"Let's just keep going!". And with those words THELMA & LOUISE became legends. Not only to the battalion of interstate authorities pursuing the contemporary "Butch & Sundance" towards the border of Mexico, but to film fans, socio-political pundits, feminists and even protestors who felt the film was "male bashing". Those who remember the summer of 1991 recall how all the hubbub coalesced into THELMA & LOUISE becoming not only one of the most talked about films of it's year (no mean feet in the wake of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), but also how director Ridley Scott's "nifty road movie with a twist" managed to forever enshrine itself into pop culture history.
The story of lifelong BFFs (Susan Sarandon & Geena Davis) who, after killing a rapist, are plunged into an escalating (and escalatingly funny) cross country crime spree, THELMA & LOUISE was born via the pen of Callie Khouri, a former landscape architecture student who veered into dramatic studies at the Lee Strasburg Theater and Film Institute before entering film in the early 90s. Garnering industry interest, Khouri's first time script would at various times have filmmakers such as Brian DePalma, Sidney Lumet and Richard Donner attached, as well as performers Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, Mia Farrow, Jodie Foster and Sigourney Weaver. Originally Khouri was to direct, with Scott as producer. But when it became evident the production was too huge for the neophyte film maker, Scott took the chair, fashioning not only (what detractors called) a clever "Butch and Sundance with tits" rift, but below the pulp veneer, a searingly perceptive character study of two "Jane Q. Public"'s who've "settled for ..." all their lives; and who's forced exodus into the wilderness (shades of the Old Testament, Buddah and even Christ) triggers a spiritual quest for self identification and self determination. So effective where the film's philosophical underpinnings, that when Thelma and Louise reach that precipice (their own "Red Sea) and decide to "keep going", to both Khouri and Scott's artistic credit, we the audience are more than willing to take the fateful leap with them.
Arguably the most popular film composer of the 21st century, Hans Zimmer (RAIN MAN, THE LION KING, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES) is, like the film THELMA & LOUISE, not without detractors; among them, many fans of classical composition who cite his "electro orchestrations" as the progenitor of all that's non-melodically bad about current cinema scoring. And while certainly inspiring low rent impersonators, Zimmer himself IS a composer in the truest old school sense ... albeit an iconoclastic one (this ALSO in the old school sense). His second teaming with Ridley Scott after BLACK RAIN (they'd also essay GLADIATOR, HANNIBAL, BLACK HAWK DOWN and MATCHSTICK MEN), THELMA & LOUISE would become the quintessential Zimmer score - a complex polyglot with a musical foot on the accelerator of the movie's subtextual thematics (listen for rock, blues, zydeco, metal, Charlie Daniels-style fiddle and even gospel choir), while simultaneously keeping it's hand on the shifting gear of the film's anamorphic settings - ethereal acoustic and synthesized strings, wild fire percussion and old school slide guitar equally breathing sonic color and personality into both the film's quaint country back roads and mammoth John Ford-inspired "Super 35 mm" western vistas.
In this regard former Climax Blues Band co-founder and guitarist Pete Haycock is almost co-composer on THELMA & LOUISE. From the impassioned slide guitar solos of "Going To Mexico" and "Thunderbird", to the Delta blues of "Butt Talk" and rockabilly rifts on the exhilarating "Chase - Grand Canyon", Haycock's guitar becomes the voice and soul of Thelma and Louise: alternately humorous, bad-assed, then just as suddenly tragic and melancholy. It's surely the most stunnigly effective solo work in a film score since Pat Metheny's contribution to Jerry Goldsmith's UNDER FIRE in 1983.
Zimmer and Haycock would re-team on DROP ZONE, K2 and TOYS (in collaboration with John Zorn). And the "Thunderbird Theme" from THELMA & LOUISE would prove so popular, the duo would perform it live at concerts around the world, one of the most impressive renditions captured on Decca's 2001 release THE WINGS OF A FILM: HANS ZIMMER LIVE.
CEJ
1) Going To Mexico (0:00 of 13:59)
2) Chase - Grand Canyon (2:08 of 13:59)
3) Decision / End Title (10:00 of 13:59)
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