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Twister (film)
Encyclopedia
Twister is a 1996 American disaster
/thriller film
starring Bill Paxton
and Helen Hunt
as "storm chasers
" researching tornado
es. It was directed by Jan de Bont
. The film was based upon a script by Michael Crichton
and Anne-Marie Martin
. Its executive producer
s were Steven Spielberg
, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald
and Gerald R. Molen
. Twister was the second-highest grossing film of 1996
domestically, with an estimated 55 million tickets sold in the US.
In the film, a team of storm chasers
try to perfect a data-gathering instrument, designed to be released into the funnel of a tornado
, while competing with another better-funded team with a similar device during a tornado outbreak
across Oklahoma
. The plot is a dramatized view of research projects like VORTEX
of the NOAA
and the device, called Dorothy, is copied from TOTO
used in the 1980s by NSSL
.
Twister is notable for being both the first Hollywood feature film
to be released on DVD
format and the last to be released on HD DVD
. Twister has since been released on Blu-ray disc
.
Years later, Dr. Jo Harding (Hunt) is reunited with her estranged husband, Bill Harding (Paxton). Bill is a former weather researcher and storm chaser who has taken a job as a weather reporter. He is planning to marry his new girlfriend, Dr. Melissa Reeves, and arrives at Jo's field station seeking Jo’s signature for the final divorce papers. Bill discovers that Jo has built four identical tornado research devices, all called DOROTHY, based upon his own design; the device is designed to release hundreds of sensors into the center of a tornado to study its structure. The team later meets up with Dr. Jonas Miller, a smug and unscrupulous (but well-funded) fellow meteorologist and storm chaser. When Bill discovers that Jonas has "invented" a device almost identical to DOROTHY, he vows to help Jo deploy DOROTHY before Miller can claim credit for the idea. Bill and Melissa join Jo and her eccentric team of storm chasers.
Tensions rise between Jo and Bill when they have several close calls with dangerous tornadoes as the team tries unsuccessfully to deploy the new device. During the first tornado, referred to in the commentary as an F-1, Jo's truck is tossed as the couple take shelter in a ditch. The truck and DOROTHY I are both destroyed. They continue chasing in Bill's truck, with Melissa in the back.
They find the second tornado, a stovepipe-shaped F-2, and head off on a backroad when it shifts its track. They soon find themselves driving through heavy rain. Before long the same storm drops satellite tornadoes on a lake - the same ones that toss a flying cow back and forth. Bill attempts to intercept them on a dam but is caught in the waterspouts, which spin his truck around until they dissipate.
Later, after a lunch with Jo's Aunt Meg, the chasers take off to chase yet another storm. As they track the storm they learn the tornado is on the ground, but have trouble finding it. Approaching a hill they run into a hailstorm, and Bill drives ahead of the chasers to intercept the oncoming pitch-black tornado (believed to be an F-3). A power pole falls on the back of Bill's truck and knocks DOROTHY II out onto the road, rendering it useless. As the tornado jumps and lands very close, Bill pulls an obsessed Jo into the truck and backs away to safety. The two have a meltdown between each other, involving their marriage and Jo's obsession with deploying DOROTHY into the tornado.
That night, a violent tornado blows away a drive-in movie theater, at which Bill and Jo's team is present. The F4 tornado later devastates Wakita, Oklahoma
, destroying the home of Jo's aunt Meg. Melissa, frightened by the dangers of storm chasing and recognizing the unresolved feelings between Jo and Bill, leaves. After Bill and Jo rescue Aunt Meg, the scientists at NSSL report that an even stronger storm is forming 25 miles south of Wakita. As they predict that the storm could produce an F5 tornado, Jo realizes how to successfully deploy DOROTHY.
As the sun rises, the team attacks their goal with even more fervor, chasing a massive F5 tornado in an attempt to deploy the last two DOROTHY's. The rival team's hubris and lack of instinct proves fatal as Dr. Miller's truck is swept up and destroyed in the last tornado due to overzealous chasing, despite Bill's warnings. Eventually Jo and Bill set out on their own and, in a risky maneuver, are able to deploy the last DOROTHY successfully, surviving a direct contact with a huge F5 tornado and re-sealing their personal bond in the process.
and Universal Studios
. Both studios had often collaborated with another of the film's production companies, Amblin Entertainment
, prior to this film.
The original concept and 10-page tornado-chaser story were presented to Amblin Entertainment
in 1992 by motion picture business consultant and award-winning screenwriter Jeffrey Hilton. Spielberg
then presented the concept to writer Michael Crichton
.
After spending more than half a year on pre-production on Godzilla
, director Jan De Bont left after a dispute over the budget and quickly signed on for Twister. The production was plagued with numerous problems. Michael Crichton
and his wife, Anne-Marie Martin, were paid a reported $2.5 million to write the screenplay. Joss Whedon
was brought in to do rewrites through the early spring of 1995. When he got bronchitis
, Steve Zaillian was brought in. Whedon returned and worked on revisions right through the start of shooting in May 1995. He left the project after getting married and two weeks into production, Jeff Nathanson
was flown in to the set and worked on the script until principal photography ended.
