In case you don’t know who she is, Callie Khouri won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for Thelma and Louise. So, here are some insights into screenwriting that Ms. Khouri gave in a recent interview.
Graduating from Purdue with an acting major, Khouri believes that acting helped her learn to write, but her biggest influence was the jobs that she took once she moved to Hollywood in the 1980s.
Khouri started work as a receptionist for a music video production company. She then worked her way up to production assistant then production manager. And it was this experience, first and foremost, that taught her to write.
Working in music video production, Khouri says that although the videos were very abstract, she learned how to get an image on film and fit a story into a series of frames.
This helped her focus immeasurably.
From there, Thelma and Louise literally poured out of her. After contacting several screenwriting agencies, Khourie had no problem finding an agent to represent her screenplay and selling her script was easy.
Although Khouri confesses that she does find it hard to work with studios, especially when her heart isn’t into the work they want her to do. She parallels her experience with studios like this: they want you to write a story about their mother and you can only give them a story about your mother or your friend’s mother.
It is often hard working with studios, because at the same time your want to write stories that will do good for people, and this is often in conflict with the studios.
Talking about the famous rape scene in Thelme and Louise, Khouri says that this scene was most definitely not inspired by real event in her life; in fact, the scene she says was inspired by an emotion she once felt whilst working as a waitress.
She said she was walking down the street when an old man said something so vulgar and disgusting to her that she realized that if she had been carrying a gun at that moment, she would have killed him—right there, right then.
Khouri believes that we can all channel our emotions to write great scenes.
Another tip Khouri gives is as to try and see the story without dialogue first and be as economical as possible when writing your story.
* Liz Fairbanks has worked as a reader, development assistant, and talent agent in Los Angeles over the last seven years. Liz loves traveling, reading and yoga. Liz also works as a freelance consultant for Script Mailer (a company that connects screenwriters with agents and producers in Hollywood).