Susan Sarandon Looks Back on "Thelma & Louise" at BAM Retrospective

This spring marks the 20th anniversary of Thelma & Louise, which is being commemorated by a special edition re-release of the DVD and a retrospective of Susan Sarandon's work at BAM, called the Susan Sarandon Picture Show. But despite the film's iconic status, Sarandon said that her acting in some parts was an afterthought.

"It was my job to drive the car and line up the camera which was outside the car, attached to a truck following us," the actress revealed at her retrospective. "I had to drive and talk to [Geena Davis] and line up the camera between the rear view mirror and her face as I was talking, and keep the distance for the focus. It was great, because I was barely acting! And I got an Oscar nomination!"

Sarandon wasn't so distracted that she didn't pay attention to details. She brought it to director Ridley Scott's attention that the characters needed to have accents, so we as the audience would know they were in the South. "I said to him, 'Where does this take place?' Nobody knew. They're going somewhere, and we have to figure out where they are."

Callie Khouri's script (which won Best Original Screenplay) had a lot of detail, but there was still room to tweak a few scenes, which Sarandon did. The scene where Louise takes off her watch and jewelry, and trades it with an old man for a hat? That was Sarandon's idea, she said, because she felt like Louise "didn't need time" anymore. "I didn't feel that I would have on [my jewelry] still," she said, "and it was time to decide who they are and where they were going."

Another scene that changed based on Sarandon's suggestion was the grace note at the climax. The filmmakers had left the scene with the car going over the cliff until the end, and by the time they were ready for the actors, the sun was going down.

"I was so sick of being in that car," Sarandon said, "So I said, 'Can't we have a scene that's quiet?' It just seemed like they had been talking so much up until now that they should be finishing each other's sentences. So we moved the lines that were needed to a car chase scene, where we could yell the lines over that, and we got to the climax, where it's like no dialogue whatsoever. We're just looking at things like we're present for the first time."

Sarandon called Scott "brilliant" for putting the characters in "that incredible, heroic frame and vista." "I'm happy this film ended up stirring up so much dialogue," she said, "whether we anticipated it or not."