Blowin' in the Wind

Will Twisters take movie box office by storm?

A former cattle shed on our farm.

When you live in the tornado alley of the U.S., twisters, tornados, cyclones, and derechos fall under the category of news.

But when you earn your livelihood in a surreal place called Hollywood, you bet people will pay to be entertained by this storm-generated destruction played out on the big screen.

At least that's what the producers of Twisters are hoping, as it opens this week in Iowa theatres.

Twisters was filmed in Oklahoma City and surrounding counties as a stand-alone sequel to the 1996 summer blockbuster, Twister, starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. The plot follows two competing teams of scientists chasing tornados to study their intensity and effects, and how to control them. The characters also have stormy lives.

If you search the Internet, you'll read that the original Twister was filmed primarily in Oklahoma. But if you dig deeper, you'll see a passing mention that "The state of Iowa was only used for filming some of the conclusive moments of the movie . . . The climactic scene of the movie where Bill and Jo brace themselves for an F5 tornado was filmed in and around Eldora, Iowa. And the scene preceding it where the two characters ram through a cornfield in a pick-up while being chased by the tornado was shot in Ames, Iowa."

Ames? Now, wait just a minute! The 90s was a memorable chapter in Iowa film making. Boone County escaped the excitement of two other Iowa-based films, Field of Dreams and The Bridges of Madison County. But for two months in 1995, detours and delays were a daily fact of life for my family when final scenes of the movie Twister were filmed 28 miles west of Ames, near Pilot Mound, Iowa.

We had no idea any filming would take place west of the Des Moines River valley three miles from our farm. But the crew and cast spent three 98° days in July circling the farm drive north of our house.

A Rural Studio Lot

Seeking relief from the sweltering heat, some of them took refuge on our garden bench beneath a shade tree. Only yards away, our grain bin lay flattened, a remnant of a freakish autumn twister that ripped through our farmstead the previous year. I told my husband that we should persuade them to film this debris. But remember, this was Hollywood. They didn't want the real thing – they wanted to create debris or simulate it, along with a computer-generated twister and hailstorm! They even set up a machinery dealership a few miles east, toward Boone, that attracted a few disappointed real-life customers.

Bill Paxton got out of his pickup one day at our farm to talk to my husband, and mingled quietly with the Fun Days crowd in Ogden one night. Actress Helen Hunt never emerged from the pickup that day in our driveway because the heat would have made her makeup run!

However, she should have stayed put when the script called for her to open the door and jump out of a moving pickup into a cornfield with head-high corn. The door bounced back, hitting her in the head; she went to the hospital emergency room, and took the next two days off. She wasn't badly hurt, but had a facial bruise. (At the time, my sister-in-law farmed this rented field.)

The climactic F-5 tornado scene was filmed on a stretch of 130th Street as it passes east along the northern edge of town before plunging 600 feet into the Des Moines River Valley. Helen Hunt's character attempts to drive up the hilltop to position a "scientific" device called Dorothy in the path of the approaching tornado, as winds and debris assail their pickup truck. (RAGBRAI riders have climbed this hill in 1980, 2011, and 2018.

"We're almost there! We're almost there!" Hunt's character shouts, as a boat lifted by the winds sails past the truck, crashing into the road.

One Sunday, a crew member showed up with his family members at my in-laws' farm two miles down the road. He wanted to them to see the four Belgian draft horses. My husband gave them a farm tour. "We want to buy a farm!" one of the boys told him. Now that these California kids are grown up, I wonder what they remember about their visit to an Iowa farm with horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, and geese?

Aftermath of a Cinematic Storm

·      Shortly after Twister's popular run at movie theaters, the City of Pilot Mound mounted this roadside sign on the west edge of town. But one day, it disappeared! Rumors swirled regarding who committed the heist. A small reward was offered, but never claimed. A year or two later, another sign was purchased to replace it.

