Exclusive: Alan Ruck reflects Twister’s 25th anniversary and hectic filming
While chatting with the Succession for the upcoming Blu-ray release of the hit horror comedy FreakyComingSoon.net looked back with Alan Ruck on his work on Jan de Bont’s successful disaster adventure Twister on its 25th anniversary and its notoriously hectic production. Click here to buy digitally Freaky!
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Filmed on location in Oklahoma, the technically powerful set by Twister was fraught with problems during its five months of filming, from various paraphrases during the first two weeks of production to weather and taxation costs for its actors and crew.
Ruck, who previously worked with de Bont on his acclaimed directorial debut speed Two years ago, despite some of these problems, he happily looks back on the production and even laughs at the memory that the catchphrase used by the former cameraman on set was “F *** ing Hell Shit!” Throughout the shoot.
“He demanded, but everyone was so behind him that the entire crew was behind him because it looked like, ‘Wow, one of us made it over the line, baby,” said Ruck, warmly recalling the production with Keanu Reeves . “A cameraman shot a picture, so the camera team was just great and we had a lot of fun. We had 12 different buses. It was crazy, we had the 105 freeway all to ourselves before it opened to the public and it was an exciting job. So then, Twister come in and Jan, I came in to read for it, but Jan had just decided I was going to be in this movie, so I’m glad to go, you know? He’s been under a lot of pressure from bigger people than himself in this picture and he’s had tough times because he’s a cameraman and the original cameraman was a guy called Don Burgess who is a wonderful, talented guy but is not like Jan at all. Don makes his own storyboards, he makes his own shot lists, he plans everything down to the last detail. Jan says, “Let’s shoot from the hip, baby.” He says, “No, no, no, no, no.” Sometimes he steps in and says, “I’m going to operate. I will serve this shot. ‘ You know? That’s just who he is. So there was a clash of personalities and it didn’t go well at all. At some point Jan made someone angry and Don just said, “That’s it.” He brought his entire crew back to LA. “
Click here to rent or buy the adventure blockbuster directed by Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt!
After Burgess and his crew left the film, Warner Bros. and de Bont hired Clint Eastwood’s frequent contributor Jack Green to finish filming, and while Ruck felt like “everything went well,” noted he that a large part of the physical problems consisted of effects and the work attempted to envision the title storm at the size de Bont had planned was “punishing”.
“We were out in the boiling sun in Oklahoma and Iowa with clear blue skies and pretended to be looking at terrible weather,” said Ruck. “So we just wore our asses off and when we saw the movie we said, ‘Oh, we could all have been bigger. ‘Because Jan always said: “You are scared to death. You think you will die. It’s the biggest tornado you’ve ever seen. You will die.’ You know, and we’d just look at a clear blue sky and feel like ‘ah, ah, ah’ just feel like assholes because it’s like anything they teach you not to do in drama school. They had a machine that was a long slide that they shoved huge blocks of ice on, and at the bottom of the slide was a V8 that was attached to a huge helicopter blade. They turned the thing on and let the ice fall and it chopped the ice up into ice cubes and tossed it in the sky and they could shoot it wherever they wanted. They would throw this stuff at us that was supposed to be hail, but they were ice cubes and they had a lot of speed. When you get hit like on your head or your shoulder blades, on your shoulders, your arms, your hands with pieces of ice that – I don’t know how fast they go, but man, they move – it just hurts you know it it just sucks.
“Then they had jet engines to create tremendous winds, just like they were taken from airplanes and mounted on the back of a truck,” Ruck continued. “They’d make all that jet exhaust and then throw pieces of styrofoam that looked like wood and brick and that stuff would be pelted at us. You know it just sucked but I was glad I did. I was happy with the experience, it was a long job. I mean, I think we started in April and I think we finished in August, we went to Iowa and there was this sequence called “The Beautiful Farm” and there was this old farmhouse that they ran on a pig have found. They came in and did Hollywood magic and made it look like it was beautiful. But the inside is basically lazy, it was just a facade and they were planting like an acre of corn, the Hollywood people, the crew people were planting like full blown corn stalks, right because they’re all ripped out in the final sequence with Bill and Helen . But the problem was that everything smelled like pig manure. Everything. I mean, the smell got into our clothes, it got into our RVs. It got in. It was just bad, man. I mean, it was just that filmmaking isn’t always sunglasses and red carpets. Sometimes it just hits you. [laughs] It was long ago. I was much younger. I’m glad I did, but I don’t think I want to do it again. “
Although Jurassic Park Writer Michael Crichton, who wrote the original script, and Steven Spielberg, who produced the project through his Amblin Entertainment banner, notes that he didn’t remember seeing it on the set of production , but saw the latter while working on the pilot for the Michael J. Fox-directed ABC sitcom Spin City.
“I think he was there and then I saw him once – I’m trying to remember the name of this show that I worked on around 2014. I worked on this show in Canada with Lily Rabe,” Ruck said of the short film. lived mystery drama The whisper. “It was about aliens, but I can’t remember the name now. But it was under one of Spielberg’s companies, so I met him up there. He’s a very, very nice guy, but I don’t remember him being on set during that time Twister. It could have been, but I don’t remember it. “
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Released in May 1996, Twister The focus is on estranged married couple Jo and Bill Harding (Paxton and Hunt), who reunite during a major tornado outbreak in Oklahoma as they strive to deploy a research device to improve lead times for tornado warnings.
In addition to Paxton, Hunt and Ruck, Cary Elwes (The princess bride), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (The master), Jami Gertz (The neighbours), Sean Whalen (The people under the stairs) and Jeremy Davies (Justified).
The film proved to be a huge hit with its theatrical release. With an estimated budget of $ 92 million at the box office, it grossed over $ 495 million. It received two Academy Award nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound, and would continue to gain audiences for the past 25 years thanks to frequent screenings on cable television. A restart is currently in the works at Universal Pictures with Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy) in conversations with the rudder.