Halfway through filming both Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded by bright electronic lamps used to get the exposure down to make the sky behind the two actors look dark and stormy because it was too bright outside. Paxton remembers that "these things literally sunburned our eyeballs. I got back to my room, I couldn't see". To solve the problem, a Plexiglas filter was placed in front of the beams. The actors took eye drops and wore special glasses for a few days to recuperate. After filming in a ditch that contained bacteria, Hunt and Paxton had to have hepatitis shots. During the same scene, she repeatedly hit her head on a low wooden bridge because she was so exhausted from the demanding shoot that she forgot not to stand up so quickly. Hunt did one stunt in which she opened the door of a vehicle that was speeding through a cornfield, stood up on the passenger side and was hit by the door on the side of her head when she let it go momentarily. As a result, some sources claim that Hunt got a concussion. De Bont said, "I love Helen to death, but you know, she can be also a little bit clumsy." She responded, "Clumsy? The guy burned my retinas, but I'm clumsy ... I thought I was a good sport. I don't know ultimately if Jan chalks me up as that or not, but one would hope so".
Some crew members felt De Bont was "out of control" and left five weeks into filming. The camera crew led by Don Burgess
left the production after five weeks, claiming that De Bont "didn't know what he wanted till he saw it. He would shoot one direction, with all the equipment behind the view of the camera, and then he'd want to shoot in the other direction right away and we'd have to move [everything] and he'd get angry that we took too long ... and it was always everybody else's fault, never his". De Bont claims that they had to make schedules for at least three different scenes every day because the weather changed so often that "Don had trouble adjusting to that". When De Bont knocked over a camera assistant who had missed a cue, Burgess and his crew left, much to the shock of the cast. Burgess and his crew stayed on one more week until a replacement was found in Jack N. Green
. Just before the end of the shoot, Green was injured when a hydraulic house set, designed to collapse on cue, was mistakenly activated with him inside it. A rigged ceiling hit him in the head and he injured his back and had to go to the hospital. Green missed the last two days of principal photography and De Bont took over as his own director of photography.
De Bont had to shoot many of the film's tornado-chasing scenes in bright sunlight when they could not get overcast skies and asked Industrial Light & Magic to more than double its original plan for 150 "digital sky-replacement" shots. Principal photography had a certain time limit because Hunt had to return to film another season of Mad About You
but Paul Reiser
was willing to delay it for two-and-a-half weeks when the Twister shoot was extended. De Bont insisted on using multiple cameras and this led to the exposure of 1.3 million feet of raw film (most films use no more than 300,000 feet).
De Bont claims that Twister cost close to $70 million with $2–3 million going to the director. It was speculated that last-minute re-shoots in March and April 1996 (to clarify a scene about Jo as a child) and overtime requirements in post-production and at ILM, raised the budget to $90 million. Warner Bros. moved up the film's release date from May 17 to May 10 in order to give it two weekends before Mission: Impossible
opened.
) and several rock music
songs, including an instrumental theme song composed and performed for the film by Van Halen
. Both the rock soundtrack and the orchestral score were released separately on compact disc
.
There are some orchestrated tracks that were in the movie but were not released on the orchestral score, most notably the orchestrated intro to Humans Being from when Jo's team left Wakita to chase the Hailstorm Hill tornado. Other, lesser-known tracks omitted include an extended version of "Going Green" (when we first meet Jonas) and a short track from when the first tornado is initially spotted.
, Bill Paxton
revealed that he had a meeting with film producer
Kathleen Kennedy about making a Twister 2. Paxton stated that he would like to direct the sequel if and when it is produced.
for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound (Steve Maslow
, Gregg Landaker
, Kevin O'Connell
and Geoffrey Patterson
) in 1997. It also won a Razzie Award in a special category called "Worst Screenplay Grossing Over $100 Million" while Jami Gertz
was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress.
Reception to Twister was mixed, with a 59% rating at Rotten Tomatoes
, and a weighted mean
score of 68 at Metacritic
.
Roger Ebert
gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? Twister works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it". In her review for The New York Times
, Janet Maslin
wrote, "Somehow Twister stays as uptempo and exuberant as a roller-coaster ride, neatly avoiding the idea of real danger". Entertainment Weekly
gave the film a "B" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "Yet the images that linger longest in my memory are those of windswept livestock. And that, in a teacup, sums up everything that's right, and wrong, about this appealingly noisy but ultimately flyaway first blockbuster of summer". In his review for the Los Angeles Times
, Kenneth Turan wrote, "But the ringmaster of this circus, the man without whom nothing would be possible, is director De Bont, who now must be considered Hollywood's top action specialist. An expert in making audiences squirm and twist, at making us feel the rush of experience right along with the actors, De Bont choreographs action and suspense so beautifully he makes it seem like a snap". Time
magazine's Richard Schickel
wrote, "when action is never shown to have deadly or pitiable consequences, it tends toward abstraction. Pretty soon you're not tornado watching, you're special-effects watching". In his review for the Washington Post Desson Howe wrote, "it's a triumph of technology over storytelling and the actors' craft. Characters exist merely to tell a couple of jokes, cower in fear of downdrafts and otherwise kill time between tornadoes".
