Callie Khouri
Callie Khouri
Carolyn Ann "Callie" Khouriis a Lebanese American film and television screenwriter, producer, feminist, and director. In 1992 she won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for the film Thelma & Louise, which was controversial upon its release because of its progressive representation of gender politics, but which subsequently became a classic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth27 November 1957
CitySan Antonio, TX
CountryUnited States of America
One of the magical things about Nashville is just how many incredibly talented people are here and the way they support each other.
When you look around right now, Nashville is kind of going through another changing of guard; you're watching the Martina McBrides and the Faith Hills and all of them that have been the big stars for the last however many years, and the next generation is coming in: Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, those girls.
We get the best people we can get and it turns out a lot of them are women. I've said this before If you hire people solely on their merit you wind up hiring a lot of women. I wonder how many other shows even come close to our numbers.
Kelly Clarkson is the most adorable person on the planet. She is just so nice.
If the same energy went into marketing movies to women as they do on the other demographics we might see more of a spike.
I call myself a feminist, not a feminist filmmaker. If somebody asked me if I had a feminist sensibility it would be pretty hard to deny, but is it the theme of my work? Not necessarily. I'm interested in a lot of things.
We have a lot of women on the staff, obviously. It's a predominantly female writing staff and we hire the best people. It's not like we go we need more women or we need four women directing.
I don't think any studio - it was a long shot at the time - but I don't think any studio in a million years would make 'Thelma and Louise' right now. But there's so many other kinds of movies they won't make right now.
I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.
I think this happens to a lot of people, men and women, where you reach a point in your life and all of a sudden realize that things have changed. You suddenly realize that people are coming up behind you, that maybe somebody might want to replace you for less money.
I remember when I used to have actual time to write and now you don't have time and you just do it. I think it explains a lot about television.
I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don't think it didn't happen because I was a woman, but because sports movie don't sell internationally.
Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.
One of the reasons I wanted to do a show about Nashville in Nashville was because when I lived here, the hardest thing to go out and hear was country music. Country was taking place inside the studio and it was an export.