“Twister”'s“ ”Helen Hunt and Jan de Bont share memories from 'hard' shoot and hopes for movie's legacy

Celebrating the 4K remastering of their 1996 blockbuster, the star and director reflect on how the film has aged and working with Bill Paxton.

It had been years since Helen Hunt watched Twister, but during the pandemic lockdowns, she sat down with her daughter and some friends to watch her 1996 blockbuster and walked away with one major takeaway: "It holds up!"

At its release, the film (which was nominated for sound and visual effects Oscars) broke technical barriers with its pioneering use of CGI. It was also the first theatrical feature film to be released in the DVD format. But as the years have gone on, Twister has been held back by the quality of that once state-of-the-art format. That's finally changing thanks to Jan de Bont, who remastered his film and release it on 4K Ultra HD and digital (out today). "It really looks like a better movie," says the director, crediting advancements in color correction and audio mixing.

But even without those improvements, Twister has endured almost three decades, still frequently airing on cable TV. Celebrating the new edition of their beloved film, Hunt and de Bont spoke to EW about shooting the physically demanding movie, working with the incredible ensemble (including Succession's Alan Ruck and the late Bill Paxton and Philp Seymour Hoffman), and their hopes that Twister finds a new generation of fans after the release of the "standalone sequel" Twisters on July 19.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why do you think Twister holds up as well as it does?

HELEN HUNT: I mean, at the end of the day, it's Jan de Bont. You know what I mean? There's all sorts of wonderful elements, but he chose them all. He chose really good theater actors — classically trained actors with a sense of humor — not lightweights. Everybody was these good, solid actors. Some coming from independent films, some coming from improvisation, some coming from giant movies, some coming from small movies. I think that helped. And he brought in a whole bunch of writers to make what was already an exciting script even more deep and more funny. And then he was a brilliant DP. Sometimes, he would grab the camera out of the hand of the operator because he knew that there needed to be more tension in the camera itself when it moved from person to person, even if you were just shooting two people talking in a truck.

JAN DE BONT: When I looked at the picture again before we started [remastering it], I was actually surprised at how timely the movie still is. It hasn't aged at all because nature doesn't age. And the way they're dressed is the same way they dress now. Everything felt like it could have happened now. So, to me, it felt still very contemporary. The lack of artificiality makes it timeless.

Jan, were there things you wanted to change as you worked on the film beyond color and sound?

DE BONT: I mean, little things in the... "Oh God, there's a little gap in that twister," or whatever, that nobody else would see... I don't like when directors make the "director's cut." This is the director's cut. I spent a long time on it; why would I suddenly give up on that now? There's nothing to edit because the movie is already so intense. I don't think it needs more intensity, and I definitely don't want to slow it down either — and that's what happens quite often when you add scenes.

Related: Original Twister director says he wasn't consulted about upcoming sequel

Watching it back all these years later, were there scenes that stood out to you?

DE BONT: Well, the cow scene, of course. That one line cracks up everyone. It doesn't matter what country you're in; they all laugh, they all smile. Every time someone mentions the movie, they bring that up. I think it's become an iconic sequence that represents the movie because it's a little bit like what the film is. It has very intensive scenes and very lighter scenes. Intensive drama and happiness. It's an incredible reward for a filmmaker that they pick something that is not a giant effect scene. I mean, it is an effect, but it doesn't look like an effect. It's a flying cow, for God's sake. So it is natural. It's not a fake cow; it doesn't have five legs. It's really a regular cow, so people don't even think about the effect when they see it.

HUNT: The other thing that I have to give Jan credit for is that he made an action movie without a single weapon in it. There's no guns in the movie. At one point, we were shooting, we're trying to get the [Dorothy] contraption off the back of the truck, and it said, "Bill pulls like a fish knife out of his belt to cut one of the straps," and Jan looked at it and went, "No." I didn't even know why that was so important, but there's an innocence to that movie and a playfulness — even though the subject of weather is getting less and less innocent and playful. In that movie, at that time, seeing a knife, not to mention a more lethal weapon, that would've been a different movie and not this movie.

Helen, what was the key to your chemistry with Bill Paxton?