The film was also criticized for being part of a trend among projectionists to present films with excessively loud audio. It is rumored that Warner Bros. included a note from de Bont himself in the metal containers the reels were delivered in, urging projectionists to present Twister at higher than normal volume.
in Niagara Falls, Ontario
which was scheduled to show the movie Twister in a real-life parallel to a scene in the film in which a tornado destroys a drive-in during a showing of the film The Shining
. The facts of this incident were exaggerated into an urban legend
that the theater was actually playing Twister during the tornado.
On May 10, 2010, a tornado struck Fairfax, Oklahoma
, destroying the farmhouse where numerous scenes in Twister were shot. J. Berry Harrison, the owner of the home and a former Oklahoma state senator, commented that the tornado appeared eerily similar to the fictitious one in the film. Harrison had lived in the home since 1978.
, which features filmed introductions by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.
Disaster
A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment...
/thriller film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
starring Bill Paxton
Bill Paxton
William "Bill" Paxton is an American actor and film director. He gained popularity after starring roles in the films Apollo 13, Twister, Aliens, True Lies, and Titanic...
and Helen Hunt
Helen Hunt
Helen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom Mad About You for seven years, before being cast in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets...
as "storm chasers
Storm chasing
Storm chasing is broadly defined as the pursuit of any severe weather condition, regardless of motive, which can be curiosity, adventure, scientific exploration or for news professions/media coverage....
" researching tornado
Tornado
A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...
es. It was directed by Jan de Bont
Jan de Bont
Jan de Bont is a Dutch cinematographer, producer, and film director.-Early life and career:De Bont was born, one of 17 children, to a Roman Catholic family in Eindhoven, Netherlands. His earliest work after studying at the Amsterdam Film Academy was with the Dutch avant garde director Adriaan...
. The film was based upon a script by Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...
and Anne-Marie Martin
Anne-Marie Martin
Anne-Marie Martin is a Canadian actress and writer who is perhaps best known for playing Sgt. Dori Doreau in the American television comedy series Sledge Hammer! from 1986 to 1988....
. Its executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
s were Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald
Laurie MacDonald
Laurie MacDonald is a film producer. She is married to Walter F. Parkes and is a production executive of DreamWorks. Her credits include:*The Ring*The Terminal*Cloud Atlas *Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events...
and Gerald R. Molen
Gerald R. Molen
Gerald Robert Molen is a high profile American film producer. He works very closely with Steven Spielberg, having produced five of his films, and won an Academy Award for co-producing Schindler's List...
. Twister was the second-highest grossing film of 1996
1996 in film
Major releases this year included Scream, Independence Day, Fargo, Trainspotting, The English Patient, Twister, Mars Attacks!, Jerry Maguire and a version of Evita starring Madonna.-Events:...
domestically, with an estimated 55 million tickets sold in the US.
In the film, a team of storm chasers
Storm chasing
Storm chasing is broadly defined as the pursuit of any severe weather condition, regardless of motive, which can be curiosity, adventure, scientific exploration or for news professions/media coverage....
try to perfect a data-gathering instrument, designed to be released into the funnel of a tornado
Tornado
A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...
, while competing with another better-funded team with a similar device during a tornado outbreak
Tornado outbreak
While there is no single agreed upon definition, generally at least 6-10 tornadoes produced by the same synoptic scale weather system is considered a tornado outbreak. The tornadoes usually occur within the same day, or continue into the early morning hours of the succeeding day, and within the...
across Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
. The plot is a dramatized view of research projects like VORTEX
VORTEX projects
The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment or VORTEX, field projects study tornadoes. VORTEX1 was the first time scientists completely researched the entire evolution of a tornado, enabling a greater understanding of the processes involved with tornadogenesis...
of the NOAA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...
and the device, called Dorothy, is copied from TOTO
TOtable Tornado Observatory
The TOtable Tornado Observatory is a large, instrumented barrel-shaped device invented in 1979 by Dr. Al Bedard and Carl Ramzy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Environmental Technology Laboratory...
used in the 1980s by NSSL
National Severe Storms Laboratory
The National Severe Storms Laboratory is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather research laboratory located at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma....
.
Twister is notable for being both the first Hollywood feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
to be released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
format and the last to be released on HD DVD
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
. Twister has since been released on Blu-ray disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
.