·      Near Whitten, Iowa, where other scenes were filmed, plans to demolish an abandoned Victorian home were reversed when residents protested. But not before some of its fine woodwork had been removed and sold to cast members. The historic barn on this farm was destroyed in the filming. The debris still was scattered in Hardin County a year afterwards. Fast-forward: No filming took place inside the home, but it was available for tours for a decade. Then new owners completed a 10-year restoration, and it remains a private residence today.

·      Wakita, Oklahoma, population 310, is the home of the Twister Movie Museum. It opened eight months before the movie. Wakita was selected because it already had been partially destroyed by a hailstorm, providing lots of debris. Dorothy 1 is on display there.

·      A few years ago, Twister Hill and the Des Moines River Valley east of Pilot Mound was the site of protests from local landowners, residents, and environmentalists, as trees were uprooted to carve a path for the Dakota Access pipeline, which now lies beneath the Des Moines River, and continues up that famous hill to the east

You can see where the trees were uprooted to dig the Dakota Access (Bakken) Pipeline.

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·      In 2017, Bill Paxton passed away unexpectedly after a surgical procedure, at age 61. (His son James has a cameo appearance in Twisters.)

Is the Sequel Worth the Wait?

Twister grossed more than $240 million in the U.S. and $500 million worldwide. How will the movie sequel Twisters fare today?

So far, it's opened to good reviews. My daughter and I saw it last night in Ames, and there were at least three screens showing it.

Twisters preserves "Dorothy," the device invented in Twister to track and provide better warning systems for tornadoes, but today advanced computer-generated imagery is used to pursue the goal of stopping tornadoes in their tracks. Homage to the original Twister is subtle: the signature red truck, lead characters who lost loved ones to tornadoes, two competitive storm-chasing teams, and a romance story.

No airborne cows this time around. However, be prepared to suspend your sense of disbelief as Oklahomans in 2024 still apparently need two storm-chasers to convince them to leave the street fair to seek shelter from a massive tornado. Strangely enough, in this era of Storm Doppler Radar, they only have a few seconds before the tornado hits. You'll notice Twisters' storm chasers also display more of a social conscience regarding the tragic outcomes for survivors and their communities.

Hitting Too Close to Home

We still have the VHS Twister tape, and an old TV with a VCR player. But I don't need reminders about the destructiveness of tornadoes. I vividly recall running out of my home as a child at night with my family, headed to Grandma's storm cellar. We'd huddle in the dark with a flashlight amidst her Mason jars of canned tomatoes, green beans, corn and orchard fruits of cherries and apples, until the winds subsided. I also remember standing on her front porch steps in the Loess Hills of western Iowa, watching a panoramic view of a tornado moving across the distant horizon of Missouri River farm bottomland.

Here in Boone County, in the early 1990s, we saw a pink funnel cloud alternately lifting and lowering in the sky over Pilot Mound, before it fell apart. Our farm buildings and machinery have suffered damage from tornado, straight winds, or a derecho at least four times in my memory.

We had to take down the entire tree after it narrowly missed falling on our house.

So I wonder if the topic of devastating windstorms is hitting a little too close to home for Iowans this summer? After all, there have been 112 tornadoes so far this year, and the record set in 2004 is 120.

Exploring the connection between this heightened activity and climate change apparently is too much to expect from a summer disaster movie like Twisters. (In one scene a farmer complains that storms and floods are becoming more common, and how it's impacting wheat prices.)

Today we know EF ratings aren't based entirely on wind speed; they also take into consideration the degree of damage. At one point, Tyler Owens, the Tornado Wrangler hero, asks the Twisters' heroine Kate Carter how much longer will she carry around the [emotional] damage from her [personal storm-related] losses?

Here in Iowa, the damage is significant, and the scars will linger. I heard last night on the news that a wedding dress had been recovered north of Rippey in Greene County. Denise Gannon has posted a photo on Facebook, hoping she could help one woman reclaim a precious remnant of her past.

Having grown up on a farm, and after farming with my husband for several decades, my life has revolved around the weather forecast. I'm resigned to it. But increasingly, weather has become the lead story for all Americans – and a life-changing event for many others – no matter their occupation or location.

What's the forecast? Are Iowans in the mood for Twisters to blow them away?

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