the wild. But, halfway through this sequence, problems start to percolate. Thelma and Louise encounter a sleazy, boorish truck driver that they, at this point, have to try to ignore. Then, we learn that the cops are waiting for Jimmy when he returns home, and JD is picked up and interrogated. Now, this might be a reach, but you could argue that out on the road, in this free desert area, Thelma and Louise could be equals with these men, but back in the regular world — where it’s always dark or raining or indoors — Jimmy and JD kinda sell Thelma and Louise out. The cops are now closing in, and, at minute 82, we wonder if Thelma and Louise can really avoid them, and so we enter sequence VII: the bridge from the Honeymoon to the lowpoint.

Thelma, who you might notice is now wearing Louise’s jacket, calls Darryl again only to discover that the cops are there now. Now, it’s often at this point in the story where something from the character’s previous way of being catches up with them, which throws a real spanner in the works. And so it is here. Louise learns that the cops know she’s heading to Mexico, and that Thelma told JD their plans. Suddenly, Louise is back telling off Thelma like she was her mother, and Thelma has to sit there and take it like a child again. But Thelma has learnt something, so she doesn’t shirk or hide. She nods assertively and says “You’re right”. 

Now, the shape here is interesting, cos if this were a typically happy ending, this is when things would be getting really bad before they improve. But that’s not really the case here, cos our ending is somewhat ambivalent. But you can still notice that we’re headed to a kind of inversion of the eventual ending. So, the cops are sitting around watching Penny Serenade of all things and Louise can stop and appreciate the beauty of the wild desert in her freedom. But there are signs of trouble. They once again have to ignore the boorish truck driver, and Thelma soon asks Louise about being raped in Texas. And Louise cannot talk about it. She gets wide-eyed and intense, and the script describes her driving with white knuckles. Which may be why what happens next happens at all. In the honeymoon sequence, Thelma said she’d just die if they got caught for speeding, and now, here at minute 92, a tightened Louise is pulled over for that very reason. Our overall act II tension and this sequence’s tension was all about whether Thelma and Louise could avoid the cops. But now we have our answer: they could not. As with so many low points, the protagonist no longer believes the counterargument, but the argument seems impossible. Thelma and Louise have embraced their freedom and autonomy, but it looks like they will not be able to express it any further. Things look bad, so we end Act II and we enter Act III.

Act III has a false resolution and a true resolution. And so, as you might expect, our false resolution makes it seem as though Thelma and Louise might make it out after all. As the cop talks to Louise, Thelma pulls a gun. And in a reverse of how they were earlier, Louise is now in a complete stupor while Thelma has to tell her to snap out of it and do as she’s told. Now, the main tension here is really now that Hal is talking to Louise, whether or not she will be coaxed into making some kind of deal with him. But just as she seems to be deliberating on the phone in the back of a store, Thelma appears and hangs up the phone. She is now the one telling Louise not to screw this up. Out front, in a fantastic scene that has no business looking or feeling as epic as it does, our tension is resolved. And this is where Thelma’s transformation is made explicit. [] She says that something has crossed over in her, and she can’t go back, and Louise understands. Unfortunately, at that same moment, the cops have traced their call. The endgame is in sight, and so we enter Thelma and Louise’s True Resolution as we wonder “Can these two women find any possible way to escape?”

And we immediately have an ominous foreshadowing of what is to come, as the women bop along to BB King’s “Better Not Look Down”. But Thelma and Louise are soon again drawn back into the world of men. Once again, they encounter the truck driver, and this time, they decide to do something about this lecherous creep. Confronting him, they blow up his tanker when he refuses to show any contrition for his misogynistic behaviour.

Of course, blowing up a tanker and creating a giant dust cloud when you’re on the run is maybe not the smartest thing to do, and the chase is soon on. Now, earlier, as Thelma whimpered about not having fun on her holiday, a frustrated, shocked Louise kind of implied that this was at least partially Thelma’s fault. Now, in the chase, Thelma takes responsibility and declares that this is all her fault, but Louise responds that that is obviously not the case. Now, we’re coming right up to the climax, and the last 10 minutes of this film are just iconic filmmaking. Hal closes in, with his helicopter rounding the Grand Canyon. The women are soon caught between the Canyon and a veritable army of trigger-happy cops. And Thelma makes the ultimate decision to refuse to surrender her autonomy. [] Louise hits it, leaving a desperate, chasing Hal in their dust. The women fly off the cliff and into pop culture history.

Epilogue

What a movie. What an ending. As with any great film, there’s any number of things I could talk about here, but I’d really like to focus on what I think makes this film such a standout. And that, to my mind, is the rock solid fundamentals of the 3 act structure and the dynamic 2nd act in particular.

Now, not everyone likes the idea that there is such a thing as the 3 act structure. And I get it. It might seem formulaic. To some extent, it is a formula. But it’s a formula with endless possibilities. And really, to my mind, all the 3 act structure means is just that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end, which is essential for a story to have unity and completeness. And from studying story structure, I increasingly think of these as: a Before, a Change (or a Process of Change), and an After. Act I is how the protagonist was before they started their main journey. It has 2 parts, where we see who they are and what their coping mechanism is for dealing with their status quo. Then, we see something come along and destroy that status quo and how they react to it. Act II is then that main journey triggered by whatever that inciting incident was, and because their coping mechanism is totally unfit to deal with this new problem, that journey should change them. Act III is how they are after they have made their change. At first, everything seems lost, because they no longer have their coping mechanism, but they don’t know yet how to act without it. But then, of course, the value of that change reveals itself and they become a more rounded person. 