Plot
In June 1969, severe weather looms on a rural Oklahoma farm. A family (including five-year-old Jo) seeks shelter in a storm cellar as an F5 tornado strikes. However, the storm is so strong that the locks on the cellar door fail and Jo's father is caught up in the storm and killed as young Jo struggles to catch a glimpse of the powerful storm.Years later, Dr. Jo Harding (Hunt) is reunited with her estranged husband, Bill Harding (Paxton). Bill is a former weather researcher and storm chaser who has taken a job as a weather reporter. He is planning to marry his new girlfriend, Dr. Melissa Reeves, and arrives at Jo's field station seeking Jo’s signature for the final divorce papers. Bill discovers that Jo has built four identical tornado research devices, all called DOROTHY, based upon his own design; the device is designed to release hundreds of sensors into the center of a tornado to study its structure. The team later meets up with Dr. Jonas Miller, a smug and unscrupulous (but well-funded) fellow meteorologist and storm chaser. When Bill discovers that Jonas has "invented" a device almost identical to DOROTHY, he vows to help Jo deploy DOROTHY before Miller can claim credit for the idea. Bill and Melissa join Jo and her eccentric team of storm chasers.
Tensions rise between Jo and Bill when they have several close calls with dangerous tornadoes as the team tries unsuccessfully to deploy the new device. During the first tornado, referred to in the commentary as an F-1, Jo's truck is tossed as the couple take shelter in a ditch. The truck and DOROTHY I are both destroyed. They continue chasing in Bill's truck, with Melissa in the back.
They find the second tornado, a stovepipe-shaped F-2, and head off on a backroad when it shifts its track. They soon find themselves driving through heavy rain. Before long the same storm drops satellite tornadoes on a lake - the same ones that toss a flying cow back and forth. Bill attempts to intercept them on a dam but is caught in the waterspouts, which spin his truck around until they dissipate.
Later, after a lunch with Jo's Aunt Meg, the chasers take off to chase yet another storm. As they track the storm they learn the tornado is on the ground, but have trouble finding it. Approaching a hill they run into a hailstorm, and Bill drives ahead of the chasers to intercept the oncoming pitch-black tornado (believed to be an F-3). A power pole falls on the back of Bill's truck and knocks DOROTHY II out onto the road, rendering it useless. As the tornado jumps and lands very close, Bill pulls an obsessed Jo into the truck and backs away to safety. The two have a meltdown between each other, involving their marriage and Jo's obsession with deploying DOROTHY into the tornado.
That night, a violent tornado blows away a drive-in movie theater, at which Bill and Jo's team is present. The F4 tornado later devastates Wakita, Oklahoma
Wakita, Oklahoma
Wakita is a town in Grant County, Oklahoma, United States, founded in 1898. The population was 344 at the 2010 census. It was featured in the 1996 blockbuster film Twister starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in which Wakita was destroyed by an F4 tornado that was part of a storm system later...
, destroying the home of Jo's aunt Meg. Melissa, frightened by the dangers of storm chasing and recognizing the unresolved feelings between Jo and Bill, leaves. After Bill and Jo rescue Aunt Meg, the scientists at NSSL report that an even stronger storm is forming 25 miles south of Wakita. As they predict that the storm could produce an F5 tornado, Jo realizes how to successfully deploy DOROTHY.
As the sun rises, the team attacks their goal with even more fervor, chasing a massive F5 tornado in an attempt to deploy the last two DOROTHY's. The rival team's hubris and lack of instinct proves fatal as Dr. Miller's truck is swept up and destroyed in the last tornado due to overzealous chasing, despite Bill's warnings. Eventually Jo and Bill set out on their own and, in a risky maneuver, are able to deploy the last DOROTHY successfully, surviving a direct contact with a huge F5 tornado and re-sealing their personal bond in the process.
Cast
- Bill PaxtonBill PaxtonWilliam "Bill" Paxton is an American actor and film director. He gained popularity after starring roles in the films Apollo 13, Twister, Aliens, True Lies, and Titanic...
as Bill Harding - Helen HuntHelen HuntHelen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom Mad About You for seven years, before being cast in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets...
as Dr. Jo Harding - Jami GertzJami GertzJami Beth Gertz is an American actress. Gertz is known for her early roles in the films Sixteen Candles, Crossroads, The Lost Boys, Less Than Zero, the 1980s TV series Square Pegs with Sarah Jessica Parker, and 1996's Twister, as well as for her role as Judy Miller in the CBS sitcom Still Standing...
as Dr. Melissa Reeves - Cary ElwesCary ElwesIvan Simon Cary Elwes , known professionally as Cary Elwes, is an English actor. The son of Dominick Elwes and Tessa Georgina Kennedy, Elwes acted in off-Broadway plays during college and moved to the United States in the early 1980s. He is known for his role as Westley in the cult classic The...
as Dr. Jonas Miller - Philip Seymour HoffmanPhilip Seymour HoffmanPhilip Seymour Hoffman is an American actor and director. Hoffman began acting in television in 1991, and the following year started to appear in films...
as Dustin 'Dusty' Davis - Alan RuckAlan RuckAlan Ruck is an American film, stage and television actor, perhaps best known for his roles as Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Stuart Bondek on Spin City.-Early life:...
as Robert "Rabbit" Nurick - Jeremy DaviesJeremy Davies (actor)Jeremy Davies is an American film and television actor. He is known for portraying the interpreter Cpl. Timothy E. Upham in the film Saving Private Ryan and the physicist Daniel Faraday on the television series Lost. He most recently appeared in the FX series, Justified, as Dickie Bennett.-Early...
