Writing “Thelma & Louise”

“I had dabbled with the idea of (becoming a writer), but I had never actually attempted anything. I mean, maybe once or twice I had tried to write a sitcom script or something like that, but again the discipline thing was a problem. And then one night, I was coming home from a shoot (working on music videos), and I had just gotten off the freeway and I pulled up in front of my house and parked the car. And I turned off the engine, and I thought, two women go on a crime spree. That was about December ’97. And I just sat there in the car because of that phrase. I liken it to being hit in the head with a two-by-four. That’s what it felt like…I finally decided I was going to write a screenplay…Probably a total of four people knew that I was doing this and they were all sworn to secrecy. I didn’t want to walk around telling people,’Yeah I’m writing a screenplay,’ because I knew I’d never finish it, I knew I would just get nothing but negative feedback. It seems people are always so willing to believe that you’re going to fail. Especially with somebody who didn’t go to film school, I was kind of there by luck. There were certainly people who would say, ‘Well, what the hell do you know about it. You didn’t go to AFI.’ I just decided to not open myself up to that. And the challenge to me was to just finish the screenplay; that was all I was trying for. I didn’t think about selling it. I didn’t think about anything.”
Callie Khouri interviewed in American Screenwriters
Khouri finished that screenplay, Thelma & Louise, in six months and it not only sold and got produced—but in 1992 she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for that script and it would later be named by the Writers Guild of America as #72 on their list of 101 Greatest Screenplays.  (Ahead of The Verdict, Witness, Rocky, Do the Right thing, and The Grapes of Wrath.)
Like Diablo Cody, Khouri proved that you don’t always have to go to film school, have written 6-10 scripts…or be a man to make a huge impact.