Off the Cliff by Becky Aikman

Author:Becky Aikman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-25T10:55:45+00:00

CHAPTER 19

BAD BOYS

Chris McDonald strutted out the front door to the smokin’ red Corvette emblematic of his character, Darryl Dickinson, buffoonish husband of Thelma, regional manager of Carpeteria and all around Big Swinging Dick. The actor was white-hot to make an impression in the first take of his first scene, and all signs pointed to the positive. He looked snappy in a peacock-blue polyester jacket and slick new shoes from the costume department, and he congratulated himself that Ridley had adapted “The 1” idea from Chris’s audition necklace and embossed it on the license plate of the car.

Next thing he knew, those new shoes slipped on some lumber from the household’s lackadaisical home-improvement project. Chris fell smack on his ass, his head ringing like a gong on a metal tank amid the mess on the driveway.

Ridley saw that the actor was hurting but didn’t yell cut. Chris rallied, threw his briefcase into the car and ad-libbed a tirade at the construction workers. I want you out of here by five! he hollered. No, three, get outta here by three today!

He winced and shot a chagrined look at the director. Ridley was laughing his head off, along with most of the crew. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” Ridley said. “We could do it again, but that’s in the movie.”

After the ordeal of the rape scene, the mishap was a gift. The production badly needed some comic relief as it backtracked to pick up the earlier threads of the story. For the next couple weeks, Thelma & Louise settled back in the comedy groove.

Some early scenes set before Thelma and Louise took off on their odyssey served up a showcase for the art department to define the characters through decor. A brisk montage of Louise packing for the weekend, sealing everything in Ziploc bags, highlighted her spotless apartment. There was a photo of Jimmy in a silver frame, and one of Louise as a child, twirling a baton, an actual picture of a young Susan Sarandon. In the immaculate kitchen, she rubbed a drinking glass dry and set it upside down on a neatly folded dishtowel, because leaving a wet glass in a dish drainer just wouldn’t do. Ridley’s camera lingered for a moment as sunlight filtered through the blue glass.

The designers went to town on Thelma’s place. Thanks to her taste for frilly, ill-considered kitsch, the home exploded with texture and color, mostly pastels. Clear plastic sheeting had emerged as Norris Spencer’s favorite design trick, so he draped it over the Dickinsons’ perpetual construction work to pick up shine. Anne Ahrens packed the set with recipes taped on the stove, a TV game show playing in the corner and motley flea market finds. “Thelma’s life was out of her control,” Ahrens says. “She was trying to control the chaos with ruffles.”

The set decorator shopped in the mind-set of the Thelma character to pick out one-of-a-kind pieces, but once, at a store that specialized in zany Lucite furniture, Ahrens spied the one thing, a lamp, that she thought Darryl might have chosen.

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