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Writer's pictureShannon Heibler

Twister (1996)

This movie rocks. I wish movies like this were still made. Low gore, high excitement, low kill count, high stakes. Jan de Bont, we salute you.


I saw this in theaters the summer it came out. It is a perfect summer blockbuster movie. And it needs to be experienced at least once in theaters, if only for the sound. We're seeing the new movie two days after this viewing and honestly I'm so excited to be blown out of my seat by the sound. Here's hoping. (Future Shannon, here. I was not. I was disappointed by Twisters in almost every conceivable way. I'll probably still idly play it in the background as I do things though.)


Not having watched this, one of my comfort movies, for two years (I didn't own it for some reason and purchased it partway into the project), I was worried that it wouldn't hold up. Folks, I was wrong. The story is a little melodramatic but not as much as I thought? I think it helps a lot that Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are such grounded, earthy actors. There's nothing glamorous about them and I buy them in their professions here as well as their relationships. This whole movie works because the cast is STACKED top to bottom and they sell every breath and every beat. Take the "COW" moment. Those actors didn't have shit to look at, they just sat in front of a camera and "watched a cow" fly across their field of vision, having faith that the VFX team would, in fact, animate a cow flying across their field of vision. The animation is fine, but Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt and Jamie Gertz make it so believable and funny and I cannot imagine another team of actors delivering like that.


Not to mention the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman showing up in the near background?


The costume design on this movie is a masterclass. The differences between Jo's crew and Jonas'? Come on. This is an artform that 21st century movies struggle with. Within a few minutes of the camera simply passing members of Jo's crew, just through costume and acting choices, NO EXPOSITION, we learn all about their characters. There's the weirdo stoner, the green kid, the anal retentive one, the preacher. I have never met these humans but I know them, and you do too. The distress work on the team also blows me away. It's so much harder than anyone thinks and when it's done poorly it's very obvious. Look at Dusty's hat in the above gif. Perfectly faded, worn in places, a little dirty, completely broken in. (This is also an issue with the modern reliance on fast fashion - not only is it harder to properly distress fast fashion pieces, a lot of young designers just don't know what it should look like!)


The older I get, the more I wish I was Aunt Meg (Oklahoma death landscaping and all) and the more I wish that Cary Elwes & his driver didn't die like that. They're corporate shills and all that but in 1996 that was a much different thing than it is now and I just can't root for that horrible and terrifying a death. (Is it odd that my biggest fear about death is the fear I'll feel as I face it?)


My father was, allegedly, a storm chaser in Oklahoma long before I was born. As a kid, I enjoyed going outside in the moments before a storm to watch the sky and learn the signs of danger. I enjoyed calming down friends at Girl Scout Camp when bad weather rolled in. This movie made me feel closer to my father. Of all of his many outlandish hobbies and careers, I think Tornado-Chasing Dad was my favorite. It's difficult to imagine him in a team, though. And ultimately, this movie is all about the team.


Paper and glue.







Takeaways:

-Hoh boy. OH boy oh boy oh boy. This was a miss. Which is only a little disappointing because I actually let go some and just played with this one, which is a huge win for anal retentive perfectionist me. But I was hopeful about the new technique I tried. I really thought it was going to be cool. Ah well.

-This was my first attempt at "pulp painting", but probably more to the point, aside from one girl scout project thirty-some years ago, it was my first time making paper. It's surprisingly simple and I learned a lot from it. People do amazing things with pulp painting, blending different colors of paper into pulp and then, as thought it were paint, spooning or squirting it onto a screen to dry out and form a picture. I thought, I'll start simple (for once!) and just do two colors: white/gray and black. There was good contrast as I used little ketchup-type bottles to squirt out my tornado but as it dried, the contrast disappeared. I will absolutely try this technique again, I just know that I have to either add pigment or be choosier with the papers I use. (My in-laws gave me a stack of magazines as they moved and I did this whole project (minus The Truck and Dorothy) from those magazines. Cool! But not as specific as I would usually like to be.)

-I decoupaged the background images while I was upset about something (no fiddly crafts or baking while you're angry, Shannon!) and it was like I forgot everything I've learned about it over the last 15 years. Wrinkles, tears, just bad.

-So as I lamented a very understated tornado and a wrinkly Oklahoma, I thought, what the hell, I might as well try to salvage this. I decoupaged more, purposely wrinkled and bunched shreds of tissue paper and I added ink to the tornado to try and reclaim some of the detail. I don't think it worked. I don't know that it made it worse and I'm proud of myself for trying but sad trombone noises all around on this one.

-Collage is something that fascinates me but it's so difficult to get right. I fell into some of the pitfalls I fear most and some of the collage ended up looking very "high school English poster board project" to my chagrin.


Onward and upward (I hope?)!

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