as Laurence - Joey SlotnickJoey SlotnickJoey Slotnick is an American film and television actor.-Biography:Slotnick was born in Chicago, Ill.His film roles include computer industry pioneer Steve Wozniak in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley, and a part in the 1996 blockbuster Twister...
as Joey - Sean WhalenSean WhalenSean M. Whalen is an American film, television, and stage actor.Whalen was born in Washington D.C. in 1964, the youngest of four children, he was raised in Silver Spring/Olney, Maryland. He attended Sherwood High School and graduated from UCLA. He worked as a waiter while studying and performing...
as Alan Sanders - Todd FieldTodd FieldWilliam Todd Field, known professionally as Todd Field is an American actor and writer/director. He has received three Academy Award nominations.-Background and personal life:...
as Tim "Beltzer" Lewis - Wendle Josepher as Haynes
- Scott Thomson as Jason "Preacher" Rowe
- Lois SmithLois SmithLois Smith is an American actress whose career in theater, film, and television has spanned five decades.Smith was born Lois Arlene Humbert in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Carrie Davis and William Oren Humbert, who was a telephone company employee...
as Aunt Meg Greene - Zach GrenierZach GrenierZach Grenier is an American actor who has worked in film, television and on stage.He appeared in the first season of the television show 24 as Carl Webb, was in Deadwood, and on several episodes of Law & Order...
as Eddie - Alexa VegaAlexa VegaAlexa Ellesse Vega is an American actress, singer and pianist. She is best known for playing Carmen Cortez in the Spy Kids film series and Shilo Wallace in the movie Repo! the Genetic Opera. In 2009, she starred as the title character Ruby Gallagher in the ABC Family series Ruby & The...
as Young Jo - Richard LinebackRichard LinebackRichard D. Lineback is an American actor. He has performed in character roles in such blockbuster films as Speed, Twister and Varsity Blues. He played Deputy Dodd in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning....
as Jo's Father
Production
Twister was a joint production between Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
. Both studios had often collaborated with another of the film's production companies, Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its...
, prior to this film.
The original concept and 10-page tornado-chaser story were presented to Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its...
in 1992 by motion picture business consultant and award-winning screenwriter Jeffrey Hilton. Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
then presented the concept to writer Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...
.
After spending more than half a year on pre-production on Godzilla
Godzilla (1998 film)
Godzilla is a 1998 science fiction monster disaster film film co-written and directed by Roland Emmerich. It is a loose remake of the 1954 giant monster classic Godzilla. The storyline was conceived from a screenplay written by Emmerich and Dean Devlin. The film relates a tale of a nuclear incident...
, director Jan De Bont left after a dispute over the budget and quickly signed on for Twister. The production was plagued with numerous problems. Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...
and his wife, Anne-Marie Martin, were paid a reported $2.5 million to write the screenplay. Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
was brought in to do rewrites through the early spring of 1995. When he got bronchitis
Bronchitis
Acute bronchitis is an inflammation of the large bronchi in the lungs that is usually caused by viruses or bacteria and may last several days or weeks. Characteristic symptoms include cough, sputum production, and shortness of breath and wheezing related to the obstruction of the inflamed airways...
, Steve Zaillian was brought in. Whedon returned and worked on revisions right through the start of shooting in May 1995. He left the project after getting married and two weeks into production, Jeff Nathanson
Jeff Nathanson
Jeff Nathanson is an American film writer, film producer, and director.He is best known for his work on the Rush Hour series, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, and The Last Shot, and has also co-written a story draft for the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with George Lucas...
was flown in to the set and worked on the script until principal photography ended.
Halfway through filming both Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded by bright electronic lamps used to get the exposure down to make the sky behind the two actors look dark and stormy because it was too bright outside. Paxton remembers that "these things literally sunburned our eyeballs. I got back to my room, I couldn't see". To solve the problem, a Plexiglas filter was placed in front of the beams. The actors took eye drops and wore special glasses for a few days to recuperate. After filming in a ditch that contained bacteria, Hunt and Paxton had to have hepatitis shots. During the same scene, she repeatedly hit her head on a low wooden bridge because she was so exhausted from the demanding shoot that she forgot not to stand up so quickly. Hunt did one stunt in which she opened the door of a vehicle that was speeding through a cornfield, stood up on the passenger side and was hit by the door on the side of her head when she let it go momentarily. As a result, some sources claim that Hunt got a concussion. De Bont said, "I love Helen to death, but you know, she can be also a little bit clumsy." She responded, "Clumsy? The guy burned my retinas, but I'm clumsy ... I thought I was a good sport. I don't know ultimately if Jan chalks me up as that or not, but one would hope so".
