Twister

On this episode, tornado scientists Caitlin and Jamie analyze Twister (1996).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hey, Jamie, Twisters hate my family, like honestly, Caitlin as
a militant feminist.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Everyone in this movie needs to get away from Helen Hunt.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
She is leading them to danger.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yes, she is repeated. I mean everyone is being led
to danger. Everyone here has a near death kink obviously
right like they get off on it. We see it repeatedly. However,
there's only one character who the Twister hates back with
a vengeance, and it's Helen Hunt. Because we are in

(01:01):
from what we can understand, we're led to believe, you know,
like we're we're with Oklahoma natives. We are with people
who have grown up live understand Tornado Alley, but with
Helen Hunt around. There are six unprecedented Twisters in a
space of it seems like seventy two hours. Yeah, seventy

(01:24):
two hours generously, But we never see anyone sleep, and
no one changes their clothes.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
I think it's one nightfall. I think it's forty eight hours.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Maybe just when you think there's not going to be another.
I watched this movie with my brother today and we
were repeatedly shocked at exactly how many times Twister delivers
on the titular promise. Like I thought we had reached
the final Twister, and then I checked the run time.
I'm like, hold on, and then there is like a

(01:52):
you know whatever, diegetic newscast that's like up next, the
biggest Twister in thirty years. I'm like, they literally just
finished one. It's shocking how many Twisters, and they seem
to hate Helen Hunt and her extended family. Well, I
think it's personal with the Twisters, Like I don't know
what Helen Hunt's family did in ancient times to a Twister,

(02:16):
but the Twisters have it out for her specific twist.
Like I would be like, Helen, I love you, Joe
love you, but clearly Twisters hate you, like you need
to move out of the area.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
I think when Joe and the Twisters are chasing each other,
I think that that passes the Bechdel test.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
I was gonna ask you that because they do use
she her pronouns for Twisters in the same way that
I mean there's so many, I mean, truly so many
parallels between this movie and Jurassic Park, but also a
lot of parallels between this movie and Titanic. You know,
she her Titanic, she her the twist Twisters.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
She heard Tyrannosaurus Rex and the raptors and all the
other dinosaurs and.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
When it all comes together, and yeah, I mean there
really are the Michael Crichton of it all, the gorgeous
science woman lead wearing a tank top whereas everyone else
is wearing three shirts as a man of it all,
the guy calling Bill Paxton boss of it all. It

(03:28):
really does boggle the mind. How what a clear line
there is with disaster movies, with thrillers with white men
wearing minimum three shirts as the romantic protagonist. Like it's
just Twister is a part of a cultural moment.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
It sure is.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
And I personally feel as someone who at the time
of recording, I have not seen Twisters. I don't think
I could, or like, if I wanted to see Twisters,
I would need to be sitting in a movie seat
at this exact moment.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
No, it's not even out for another week at the
time of this recording.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Okay, fuck it I'm busy, I'm not I don't think
I'm going to see it. And here's why, Glenn Powell.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
I like him.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
I like him. I have enjoyed the performances of his
i've seen, but I just feel like it's a losing
battle to be like, hey, new guy have the raw
charisma of Bill Paxton in his prime. Like it's I
just don't see it. How could anyone? He's so distinct.
May his soul rest in peace.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
May it indeed. I would say this is one of
Bill Paxton's more subdued roles because he's normally screaming even
more than this in most of his movies.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
I agree. And also I think it's really funny that
his name is Bill, like they made it, they put him,
not that this movie is on easy mode, Like as
an actor, clearly there's a lot of physical demands that
come with this movie on top of like normal acting challenge.
But I just always think it's funny when you know
it's Bill Paxton and they I don't know if I'm

(05:07):
casting an actor, if the perfect actor for my lead
role has the same first name, I would consider changing
it because it is a little like they keep calling
him Bill and you're like, oh, you made a mistake,
but they didn't. The character's name is Bill.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yeah, it's pretty funny. Hey listeners, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Whatever, fuck you, guys. We love you guys. Happy summer.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
My name is Caitlin Deonte.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
My name is Jamie Loftus. This is the Bechdel Cast,
the podcast where we talk about your favorite movies using
an intersectional feminist lens. What's the Bechdel test, Well look
it up on your own time. We're kind of busy
tonight because we have to talk about Twister nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
Yeah, okay, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
I've seen it a couple different times. Over the course
of the last twenty years. I've seen Twister probably three
or four times. Yeah. I have a memory of watching
this movie with my aunt during a vacation. I have
a memory of watching this movie on a plane. Like,
this is a movie that I didn't see in theaters.

