Book ~ "Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives" (2013) Becky Aikman

From Goodreads ~ In her forties - a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role - Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world. In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas. Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.

Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide. 

The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen. They share emotional peaks and valleys - dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves - while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down. Through it all runs the story of Aikman's own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again. 

I had read and liked Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge by this author last year so was interested in reading something else by her, which turned out to be this book.  I didn't know what it was about ... I assumed from the title that it was fiction and about six friends who get together on Saturday nights because their husbands are watching sports.  Boy, was I wrong!  Ha!

This book is Becky's memoir about becoming a widow and finding her life again.  When she was in her forties, Becky's husband, Bernie, had cancer and passed away.  About a year later, she was ready to live again.  Looking for inspiration, she attended a widows' support group but soon discovered that it wasn't for her (she was actually asked not to come back).  She did research and decided to start her own widows' support group.  She found five women - Marcia, Tara, Dawn, Lesley and Denise - and asked them to join her group.  Each had been widowed from six month to two years and their husbands had passed away in various ways including illness, an accident and a suicide.  They met once a month for a year and did something fun such as a cooking class, a visit to a museum, a spa weekend and a trip to Morocco.

Becky, Marcia, Tara, Dawn, Lesley and Denise

Though each woman was different and probably wouldn't have found each other but for this group, they ended up great friends.  Not only did they participate in fun activities that were sometimes out of their comfort zones but it also gave them the opportunity to talk about how they were feeling and what they wanted out of life with others who knew what they were going through.

I found this book interesting (I like reading memoirs).  Sometimes I found it confusing, though, as to who the women were and what their stories were.  We do find out about them but it was scattered throughout the book.  I think it would have been easier (at least for me) had I been introduced to the women in the beginning and let them have their own chapter (which would have made it easier for me to refer back to when/if I needed).  Plus it would have been nice to have a picture of the women so I could put a face to them (I'm visual).  I read an e-version so maybe there were pictures in an actual book?  I had to Google and find a picture of them and keep it handy (that's the one above).

I found it odd that the author would start this support group after she had been married to Bob, husband #2, for a while.  I wonder how the other women felt about this as they were trying to get their lives together and move on when Becky had appeared to have moved on.  I found it a bit sad that some of these women didn't feel their lives were complete unless/until they found a new man.

Book ~ "Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge" (2017) Becky Aikman

From Goodreads ~ "You've always been crazy," says Louise to Thelma, having just outrun the police in a car chase and locked an officer in the trunk of his own car. "This is just the first chance you've had to express yourself."

In 1991, Thelma and Louise, the story of two outlaw women on the run from their disenchanted lives, was a revelation. Suddenly, for the first time, here was a film in which women were, in every sense, behind the wheel. It turned the tables on Hollywood, instantly becoming a classic and continues today to electrify audiences as a cultural statement of defiance. But if the film's place in history now seems certain, at the time its creation was a long shot.

Before Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon and a young up-and-coming actor named Brad Pitt got involved, "Thelma and Louise" was just an idea in the head of Callie Khouri, a thirty-year-old music video production manager, who was fed up with working behind the scenes on sleazy sets. At four a.m. one night, sitting in her car outside the ramshackle bungalow in Santa Monica that she shared with two friends, she had a vision: two women on a crime spree, fleeing their dull and tedious lives - lives like hers - in search of a freedom they had never before been able to realize. She knew in that moment that she had to be the one to write it.

But in the late 1980s, Hollywood was dominated by men, both on the screen and behind the scenes. The likelihood of a script by an unheard-of screenwriter starring two women in lead roles actually getting made was remote. But Callie had one thing going for her - she had no idea she was attempting the almost impossible. And she pulled it off, by dint of sheer hard work and some good luck when she was able to get the script into the hands of the brilliant English filmmaker Ridley Scott, who saw its huge potential. With Scott on board, a team willing to challenge the odds came together - including not only the stars Davis and Sarandon, but also legends like actor Harvey Keitel, composer Hans Zimmer, and old-school studio chief Alan Ladd Jr. - to create one of the most controversial movies of all time.

In "Off the Cliff", Becky Aikman tells the full extraordinary story behind this feminist sensation, which crashed through barricades and upended convention. Drawing on 130 exclusive interviews with the key players from this remarkable cast of actors, writers, and filmmakers, Aikman tells an inspiring and important underdog story about creativity, the magic of cinema, and the unjust obstacles that women in Hollywood continue to face to this day. 

Louise and Thelma

Thelma & Louise is a movie made in 1991 starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon as two friends who go on a road trip with unexpected results.  The supporting cast included Christopher McDonald, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen and Brad Pitt.

Thelma and Louise are best friends who set out for a weekend vacation at a fishing cabin in the mountains.  Thelma is a ditzy housewife married to a disrespectful and controlling man named Darryl.  Louise is a waitress in a diner and dating a musician named Jimmy, who spends most of his time on the road.  The vacation doesn't go as planned they end up on the run for murder.  Rather than be captured and spend the rest of their lives in jail, Thelma suggests that they "keep going" and they ride the car over the cliff to their deaths.

This book is all about the movie.  It discusses how the writer shopped the script around and Ridley Scott finally decided to direct it, the small budget, casting of the parts (Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster were originally chosen for the leads but eventually dropped out due to other commitments), the actually filming of the movie, the reaction after the movie was made, how it's become a classic and what the actors had done before and since the movie.  I found it interesting to get the behind-the-scene view of what was going on at the time and during the filming.

It's been a lot of years since I've seen Thelma & Louise and after reading this book, I'm going to watch it soon now that I have the inside scoop.