Some crew members felt De Bont was "out of control" and left five weeks into filming. The camera crew led by Don Burgess
Don Burgess (cinematographer)
Don Michael Burgess, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer. He studied at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.-Filmography:*Mo' Money *Josh and S.A.M. *Forrest Gump *Richie Rich...
left the production after five weeks, claiming that De Bont "didn't know what he wanted till he saw it. He would shoot one direction, with all the equipment behind the view of the camera, and then he'd want to shoot in the other direction right away and we'd have to move [everything] and he'd get angry that we took too long ... and it was always everybody else's fault, never his". De Bont claims that they had to make schedules for at least three different scenes every day because the weather changed so often that "Don had trouble adjusting to that". When De Bont knocked over a camera assistant who had missed a cue, Burgess and his crew left, much to the shock of the cast. Burgess and his crew stayed on one more week until a replacement was found in Jack N. Green
Jack N. Green
John Niel "Jack" Green A.S.C. , often credited as Jack N. Green, is an American cinematographer.Green was born in San Francisco, California. A frequent collaborator with Clint Eastwood, he was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for best cinematography for the 1992 western, Unforgiven...
. Just before the end of the shoot, Green was injured when a hydraulic house set, designed to collapse on cue, was mistakenly activated with him inside it. A rigged ceiling hit him in the head and he injured his back and had to go to the hospital. Green missed the last two days of principal photography and De Bont took over as his own director of photography.
De Bont had to shoot many of the film's tornado-chasing scenes in bright sunlight when they could not get overcast skies and asked Industrial Light & Magic to more than double its original plan for 150 "digital sky-replacement" shots. Principal photography had a certain time limit because Hunt had to return to film another season of Mad About You
Mad About You
Mad About You is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 23, 1992 to May 24, 1999. The show starred Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as a newly married couple in New York City. Reiser played Paul Buchman, a documentary film maker. Hunt played Jamie Stemple Buchman, a public relations specialist...
but Paul Reiser
Paul Reiser
Paul Reiser is an American stand-up comedian, actor, television personality, author, screenwriter and musician. He is most widely known for his role on the long-running television sitcom Mad About You.-Early life:...
was willing to delay it for two-and-a-half weeks when the Twister shoot was extended. De Bont insisted on using multiple cameras and this led to the exposure of 1.3 million feet of raw film (most films use no more than 300,000 feet).
De Bont claims that Twister cost close to $70 million with $2–3 million going to the director. It was speculated that last-minute re-shoots in March and April 1996 (to clarify a scene about Jo as a child) and overtime requirements in post-production and at ILM, raised the budget to $90 million. Warner Bros. moved up the film's release date from May 17 to May 10 in order to give it two weekends before Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible (film)
Mission: Impossible is a 1996 action thriller directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. Following on from the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole within the CIA who has framed him for the murders of his entire...
opened.
Soundtrack
Twister featured both a traditional orchestral film score (by Mark MancinaMark Mancina
Mark Alan Mancina is a U.S. composer, primarily for Hollywood soundtracks, such as his collaboration with Trevor Rabin on the soundtrack for Con Air. He arranged many of the songs behind Disney's The Lion King including the Broadway musical...
) and several rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
songs, including an instrumental theme song composed and performed for the film by Van Halen
Van Halen
Van Halen is an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California, in 1972. The band has enjoyed success since the release of its debut album, Van Halen, . As of 2007 Van Halen has sold 80 million albums worldwide and has had the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart...
. Both the rock soundtrack and the orchestral score were released separately on compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
.
Rock Soundtrack
- Van HalenVan HalenVan Halen is an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California, in 1972. The band has enjoyed success since the release of its debut album, Van Halen, . As of 2007 Van Halen has sold 80 million albums worldwide and has had the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart...
- "Humans BeingHumans Being"Humans Being" is a song recorded and contributed by the rock band Van Halen for the film, Twister. The song's lyrics proved a major source of contention, as Eddie Van Halen felt compelled to rewrite Sammy Hagar's lyrics, calling them "cheesy"...
" - Rusted RootRusted RootRusted Root is a band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania known for their unique fusion of acoustic, rock, world and other styles of music, with a strong percussion section that draws from African, Latin American, Native American, and Indian influences...
- "Virtual Reality" - Tori AmosTori AmosTori Amos is an American pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. She was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument...
- "Talula (BT's Tornado Mix)" - Alison KraussAlison KraussAlison Maria Krauss is an American bluegrass-country singer, songwriter and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, winning local contests by the age of ten and recording for the first time at fourteen. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in...
- "Moments Like ThisMoments Like ThisMoments Like This may refer to:* "Moments Like This" , a 1938 popular song* "Moments Like This" * Moments Like This , an album by Peggy Lee, featuring a cover of the 1938 song...
" - Mark KnopflerMark KnopflerMark Freuder Knopfler, OBE is a Scottish-born British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977...
- "Darling PrettyDarling Pretty"Darling Pretty" is the first single from the album Golden Heart by Mark Knopfler, released in 1996. It reached number 33 in the UK Singles Chart. The song featured in the 1996 film Twister. "Gravy Train", the second track in the maxi-single, featured in the 2001 film America's Sweethearts....
" - Soul AsylumSoul AsylumSoul Asylum is an American alternative rock band that formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1983.The band originally formed in 1981 under the name Loud Fast Rules, with the original line-up consisting of Dan Murphy, Dave Pirner, Karl Mueller and Pat Morley. The latter was replaced by Grant Young in...