(06:18):
I was too young to see it in theaters for sure,
But I just have memories of like knowing of its existence,
and I have a feeling that the reason I don't
watch this movie more. While I do think it's good,
and it has a lot of the elements of what
I like in a movie. There are so many movies
that came out in close proximity with similar actors, with

(06:38):
a similar premise that I think are better that while
this movie was I think, rightfully, very successful, I don't
return to it very often. I feel like the reason
I mainly think about this movie is because of the
attraction that existed about this movie at Universal Studios, Florida. Right,

(06:58):
and then Bill Paksay's in the video and he's like, Hi,
because that's like his whole vibe. Hi. You might be
wondering how did we make the Twister? And you're like, dude,
I was like six, I did not wonder how you
made the Twister? But they had, you know, if you're
nine thousand years old like us. There was a live

(07:19):
demonstration at Universal Studios, Florida where they basically demonstrated something
I would probably be more interested in now than I
was as a child, where they would sort of demonstrate
behind a pane of glass how they did a lot
of the practical effects in Twister. Which is part of
what's really cool about this movie is how many really

(07:41):
challenging and as we'll talk about very dangerous practical effects
that were done during this movie. And I was kind
of surprised on this viewing. It'd been at least six
or seven years since I'd seen it, and I don't
know that I've ever watched this movie paying one hundred
percent attention, if I'm being honest. So a lot of

(08:02):
plot points I'd forgotten. I totally forgot phillipsymore off. But
like there's so many people. I don't think I knew
who Alan Rock was the last time I saw this,
Like there's this movie has a ridiculous amount of heavy hitters. Yeah,
but in any case, Yeah, this was the first time
that I truly paid attention to it, and I was

(08:23):
pleasantly surprised at at least how relatively well. I feel
like the special effects hold up, which makes sense when
you know, or I learned after I finished watching the
movie that this movie was basically pitched as a special
effects demo versus a story to endure, which it's I

(08:45):
would argue, not wow, rude, I mean, the story sucks.
The story sucks, but whatever. Famous climate change denialist Michael
Crichton wrote this movie, you know, sort of offset from
Jurassic Park. It just feels like he's pulling from the
hits to write this special effects demo that became the

(09:08):
movie Twister.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
Sure. Also, I mean the practical effects, yes, very good.
The CGI not so good. But it was nineteen ninety six,
so what could they have done.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
I think the practical effects are amazing. I think the
CGI effects for the time for the time, yeah, are
pretty good. And I really got a kick out of
learning that the cow, which is iconic. I remember the
cow from the trailer whenever I saw the trailer on
like ABHS or whatever. Also Twister nineteen ninety six, Caitlin. Yeah,

(09:41):
from what I heard, and from what I heard is
from director John Debont. And it was so funny because
I again, this was a rewatch that I just watched
the movie with my brother and then I did all
of the research after I did no research before we
started watching, and I said several times I was like, wow,
this feels paced, whise like speed. Like every single time

(10:03):
there's a twister, there's like a brief Quippi exchange and
then there's just another twister, which is how speed works.
It's like there's a car thing and then Keanu and
Sandra are like, that was wild. That was wild. I
have a crush. No, I have a crush. Oh my god,
the baby.

Speaker 4 (10:22):
Like it was cans.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
It was cons like. And that's kind of the pacing
of this movie as well, where it's like, Sexy Quippy,
another Twister, Sexy Quippy, another Twister, and then two hours
later the movie ends, and then to find that they
have the same director. So it actually makes a lot
of sense. This was just like the action thriller pace

(10:45):
of this director at this time. What's your history with
Twister nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 4 (10:51):
I did not grow up with this movie, despite it
being one of two VHS tapes at my gramm's house.
So anytime I would go to visit Whoa and She's like,
do you want to watch a movie? And I'd be like, yeah,
what do you have? And she had exactly two VHS's
and I don't even remember what the other one was,

(11:12):
which is the one that I watched all the time.
I just remember that there was dirty dancing.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
No, my grandma had dirty dancing and slapshot okay, and
oh my god, Anne River dancing because she.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
Was Irish fun Okay, No, I'll have to ask my
mom if she remembers, but I.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Would be so curious. I feel like that's a very
forbit of detail, like the especially when there's only two,
and you would think I.