HUNT: I think just by who we are, we had chemistry. Not because we were similar but because we were different. And we both could see the potential for what could be really fun about this and how to keep that. It's a tried and true thing, "You drive me crazy, but I'm in love with you." But that was really on the page, and we both had a lot of fun trying to bring that to life. I want to say one other thing, though: I think the secret weapon in that duo is that it was a triangle. Jami Gertz doesn't get all the glory like Bill and I did. She had to ask all the expositional questions. She had to be the one that wasn't as cool as me, who you wanted to be with. In some early drafts of the script, they were kind of catty with each other, but we both thought, "Boy, is that a mistake," and we just never did that. She had the less flashy part, but I think she was part of the secret sauce that made it fun to watch. Maybe more than people realize.

Related: See how storm chasers paid homage to Bill Paxton

What memories do you have filming with the rest of this ensemble?

DE BONT: [The scene in Aunt Meg's dining room] was filmed with two cameras around the table. Initially, when we started filming it, one actor spoke, and then another spoke. And I said, "No, no, no, this cannot happen. You guys were having fun. Okay? You're hungry. You're having fun, and you want a beer. So, really behave like that and interrupt each other. Break up and step on somebody's line. It's okay. That's what happens in real life, too." And they started really hesitantly in the beginning, but then they got into it, and it was so good. It's one of my favorite scenes because you feel like you get to know those people, and you really feel that you like them, all of them. And how often does that happen, that you can create that in a movie? That came together because they had all been together for so long and in really difficult terrain. They all became dependent on each other and the crew as well. There was an incredible trust developed between them. You can see that in that scene. Nobody was, "Oh, you stepped on my line, how dare you?" It didn't happen at all.

HUNT: Honestly, the strongest memory I have is all of us in my trailer playing cards until 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning... When you're acting on a movie like Twister, you have lots of time in your trailer. Then they call you out and spray you and hit you with fans and dirt, and then you go back to your trailer. And I wasn't in there with just anybody. I was in there with Phil Hoffman, who became a really dear friend to me, and Joey Slotnick, who I'm still good friends with, Alan Ruck, who I'm still good friends with. It was just a big group of actor's actor kind of actors. When you're that age and in a city you all don't live in, you're all sort of stuck together, and it's like camp.

There's incredible CGI, but there were also a lot of practical effects. What was it like filming in all those elements of wind and rain and hail?

HUNT: Honestly, I injured my knee right before we started, and so a week or two before, I remember sitting in Oklahoma with ice on my knee and calling my agent and going, "Am I going to be able to pull this off?" So, for me, it was just like "Run anyway" because I had no other choice. But it was a very physical movie.

DE BONT: It is pretty hard, I have to say because actors like to act. That's their profession. So when you have the scenes where all that [weather] comes at them, the acting is pushed in the background, and it is really the actor responding to their surroundings. Now, when they do action scenes, they see one side was stunt-doubled and then they cut to the actor's back. That doesn't work. You never see every scene when there's special effects, physical media effects. I filmed the actors at the same time, the same moment, so they react to the real thing. They don't react to, "And now fall down..." It doesn't work. This was all real.

HUNT: Looking back, it's all for the best that there wasn't the technology to do it all on your laptop. Instead, they just humbled the s--- out of us, and it looks amazing. So much of acting now is you're looking at a piece of tape, or you're looking at a green screen, or you're looking at dots on someone's face, and someone has to tell you, "Well, what's going to be here later is this thing's going to come around the corner." A lot of what we reacted to was really happening. And while it made it messier, it made it easier to act.

And now there's this new Twisters that may introduce your movie to a whole new generation.

DE BONT: That would be great. That's all I can say. And I hope they look at it... I mean, I don't know anything about the new movie; I wasn't involved and haven't seen it yet. But if [people have] not seen this version, I can guarantee you that anybody who is willing to buy it, you will have a really good time. And I'll bet you they will play it many times, too, not just one. They will play it over.

HUNT: It's fun [to see Twister having a moment]. I wish... There's two key actors who aren't with us anymore who did it with me, so I wish they were here, and there was some kind of all-get-together version of it... Some people will say, "Did you know at the time...?" And the answer is almost always "No." You don't know that a movie's going to be a success. But with this movie, I knew it was either going to be a big success or a big failure because this wasn't some little art movie. So, the fact that it holds up is amazing. I've been in big movies, and you look back, and you have to cringe a little bit because technology's come so far. But I don't know that it's come further than what Jan did with this movie.

Twister is now available on 4K Ultra HD Disc and digitally.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.