CREDITS THELMA & LOUISE, 1991 dir: Ridley Scott Susan Sarandon Geena Davis Brad Pitt Harvey Keitel Michael Madsen

Feminist road movie or male fantasies in drag? You takes your choice.

The movieís journey is from ëArkansas through Oklahoma and Colorado to Arizonaí, but the master of deceptive locations, Ridley Scott, filmed only the last third of the movie, in the desert, outside greater LA and Bakersfield. And that was in mainly in Utah.

The green, wet landscape of ëArkansasí is actually an area around Gorman, north of LA and the Lockwood Valley, dressed with appropriate cattle.

The gradual descent into the central valley of California at Bakersfield is used for the transition from the crowded, narrow mountains of ëArkansasí to the open plains of ëOklahomaí. Itís north to Shafter for the train sequence, then to the dust fields and oil rigs of Taft in the west central valley.

The mid-west C&W bar, where the attempted rape that turns the adventure sour takes place, is in southern LA. It was the Silver Bullet, now Cowboy Country, 3321 South Street, between Obispo and Downey Avenues, Long Beach.

The motel, where the pair meet up with studly JD (Brad Pitt), can also be found in LA. Itís the Vagabond Inn, 3101 South Figueroa Street, south of downtown LA.

Thereís some filming in the real Colorado, at Unaweep Canyon, Grand Junction on I-70 in the west of the state. Louise (Susan Sarandon) phones the FBI agent from Bedrock General Store, Bedrock, Colorado.

The desert scenes, while pretending to be the rather flat 'New Mexico', are the spectacular sandstone landscapes of the La Sal Mountains, Route 46, southeast of Moab in eastern Utah; Arches National Park, to the north of Moab and Canyonlands to the southwest.

The police chase is at Cisco, Utah. Filming also took place at Thompson Springs and Valley City. And the Grand Canyon? Nope. The spectacular gorge of the final scene is not the Grand Canyon, but Shafer Overlook, at Gooseneck State Park, the snaking s-bends of the San Juan River near the bizarre rock formation of Mexican Hat, Route 163 down in the southeast corner of Utah.