It was also the "Apocalypse Now" of weather-themed disaster movies. The film's production was marked by severe injuries to the stars and crew, a runaway budget, and the cinematographers openly rebelling against the director. Here are the real-life twists you didn't hear about from the tornado drama's tempestuous shoot.
2. Helen Hunt was director Jan de Bont's only choice for the role of tormented storm chaser Jo. She was surprised to be asked to carry the expensive blockbuster, since she had to be back on the set of her hit sitcom, "Mad About You," before the end of August 1995. Fortunately, "Mad" producer/co-star Paul Reiser offered to push back the start of the show's production by two and a half weeks to accommodate "Twister" overruns.
4. Plagued by sunny weather, the production used bright lamps to reduce the exposure and make the skies look dark and stormy. But the lamps blinded Paxton and Hunt ("These things literally sunburned our eyeballs," Paxton recalled), and they had to wear dark glasses and take eye drops for several days until they recovered.
Paxton and Hunt also took lumps from being pelted with ice chunks in the hailstorm scene. The two leads had to take hepatitis shots after their scene wallowing in a filthy ditch. In that same sequence, Hunt kept banging her head on a low bridge because she would stand up too quickly, and she also was hit in the head by a truck's open passenger door in the cornfield sequence. De Bont told Entertainment Weekly, "I love Helen to death, but you know, she can be also a little bit clumsy." Hunt, who blamed her accidents on exhaustion from the difficult shoot, replied, "Clumsy? The guy burned my retinas, but I'm clumsy."
6. De Bont replaced Burgess with veteran cinematographer Jack N. Green. Unfortunately, Green was hospitalized with a back injury when a house rigged to collapse did so while Green was still inside it. With two days left to shoot, de Bont took over camera duties himself.
8. With the lengthy and tumultuous shoot, the need for twice as many effects shots as anticipated (because of the uncommonly clear skies), and late re-shoots that added the prologue about Jo's childhood, the budget swelled from $70 million to a reported $92 million. But "Twister" grossed $242 million in North America, becoming the second biggest movie of 1996 (only "Independence Day" earned more). Worldwide, the tornado tale sucked up a total of $494 million.
10. "Twister" was the first mainstream Hollywood movie released on the then-new home video medium of DVD.
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