- "Miss This" - BellyBelly (band)Belly was an alternative rock band formed in 1991 by former Throwing Muses members Tanya Donelly and Fred Abong. The band was based in Boston, Massachusetts, though all of the original members grew up in Newport, Rhode Island. The band consisted of Donelly on lead vocals and guitar, Abong on bass,...
- "Broken" - k.d. langK.D. LangKathryn Dawn Lang, OC , known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress...
- "Love Affair" - Nine Stories Feat. Lisa LoebLisa LoebLisa Anne Loeb is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She launched her career in 1994 with the song, "Stay ". She was the first artist to have a number one single in the United States while not signed to a recording contract.Loeb's efforts now include music, film, television, voice-over...
- "How" - Red Hot Chili PeppersRed Hot Chili PeppersRed Hot Chili Peppers is an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The group's musical style primarily consists of rock with an emphasis on funk, as well as elements from other genres such as punk, hip hop and psychedelic rock...
- "Melancholy Mechanics" - Goo Goo DollsGoo Goo DollsThe Goo Goo Dolls are a Grammy-nominated American rock band formed in 1986 in Buffalo, New York, by vocalist and guitarist John Rzeznik and vocalist and bass guitarist Robby Takac. Since the end of 1994, Mike Malinin has been the band's drummer, a position previously held by George Tutuska...
- "Long Way Down" - Shania TwainShania TwainShania Twain, OC is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. Her album The Woman in Me , brought her fame and her 1997 album Come On Over, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold over 40 million...
- "No One Needs to KnowNo One Needs to Know"No One Needs to Know" is the title of a song co-written and recorded by Canadian country music artist Shania Twain. It was released in May 1996 as the sixth single from her 1995 album The Woman in Me. The song was written by Twain and Mutt Lange. The song became Twain's third consecutive...
" - Stevie NicksStevie NicksStephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks is an American singer-songwriter, best known for her work with Fleetwood Mac and an extensive solo career, which collectively have produced over forty Top 50 hits and sold over 140 million albums...
Feat. Lindsey BuckinghamLindsey BuckinghamLindsey Adams Buckingham is an American guitarist, singer, composer and producer, most notable for being the guitarist and male lead singer of the musical group Fleetwood Mac. Aside from his tenure with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham has also released six solo albums and a live album...
- "Twisted" - Edward & Alex Van HalenAlex Van HalenAlexander Arthur "Alex" Van Halen is a Dutch-born American musician, best known as the drummer and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen. Originally, his brother Eddie had taken lessons for drums, while Alex practiced guitar...
- "Respect the WindRespect the Wind"Respect the Wind" is a lengthy keyboard and electric guitar instrumental track written and performed by Edward and Alex Van Halen. It is played over the end credits of the 1996 hit film Twister and is Alex Van Halen's only-ever credit independent of the band Van Halen.It was the second of two...
" - Deep PurpleDeep PurpleDeep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members believe that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre...
- Child in TimeChild in Time"Child in Time" is a song by British hard rock band Deep Purple. Featured on their 1970 album Deep Purple in Rock, the song is 10 minutes and 18 seconds long.-History and characteristics:... - Eric ClaptonEric ClaptonEric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
- Motherless Child
Orchestral Score
- Oklahoma: Wheatfield
- Oklahoma: Where's My Truck?
- Oklahoma: Futility
- Oklahoma: Downdraft
- It's Coming: Drive In
- It's Coming: The Big Suck
- The Hunt: Going Green (Featuring Trevor RabinTrevor RabinTrevor Charles Rabin is a South African born musician, best known as a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the British progressive rock band Yes from 1983–1994, and since then, as a film composer.- Early years :...
on guitar) - The Hunt: Sculptures
- The Hunt: Cow
- The Hunt: Ditch
- The Damage: Wakita
- Hailstorm Hill: Bob's Road
- Hailstorm Hill: We're Almost There
- F5: Dorothy IV
- F5: Mobile Home
- F5: God's Finger
- Other: William Tell Overture/Oklahoma Medley
- Other: End Title/Respect the Wind - written by Edward and Alex Van Halen
There are some orchestrated tracks that were in the movie but were not released on the orchestral score, most notably the orchestrated intro to Humans Being from when Jo's team left Wakita to chase the Hailstorm Hill tornado. Other, lesser-known tracks omitted include an extended version of "Going Green" (when we first meet Jonas) and a short track from when the first tornado is initially spotted.
Sequel
In December 2010, while doing an interview with Bullz-Eye to promote the new season of HBO's Big LoveBig Love
Big Love is an American television drama that aired on HBO between March 2006 and March 2011. The show is about a fictional fundamentalist Mormon family in Utah that practices polygamy...
, Bill Paxton
Bill Paxton
William "Bill" Paxton is an American actor and film director. He gained popularity after starring roles in the films Apollo 13, Twister, Aliens, True Lies, and Titanic...
revealed that he had a meeting with film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
Kathleen Kennedy about making a Twister 2. Paxton stated that he would like to direct the sequel if and when it is produced.