Speaker 4 (11:40):
Would remember the one that I actually watched, but I don't.
I only remember fucked up.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Were you watching like basic Instinct with your grandma?

Speaker 4 (11:47):
I'm guessing it was like Aladdin or just something that
I was watching all the time anyway, But I was
always like, what's this other movie Twister? I don't know.
I don't know about it. It seems it seems there's adults
in it. I don't no, and so I just because
I was like ten, yeah, and so I just like,
wasn't that interested it. But I do remember that she
had it, but I didn't see it until decades later.

(12:11):
I think I watched it for the first time in
my twenties and then again kind of recently, like within
the past year. I was like, oh, wait a minute,
this movie rules. It's awesome.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
It does rule. I mean, I'm surprised, and I'm glad
you have it now, because it feels like a movie
that is like you are the target audience for. I know,
it's a romp, it's intense, it's sexy. It's fun.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
Ten out of ten on the rompometer. Yeah, I don't
need Dorothy to take those measurements. I can safely say
for myself that it's a ten out of ten.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Oh my god, it made me laugh again. My brother
and I were laughing so much this morning at how
first of all the and it feels very I don't know.
I read Michael Crichton books when I was too young,
and I like, thank you so much. Even though we
don't read books for this podcast, I do love reading,

(13:09):
and like I remember reading Michael Crichton books when I
was a kid and like getting them from the library
and just feeling, you know, I'm sure he researched and
knew his shit, but it just always felt like such
YadA YadA science. And so when you get to Twister
and it's like science balls, like this whole thing is

(13:29):
like we have to throw the science balls into the
Twister so Helen Hunt can cure her father wound. Like
it's all so bizarre that, like my brother and I,
every time the science balls came out, we're like, well,
here they are again. Helen Hunt is just like having
a conniption because the science balls have spilled and they surely,

(13:53):
as scientists, they would know to put a net on
top of they. But they're always spilling the science.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
They're loose, loose science balls just.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Rolling around, and they have so many Dorothy's because they
present it as like this movie is funny to because
I think it is like fun but not good, because
if there's so many things that are wrong that are
going on, there's an antagonist who like doesn't need to
be there. The antagonist should be the Twister, Like, we
don't need Carrie Elwis there.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
How dare you say that about my friend Carrie Ellis.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
We need him in Saw, we don't need him in Twister, unfortunately.
But like it was just like every time you show
up and he looks a little bit too much like
Bill Paxson, and you're like right, and he's like, I
don't have any science balls, but screw you guys. But
they present I thought they present Dorothy the science machine

(14:49):
at the beginning, like we made Dorothy there is only
one Dorothy, but it turns out that's not true. They
have like at least four it.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
For Dorothy's, just in case the other three got ruined
by tornadoes, which is what happened Dorothy Okay. According to
Scholarly Journal, Wikipedia was inspired by Toto, an instrumented barrel
shaped device used to research tornadoes in the nineteen eighties.
And if you look at a picture of Toto, it

(15:19):
looks very similar to the design of Dorothy. So they were,
you know, basing this off of real science. I don't
know about.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
The They were, oh, a big barrel full of science balls,
and they're like, this is real. I don't buy it.
I don't buy it, but I don't care. I mean,
when it comes to science and movies, honestly, the less
you tell me, the better. I don't need, you know,
the big short someone turning to camera and being like,

(15:50):
here's what's going on with the science balls. They're the
science balls. They need the silence balls to get into
the twister to cure Helen Hunt's Father Wound, which reminded
me of Oh my god, contact. No. I was thinking
of clock Stoppers weirdly.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Oh I've never seen that.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
Actually, No, yes, we have, we covered what No, what
is the movie I'm thinking of? Julia Roberts sci Fi
Father Wound, clock Alliver Platt.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Oh no, no, no, flatliners.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Flat Liner Clockwatchers, flat liners. Listen, this has been on
for five thousand years. Well, we covered not clockwatchers, but
rather flatliners. I contact is a way better point of reference,
like in every way, but I was thought of. I

(16:40):
think it's maybe the first time that we talked about
like a sci fi movie where the primary woman who
is also the romantic lead, her entire plot line is
connected to men via a romantic interest with the male
lead and then with a vague traumatic father wound from

