The Big Picture
Twister
was a massive success due to a compelling story, captivating characters, and groundbreaking special effects.
Despite its success, the set of
Twister
was plagued with accidents, injuries, and behind-the-scenes drama.
Director Jan de Bont’s behavior caused crew members to quit, actors to be injured, and challenges throughout filming.
Following the mega success of Speed in 1994, director Jan de Bont next signed on for a film called Twister. Starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, Twister was somehow even bigger than Speed. Even though it cost a whopping $92 million to make in 1996, it made a jaw-dropping half of a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. While we remember the intense action scenes, the stellar tornado CGI (and that flying cow!), and the great chemistry between Paxton and Hunt, behind the scenes, Twister was a bigger mess than the aftermath of an F5. Before all was said and done, both Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were injured multiple times, feelings were hurt, and Jan de Bont attacked a member of his crew.
Twister
Bill and Jo Harding, advanced storm chasers on the brink of divorce, must join together to create an advanced weather alert system by putting themselves in the cross-hairs of extremely violent tornadoes.
Release Date May 10, 1996
Runtime 113 minutes
Writers Michael Crichton , Anne-Marie Martin
‘Twister’ Became One of the Best Action Movies Ever Made
Jan de Bont hit it big with Speed, but failed with Speed 2: Cruise Control three years later, not just because Keanu Reeves didn’t come back, but because the plot of a speeding cruise ship out of control was too silly for audiences to get behind, proving that bigger wasn’t always better. Bigger could be used to get your attention though, as the film de Bont made before Speed 2, Twister, showed with its intriguing premise. If the idea of a bus blowing up if it goes below fifty miles per hour raised eyebrows, then a (somewhat) true story about storm chasers finding themselves in trouble during a tornado outbreak not only raised eyebrows, but turned heads.
Twister was a success because everything clicked, from the story, to the characters, to the special effects. Written by Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame, and his wife Anne-Marie Martin, Twister was a movie that demanded to be seen on the big screen, so it’s no surprise that it became the second-biggest domestic release of 1996 behind Independence Day. The effects left not just audiences in awe, but award voters as well, with Industrial Light & Magic earning Academy Award nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.
All the phenomenal CGI in the world didn’t matter without the efforts of Twister’s cast, predominantly Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as Bill and Jo Harding, estranged spouses who clash together before fighting for their lives together. They were the perfect pair, chosen not because they were the biggest stars in the world, but because they were great character actors, with Paxton a chameleon in any genre, and Hunt a sitcom giant thanks to seven nominations and four Emmy wins on NBC’s Mad About You. We could buy them not only as three-dimensional people, but as actors running in fear from something that in reality wasn’t there. That doesn’t mean that the road to action movie immortality wasn’t filled with many issues along the way.
Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt Were Blinded on the Set of ‘Twister’
Twister had issues from the beginning. The crew had no sooner than reached Oklahoma when real life tragedy struck with the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, which led to the staff bringing food and money to the rescue effort. Movies are meant to be an escape from the horrors of real life, and although Twister sought to be and did become that, it had a hell of a time getting there. In a 1996 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bill Paxton spoke about the on-set injury both he and Helen Hunt had. One scene required them to sit in a truck cab and stare up at bright lights for a closeup shot. The problem was that the electric lamps, made up of four 16,000 watt light bulbs, were so bright that it blinded its leads. Paxton said, “These things literally sunburned our eyeballs. I got back to my room, I couldn’t see.” Both he and Hunt were temporarily blinded, leading to them having to wear special glasses and use eyedrops for a few days, before Plexiglass was put over the lights as a filter. Paxton called the ordeal “pretty scary,” and co-star Cary Elwes said everyone got bruises and cuts, but “compared with Helen and Bill, I had an easy time of it.” Jan de Bont confirmed that, telling The Hollywood Reporter that the onscreen cuts on Bill Paxton’s face were real due to an ice machine throwing rock sized chunks at him.
In a 2020 interview with Vulture, Helen Hunt said that their corneas had been fried off by the lights, but thankfully they grew back. Another problem came from the director himself. After Helen Hunt was hurt when she hit her head on a car door, Jan de Bont was reported as telling Entertainment Weekly, “I love Helen to death, but she can also be a little clumsy.” When asked about it by Vulture, Hunt said, “That’s so brutal. Let’s just leave it at that.” The question had to come up about whether Hunt would go through filming Twister all over again, because not only did she have to deal with blinding lights and an off-putting director, but she spent five days in a hail machine, had fake glass thrown at her, and had to act in front of a running jet engine. Hunt said she was lucky to be hired, but she didn’t know if she would be able to go through it once more.
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That’s not just because of what she went through on set, but even in moments when she wasn’t filming, for wouldn’t you know it, she encountered a real life tornado while in Oklahoma for Twister. Before production even began, she was in a van when a tornado was spotted, and she was told to get out and hide in a nearby ditch. Hunt spoke about the nauseating green the sky became and how the quick change in barometric pressure made her body feel all wrong, causing her to get sick. Hunt said, “And then it passed. And I thought, ‘Boy, am I not like my character! I am not the guy who’s gonna run toward this feeling. I’m the guy who’ll be in my trailer, driving away.'”
The ‘Twister’ Director’s Behavior Caused Many To Quit
It wasn’t just cornea destroying lights and real life tornadoes that had to be dealt with on Twister’s set, but also the whirlwind attitude of Jan de Bont. An Entertainment Weekly article from 1995, before the movie was even released, detailed the drama, saying that de Bont cursed so much that the crew considered making up shirts with his favorite curse words: “F—ing hell s–t.”
Now, profane outbursts, while not professional, also aren’t uncommon on film sets, but de Bont took his frustrations way too far. Two big things happened to turn his crew against him, first with de Bont getting so angry with a camera assistant for getting in the way of a shot that he pushed him down into the mud. He was also so angry with his director of photography, Don Burgess, who was just coming off of Forrest Gump, that he called him and his entire team “incompetent.” This led to Burgess quitting, and 20 to 40 members of the camera crew walking out with him. Burgess was replaced by Jack N. Green, but de Bont had an explanation for his behavior, saying:
“With the wind machines it was very loud, so the crew had to watch my hand signals. I cued action, and he [walked] right in the middle of the scene. We kept losing good performances because of stupid things like that. I don’t think I’m a hothead, but I do believe you have to be passionate. These crews get paid well, and when they screw up, I’m going to call them on it.”
Twister might have had a lot of chaos behind it, but even if the camera crew and the eyeballs of the leading stars might not agree, it turned out to be well worth it. Almost three decades later, Twister still holds up as a spectacle and the perfect action film. Let’s hope Twisters lives up to the original.
Twister is available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.
Watch on Prime Video