Reception
The film was nominated for two Academy Awards69th Academy Awards
The 69th Academy Awards were dominated by movies produced by independent studios, financed outside of mainstream Hollywood, leading to 1996 being dubbed "The Year of the Independents". All but one of the nominees for Best Picture were low-budget independent movies The 69th Academy Awards were...
for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound (Steve Maslow
Steve Maslow
Steve Maslow is an American sound engineer. He won three Academy Awards for Best Sound and has been nominated for four more in the same category...
, Gregg Landaker
Gregg Landaker
Gregg Landaker is an American sound engineer. He won three Academy Awards for Best Sound and has been nominated for four more in the same category...
, Kevin O'Connell
Kevin O'Connell (sound re-recording mixer)
Kevin O'Connell is a sound re-recording mixer. He holds the record for most Academy Award nominations without a win at 20, having originally set the record in 2006 with his 18th nomination and loss, making him the "unluckiest nominee in the history of the Academy Awards".-Awards and...
and Geoffrey Patterson
Geoffrey Patterson
Geoffrey Patterson is an American sound engineer. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Sound. He has worked on over 50 films since 1985.-Selected filmography:* Twister...
) in 1997. It also won a Razzie Award in a special category called "Worst Screenplay Grossing Over $100 Million" while Jami Gertz
Jami Gertz
Jami Beth Gertz is an American actress. Gertz is known for her early roles in the films Sixteen Candles, Crossroads, The Lost Boys, Less Than Zero, the 1980s TV series Square Pegs with Sarah Jessica Parker, and 1996's Twister, as well as for her role as Judy Miller in the CBS sitcom Still Standing...
was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress.
Reception to Twister was mixed, with a 59% rating at Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, and a weighted mean
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 68 at Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? Twister works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it". In her review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
wrote, "Somehow Twister stays as uptempo and exuberant as a roller-coaster ride, neatly avoiding the idea of real danger". Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave the film a "B" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "Yet the images that linger longest in my memory are those of windswept livestock. And that, in a teacup, sums up everything that's right, and wrong, about this appealingly noisy but ultimately flyaway first blockbuster of summer". In his review for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, Kenneth Turan wrote, "But the ringmaster of this circus, the man without whom nothing would be possible, is director De Bont, who now must be considered Hollywood's top action specialist. An expert in making audiences squirm and twist, at making us feel the rush of experience right along with the actors, De Bont choreographs action and suspense so beautifully he makes it seem like a snap". Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's Richard Schickel
Richard Schickel
Richard Warren Schickel is an American author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He is a film critic for Time magazine, having also written for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times Book Review....
wrote, "when action is never shown to have deadly or pitiable consequences, it tends toward abstraction. Pretty soon you're not tornado watching, you're special-effects watching". In his review for the Washington Post Desson Howe wrote, "it's a triumph of technology over storytelling and the actors' craft. Characters exist merely to tell a couple of jokes, cower in fear of downdrafts and otherwise kill time between tornadoes".
The film was also criticized for being part of a trend among projectionists to present films with excessively loud audio. It is rumored that Warner Bros. included a note from de Bont himself in the metal containers the reels were delivered in, urging projectionists to present Twister at higher than normal volume.
Urban legend
On May 24, 1996, a tornado destroyed a drive-in theaterDrive-in theater
A drive-in theater is a form of cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor screen, a projection booth, a concession stand and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers can view movies from the privacy and comfort of their cars.The screen can be as simple as a...
in Niagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Falls is a Canadian city on the Niagara River in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario. The municipality was incorporated on June 12, 1903...
which was scheduled to show the movie Twister in a real-life parallel to a scene in the film in which a tornado destroys a drive-in during a showing of the film The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...
. The facts of this incident were exaggerated into an urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
that the theater was actually playing Twister during the tornado.
On May 10, 2010, a tornado struck Fairfax, Oklahoma
Fairfax, Oklahoma
Fairfax is a town in Osage County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,380 at the 2010 census, down 11.3 percent from 1,555 at the 2000 census.-History:...
, destroying the farmhouse where numerous scenes in Twister were shot. J. Berry Harrison, the owner of the home and a former Oklahoma state senator, commented that the tornado appeared eerily similar to the fictitious one in the film. Harrison had lived in the home since 1978.
Theme park attraction
The film was used as the basis for the attraction Twister...Ride It Out at Universal Studios FloridaUniversal Studios Florida
Universal Studios Florida is an American theme park located in Orlando, Florida. Opened on June 7, 1990, the park's theme is the entertainment industry, in particular movies and television. Universal Studios Florida inspires its guests to "ride the movies," and it features numerous attractions and...
, which features filmed introductions by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.
External links
- Official site for the film
- Twister Museum Wakita, OklahomaWakita, OklahomaWakita is a town in Grant County, Oklahoma, United States, founded in 1898. The population was 344 at the 2010 census. It was featured in the 1996 blockbuster film Twister starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in which Wakita was destroyed by an F4 tornado that was part of a storm system later...
- Hear the theme song