(17:03):
the nineteen sixties.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
True, I have to say, and I apologize to any
of our listeners whose father was like fatally pulled into
a twister. But the CGI in that scene made me
laugh so much.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
It's a bit silly.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
If your daddy got pulled into a twister, you can
send me a mean email and cancel me. But like,
I just feel like daddy getting pulled into the twister
is funny because the CGI and that is bad. You
can just see that it is an extra on a
green screen being like whoo b Like I was laughing.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
Sorry, Yeah, well, I was like, okay, a movie that
opens with a natural disaster in which the patriarch of
the family dies, What is this, Paddington?

Speaker 3 (17:57):
I Okay, see the parallels. Yeah, we're seeing through the
matrix and this. But I do feel like this movie.
It makes sense to me why this movie was very
successful but not particularly remembered, because it just has elements
of similar movies that came out around the same time,

(18:20):
with similar, if not the same actors, that were better.
But it is kind of like it's like cooked in
a lap to be a fun summer movie. I don't
even mean it as a criticism, but like, you know,
any plot point or element of Twister that you like
was done.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
Better in another movie in two years, yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
Right before or after?

Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yeah the movie. Is it a cinematic masterpiece? Perhaps not,
but damn if it isn't a fun romp that I'm
always gonna enjoy.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
I'm smiling. It's fun.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
It's so fun. Let's take a break and then come
back for the recap, shall we. Okay, here's the plot
of Twister. The movie opens when it's nineteen sixty nine

(19:18):
in Oklahoma. What do you mean, nothing, Jamie, nothing at all.
I'll tell you when you're older, yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Tubby, yeah, Toby, tell me when I'm thirty five place.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, So we're in Oklahoma. A
storm is blowing in. There are tornado warnings on the TV.
We meet a young girl named Joe as well as
her parents as they head to their storm cellar. There's
a very intense tornado that blows little Joe's dad away

(19:52):
and he died.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Like It's sorry.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
It's campy. It's too campily done for what is a
tragic death that affects the main character for the rest
of the movie.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah, you can't have cgi like that and expect me
to be like weighted with grief for the remainder of
the movie. I also thought it was equally campily funny.
Yeah that anytime there is this repeated image connected to
the opening scene that later on when who knows the fourth, fifth, sixth,

(20:25):
ninth Twister they're plowing through the wreckage of that, Helen
Hunt will often see this recurring image of a mother, father,
and a young girl who looked like her in the
open but the dad in these subsequent images thankfully has
survived and she gives them the dirtiest little look like

(20:48):
she's like, I wish your father got sucked into the twister.
It is wild that there is such a through line
runner basically joke of how like many movies of the
nineties in two thousands and backwards, that therapy is ridiculous
because no one needs therapy more in the entire world
than Helen Hunt's character. Yes, oh my god, Like if

(21:12):
Melissa had really sat down with Joe and we just
got Bill out of there. He's the weakest of this,
you know, his girl Friday, Like whatever the movie they're
pulling from his girl Friday. The man is the weakest player.
Let's sit these ladies down and have a therapy session,
because that's what Joe needs. We don't need Joe running

(21:34):
into the eye of a storm that's going to kill her.
We need Joe to go to therapy for one second.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
I will say, And we can talk about this further
in the discussion, but it's a very common choice for
a man haunted by something from his past, specifically something
related to his father, and that being his motivation for
the rest of the movie. That's something we see time
and time again in movies for male leads, but this

(22:02):
time it's a woman, and that we don't see that much.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
So I yes, but I agree, like I had the
same thought that you don't see that much, but I
don't think that gender swapping it makes it a like
more compelling thing to see, because the takeaway is still
the same, is that like, falling in heterosexual love will
cure this deep psychic wound, which is a bad lesson

(22:30):
for any person. True fucking Bill Paxton will fix some
of your problems, but you know, could not fix Yeah.
I thought that too, and I think that there's some
value in it, but it just feels kind of like whatever.
It feels like Ghostbusters twenty sixteen, where you're just like, oh,
now women can do it, and you're like, oh, I

