"Sidelights"

Callie Khouri has written the screenplays for the controversial 1991 Academy Award winning film Thelma and Louise as well as for the 1995 film Something to Talk About. She also adapted Rebecca Wells's bestselling novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood as a film which appeared in theaters during the summer of 2002.

Khouri's best-known work, Thelma and Louise, is the story of two female friends from Arkansas whose weekend road trip in a 1966 Thunderbird convertible spins out of control. Thelma, played by Geena Davis, is a homemaker trapped in an unhappy marriage to an abusive husband. Louise, played by Susan Sarandon, is an emotionally scarred waitress with her own relationship troubles. The trip begins innocently enough, until Louise shoots and kills a thug at a roadside honky-tonk who tries to rape the outgoing Thelma. Running from the incident, the two women suddenly find themselves fugitives from the law, committing more crimes and setting the scene for the film's dramatic finale.

Newsweek contributor Jack Kroll remarked that Thelma and Louise initially "seems like an obvious feminizing of male-buddy road movies, " but the latter part of the film "churns up terrific momentum, and the writing and direction fuse into a genuine pop myth about two women who discover themselves through the good old American ways of cars and criminality." In an online interview with Khouri on SydField.com, Syd Field noted: "Thelma and Louise has been one of my favorite teaching films. It has great structure . . . great visuals . . . great direction by...