The Untold Truth Of Twister

The summer of 1996 gave the world three blockbusters that have transcended the realm of come-and-go action movies and have become the kinds of classics you always rewatch when they pop up on TV or Netflix. Independence Day had aliens, and Mission: Impossible had rogue CIA agents, but Twister scared and thrilled audiences with a threat everyday people actually meet on a regular basis — tornadoes.

For a film centered around that most dull of topics — the weather — Twister had high expectations to live up to. It cost $88 million to make, and it was a rare joint effort between two rival studios, Universal and Warner Bros. And the real stars of the movie — the tornadoes — brought their own challenges. Even a director as forceful as Jan de Bont, who was riding high from his Speed fame, couldn't control the weather on the Oklahoma locations. And the bit he could control — the recreating of tornado conditions — nearly broke his two human stars, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.

Twister was a whirlwind success, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of the year (ousted from the top spot by Independence Day). It also became a ride at Universal Studios. However, the untold truth of Twister will leave you glad the storm is only on the screen.

You don't hear much from Helen Hunt anymore, but in 1995, she was a popular TV star thanks to her lead role in the NBC sitcom Mad About You. Hunt played half of a married couple (opposite Paul Reiser) living in New York, but while her TV role gave her name recognition with potential audiences, it nearly prevented her landing the lead in Twister.

Warner Bros. and Universal Studios, which produced the movie together, were hesitant about giving Hunt a major role. They worried that she wouldn't have time to finish the movie before shooting started on Mad About You. In hindsight, even Hunt admitted that Jan de Bont's insistence on hiring her was "ridiculous." She told Entertainment Weekly, "Everyone was telling him, 'You can't put an $80 million movie on the line because Helen has to go back to her TV show in August.' ... Jan was like, 'I'm doing it.'"

It was Hunt's primarily small screen status that made her right for the part, according to de Bont. "Big stars get in the way of the movie," he told The Morning Call. Also, Hunt had a certain stormy quality. "I wanted Helen because she reminds me of a whirlwind. She can boss people around. She has a strong persona, which I like," de Bont explained. He prevailed, and Mad About You ended up being delayed by two and a half weeks so Hunt could finish Twister.

When Jan de Bont was casting Twister in 1995, Bill Paxton had already had memorable roles in blockbusters including The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies and Predator 2. That year he played one of the three astronauts in Apollo 13, a role that earned him a shared SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast. But when it came time to audition for de Bont, the director was less interested in testing Paxton's well-documented acting skills than he was in his answers to two other questions.

In 1996, Paxton told Oprah Winfrey that the director's main concern was Paxton's capacity for danger. As Paxton explained, de Bont asked him, "'How close can I put you to one of these tornadoes?' That's all he wanted to talk about. ... I'm thinking, 'Oh boy. We'll all be killed.'"

He had less control over de Bont's other condition — longer hair. At the time, Paxton was so fresh off Apollo 13 that he still had the astronaut crew cut. As Paxton told The Morning Call, "When I met Jan, he stared at me intently and said, 'Bill, how fast does your hair grow?' My being cast in the movie seemed to turn on my answer." 

Paxton delivered on the hair front and in his enthusiasm for risky set environments. "It wasn't something you wanted to continue doing, but we weren't in any real danger," he told Entertainment Weekly. "Fortunately, I'm oven-tempered for flexible strength."

The actors didn't have to try too hard to imagine what it would be like to be caught in a tornado. The wind, rain, hail and even some of the falling debris were real.

Bill Paxton was no stranger to physically demanding movie roles by 1995. He'd just starred in Apollo 13, which involved flying in NASA's zero-G-creating KC-135 weightless trainer, aka the "Vomit Comet." But he admitted that getting pelted with ice by Twister's hail machines might've been worse. "I mean, what would you rather do, throw up or be hit in the head real hard with a piece of ice?" he asked The Morning Call (rhetorically, it seems).

Even the ice-free weather sequences were tough. The wind was created by seven wind machines and two jet engines, which blasted up to 200 mph. And when they added rain, even director Jan de Bont admitted to The Morning Call, "They didn't have to act anymore."

He was less sympathetic when it came to the debris, some of which was real. Paxton and Helen Hunt were in the car when life-size farm machinery made from lightweight aluminum and a two-story house were dropped into their path. Talking to Oprah Winfrey, Paxton pointed out that a harvester really did smash the windscreen of the car, only for de Bont to add, "It wasn't that dangerous. ... They get scared very quickly."

Director Jan de Bont's over-the-top demands made an already action-packed shoot even harder. Bill Paxton described him as "intense" to Entertainment Weekly, but some of the crew had stronger feelings.

A few weeks into shooting in the summer of 1995, de Bont fell out with cinematographer Don Burgess, who'd been director of photography on Forrest Gump, the previous year's big hit. Along with Burgess went 20 members of the crew. One of them told Entertainment Weekly that de Bont was disorganized, switching between which direction he wanted to shoot and getting angry when the new set-ups took too long. He also allegedly knocked over a cameraman who missed a cue.

For his part, de Bont blamed the ever-changing weather for last-minute alterations to the shooting schedule. He also said that he was under pressure from studio executives who felt the shoot was running behind, which he blamed on Burgess' inability to adapt to the weather. Burgess and his team stayed on for a week and then handed over to replacement Jack N. Green, who was best known for his work on several Clint Eastwood films, including Unforgiven and The Bridges of Madison County.

Green got on better, but he understood Burgess' point of view. He admitted to Entertainment Weekly that he'd worked with easier and tougher directors, putting it down to de Bont's intense focus on his work, clarifying, "He's socially an extremely congenial person."

Before Twister, storm chasers were seen as weather nerds looking for an adrenaline fix. The movie didn't get everything right, but meteorologists and storm chasers were happy to see themselves at the center of a high-grossing action movie that made them look like the Indiana Joneses of weather.

Speaking about the movie in 1995, a year before it came out, Bill Paxton told an interviewer, "I think this is going to be to tornadoes what Jaws was to sharks." He said that a meteorologist at the National Severe Storm Lab (NSSL) who advised the filmmakers had written to Paxton praising Twister. "As a meteorologist, a big part of his work is mathematics and science," Paxton said. "And this will appeal to young people to go into the sciences."

Many future storm chasers got their first glimpse of the profession while watching Twister. And when Paxton died of complications from surgery on February 25, 2017, they expressed their gratitude with a unique tribute. People across the area of the US known as "Tornado Alley" coordinated with each other to write the initials "BP" onto maps using their GPS systems. Some efforts put the small town of Wakita, OK, where some of Twister was filmed, at the center. Spotter Network, who helped organize the effort, acknowledged Paxton's contributions to the profession, writing on Facebook, "The visibility of storm chasing to the public certainly impacted the avocation many of us enjoy. Our thoughts are with his friends and family."