(22:51):
just would rather she not don't know, or like have
whatever whatever. That's not what this movie is a This
movie is not about progress. It's about twisters.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
It's so true, eight of them, and that makes you
wonder how many twisters are gonna be in the movie Twisters.
Apparently a lot more.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah, if you're gonna add the s, I feel like
you're hard pressed to have more twisters in the space
of a movie. I've never gotten more bang for my twister.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
Well, because the movie Alien has one alien in it.
The movie Aliens has dozens of aliens, but the movie
Twister has multiple twisters. And then I guess the movie
Twisters is going to have an exponentially greater number of
twisters as much. So there's gonna be millions, millions of twisters.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
I didn't. It's gonna be like Snoke. They're like, oh,
we have jars full of twisters. Pat has made so
many twisters.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
Wow, Jamie making a Star Wars reference, I thought i'd
see the day.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
I love Star Wars nine because I love Babu Frick.
So actually I'm the opposite of a Star Wars fan
because I just made a joke about Star Wars nine
and I like, yeah, no, I didn't count. I meant to,
but then I kept like gasping every time there was
another twister. I would say that, like set piece wise,

(24:17):
there are well there are there are four large twisters
because there's four Dorothy's, which says rule of threes, fuck
you never mind.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
Well, also in one of those, there are three twisters
in one kind of moment, So I guess that means
there are say six.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
None of this lines with conventional story logic at all,
like four and six are just not story logic numbers whatsoever.
But these are the twisters we get, and like I
honestly I mean, I forgot what the climax. I mean,
I remembered it involved a twister, but I didn't remember

(24:59):
that in them literally getting sucked into the twister without
as much as a scratch, they were just kind of
like it was like they had just been on the
Jurassic Park ride. Like they were like a little wet
and very horny, and like that's how I have always
historically felt getting off the Jurassic Park line.

Speaker 4 (25:19):
Right, tell me about it.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
They're so fine. It's like this movie is like everything
that's fun about a blockbuster, where the steaks are always
sky high, but also like paradoxically low at the state,
Like there's never a risk that someone's gonna die except
for that one guy who knows Carrie el Wes, who
I thought was killed brutally and needlessly.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
Well, Carrie Ellis is in the same vehicle. He dies too,
I know, but.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Only his friend gets speared.

Speaker 4 (25:49):
Oh well yeah, but then you're led to believe that
Carrie Elvis is also gonna he dies.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
I mean he dies, but I was just like this
poor guy, like this guy we're allowed to believe in
the whole scene leading up to it, that it's like
he knows, he knows that they need to turn back,
and then we kill hit like he'll carry Elwiz.

Speaker 4 (26:09):
Yeah, like final destination style.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yes, kill him in a movie that is otherwise, I
think like very deliberately avoids those kind of kills. Yeah,
this is one guy who we just met and they're like,
fuck this guy, and they just like absolutely. I mean
I liked it, but I was I was shocked.

Speaker 4 (26:29):
Yeah, it's shocking. Well anyway, so that's the first scene
of the movie. Then we we see Joe's dad blow
away in the tornado. We cut to the present day
aka nineteen ninety six, which is when the movie came out.
We meet Bill Harding played by Bill Paxton, driving in

(26:52):
a truck with his fiance Melissa played by Jamie Gertz.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Melissa Innocent Melissa did nothing.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
Wrong yeah, played by a fellow Jamie, although she spells
her name jay A m I no E at the end.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
You can say it wrong.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
Yes. Anyway. They are heading to see adult Joe played
by Helen Hunt. She is a tornado scientist, so you
know woman in stem Alert. She's got a team of
people working for her. They chase tornadoes to gather scientific
data on them. The team includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan

(27:37):
ruck todd Field when he was still acting.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
It is a wild crew, yeh. A woman who's forced
to wear a hat. Okay, here's something I thought was interesting.
There is one woman on the crew. This token is
a well I guess including Joe, there's two women on
the crew. But in terms of our side characters on
the crew, there's several men. There's one woman she where
is a hat the whole time until there's three women, well, okay,

(28:05):
three women who are tornado chasing in the movie.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
And then also the Auntie aunt Megie.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Aunt Meg what I don't respect women. I don't need
to remember her name. There's three women on the storm
chasing team if you count Melissa, which you sort of
have to for the purposes of this movie. Yeah, I
feel like this movie has the patience for two women.