Thelma and Louise is a two hour long story about two women and five men who they encounter along the way told across a few days. But it feels epic. Now some of that is because of the Western setting and the music and the style. But a lot of it is because Thelma’s change from before to after is so dramatic, so complete, and so convincing. Some of the power of that iconic ending is that it immediately flashes back to how these two were at the start of our story, with Thelma all dolled up and Louise in her prim-looking headscarf, and we see just how far they’ve come. Before her journey, Thelma held a gun, as it says in the script, like a rat by the tail. After, she shoots a tanker until it explodes. Before her journey, she wouldn’t ask Darryl for permission to go on the trip and allowed his general asshole-ery to wash over her. After her journey, she would rather drive off a cliff than submit her will to anyone again. Before her journey, she was trapped and afraid of freedom. After her journey, she is free and refuses to ever be trapped again. It’s an amazing transformation. 

But of course, this change wouldn’t mean much if the film didn’t convince us of how it happened. What makes Thelma & Louise so good is that it thoroughly maps this change across the 2nd act and shows us how it comes about. 

A really common problem with screenplays or lesser films is a flat second act. And one sure sign of a flat 2nd act is that the protagonist’s behaviour is not really changing throughout. When I was studying Screenwriting in college, I got feedback on a first draft I had written. And that feedback rightly and annoyingly accurately pointed out that I had made the typical mistake of only developing the behaviour of the characters during the key moments of the screenplay. So basically, my character would behave a certain way, then have this breakthrough at the midpoint say, then they would go right back to behaving pretty much the same way they had been for another 10-15 minutes until the next big scene between the sequences. As a result, you could pretty much move a bunch of scenes around and not really notice. Now, that sounds terrible, right? Well, it was. And I would wonder how on Earth I could make such a basic mistake, but I’ve read and seen enough to know that it’s an easy and typical mistake to make. Writing is hard. 

In lesser films, protagonists often start the second act, behave the same way for an hour, and then encounter a big shock that changes them 25 minutes from the end of the story. And that is not only boring, it is unconvincing. Thelma & Louise, on the other hand, is a case study on how 2nd acts should work. Thelma makes these huge, understandable strides every 15 minutes or so, and she is then significantly different in each sequence because her character is steadily and consistently changing. In sequence III, she isn’t ready to assert herself at all. In sequence IV, she is, but she isn’t ready to sleep with JD. Their flirting is kinda playful and innocent. In Sequence V, she is ready to sleep with him, but she isn’t ready to take charge yet. In fact, she drops the ball completely in naively leaving JD with the money. In Sequence VI, she is ready to take charge, but she is still only just discovering what she is truly capable of. Finally, in sequence VII, she has achieved a new maturity in her sense of autonomy. She’s calm and authoritative in a way she has never been before, even dominating a police officer. You can see it, right? You could not move any scenes within those sequences around cos Thelma would be behaving incongruously. It is a masterfully constructed character arc.

But before I finish, I have to touch on that iconic ending. It is the power of this arc and the ultimate culmination of it that makes this ending so iconic. I don’t like to pick on films for not being, y’know, as good as an all-time classic, but it’s hard for me not to be reminded of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women here. I love so much about that film, but it annoys me to this day that at the beginning of its 3rd act, it poses a problem: Jo March does not want to lose her independence, but she is so, so lonely. We live in a time when more women are single in their 30s and 40s than ever before, and it’s theorised that it is because women are now in a position where they don’t have to trade in their independence and they don’t have to settle. But given the choice, who doesn’t want romantic companionship in their life? So, this is not only a great problem to explore, it’s a great problem to explore right now. 

But because Gerwig seemingly thinks we won’t like the answer, she decides to have her cake and eat it too. Her heart is in suggesting that Jo retains her independence and focuses on writing her book I think. But, to cover her tracks, she uses a meta device to suggest that, if you want to, or if you’re not paying too much attention, you can believe Jo also married Dr Bhaer. 

A reminder: Thelma and Louise drive off a cliff to their death because they can’t be free in a world of men. Now, obviously they are very different films, but one is the ultimate expression of the argument presented by the arc of the protagonist, and the other one suggests we can’t handle a happy ending with caveats. Now, in fairness, I’m sure Greta Gerwig wasn’t thinking “But how is this going to play to the straight, white, Irish male demographic?”, but I find one much more compelling and empowering than the other, and it is not the sugarcoated, soft-lit ending. 

As I’ve said before, oddly enough when analysing another Ridley Scott film, Alien, I once read that before the Enlightenment, tragedy was about the loss of life. After the Enlightenment, tragedy was about the loss of purpose. And there is surely no greater example of that idea than Thelma and Louise. Despite the obvious tragedy at its heart, this somehow doesn’t feel like a “downer ending”. It would feel far more depressing if they handed themselves in and submitted themselves to the judgement of, we can presume, men. Thelma and Louise will die, but they will die on their own terms. That is the ultimate expression of the thematic argument. So, somehow, a climax that would under any other circumstances be nothing but tragic also becomes an almost celebratory expression of freedom and autonomy. That’s the power of great filmmaking. That’s the power of storytelling with real, full-blooded conviction. That’s the power of Thelma and Louise.   

This has been Mark Overanalyses Film on Thelma & Louise.  If you enjoyed this episode or like the podcast in general, please do recommend it to anyone you know who might like it too! It really would be a great help! A special thanks to Mary Kate O’Flanagan who taught me everything I know about film, including these methods. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves, and see you soon.