(28:34):
And then at the point spoiler alert where Melissa voluntarily
exits the plot rather abruptly, all of a sudden, the
woman in the hat removes her hat. We don't see
her as San's hat before Melissa is gone, and I'm like,
is the production team like we cannot see more than

(28:57):
two women's full head like it was so weird because
at the same time, like my brother and I would
be like, oh, yeah, there she is in her hat again,
and she has treated like, I think, slightly less equitably
than the handful of Men, where clearly Philip seymour Hoffman
is the sort of most present of this Bee crew.

(29:21):
I would say Alan ruck is after that, and then
the other three are kind of like have a line
here and there. And the woman in the hat so
the name of the character is Haynes and the name
of the actor is Wendell Josephers, so like she has
a name, you're hard pressed to find it in passing
in this movie. For sure, I was calling her the
woman in the hat like one would talk about the Babadok.

(29:48):
But then all of a sudden, when the second narratively
consequential woman exits, she takes her hat off. I did
not even notice that I was getting conspiratorial about it.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
I was hitting this.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
I was like, oh, now she can take her damn
hat off, because at first I was like, the hat
is a part of her personality. She loves to wear
the hat, the hat is a part of her. But
then all of a sudden, the hat disappeared.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
The hat gets blown off by a tornado. I think
that's obvious.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
I was perseverating about the hat. I was like that
the importance the narrated like this, the contextual like subtextual
importance of the hat. And then my brother was like,
shut up. There's another twister, which I think is the
proper response. Yeah, yeah, yeah, silenced by men again?

Speaker 4 (30:33):
Wow? True Ben, Speaking of men, there are several more
on the team. The other ones include a guy who
looks like Steve Buscemi but isn't, a guy who looks
like Paul Giamatti but isn't, and a guy who looks
like William h. Maycy but isn't. And then there's another
guy who was in the show Lost. So there's a

(30:53):
large team.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yes, yes, it took me until halfway in the movie
to realize that. And then you really and then I looked,
you know, I read scholarly journal Wikipedia about this movie,
and it turns out that Bill Paxton is just a
guy who you call when Tom Hanks isn't available, which,
in nineteen ninety six actually does make total sense.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
Yeah yeah, yeah, what can you do?

Speaker 3 (31:17):
But anyways, also also sorry, just when we're cast shout out.

Speaker 4 (31:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
I did not realize this on first watch, but the
child actor who plays young Helen Hunt is Alexa Vega
of Spy Kids. Oh whoa, she is the sister in
Spy Kids.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
I imagine that.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Well, fine, don't be impressed. I thought it was interesting,
and now she runs an MLM. So how do you
like that? I don't.

Speaker 4 (31:50):
I don't like it either.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yeah, no one likes it. No one likes it. But
you know that's not what journalism is about, all right.
So anyways, in the movie, so I just laid down.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
Oh I loved to keep these rants going.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (32:09):
Okay. So Bill and his fiance Melissa show up to
where this team of tornado chasers has gathered. Bill used
to work with Joe and he is married to Joe currently,
but he's there to get her to sign divorce papers
so that Bill and Melissa can get married and Bill

(32:31):
can start his new life as a weather man.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
I really like this. Have you seen his girl Friday.

Speaker 4 (32:37):
I have, but it's been probably like twenty years.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
I just saw it for the first time late last
year and really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to helpfully
covering it on the show one day and this is
a gender swapped his Girl Friday situation. It's very exciting. Yeah,
and do I think his Girl Friday is better? Yeah?
I do. I mean, but there's no twist. They didn't

(33:01):
have the technology, so you know, we're having a different conversation.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
Yeah, they show up to get Joe to sign the papers,
but she's like, maybe stalling for reasons. Ooh, we'll find
out what they are.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
She moves her ring around. Kind of fun, kind of steaky.

Speaker 4 (33:22):
Then Joe shows Bill a machine called Dorothy, something that
Bill conceived and Joe built. It's a first of its
kind data collecting machine that releases.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
These science balls, yes.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Science balls, into a tornado and they'll take all these
measurements that will provide information that's never been gathered before
about tornadoes. And this data may allow tornado warnings to
go from three minutes in advance to as much as
fifteen minutes, giving people more time to get to safety.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
And you would think, you know, if it's technology were
that consequential, they wouldn't be so easy to spill all
over the ground during gale force winds. But that's just
not the situation. In Twister nineteen ninety six, it's so
easy to scatter these damn science balls. I liked that
even at the peak of the movie when the science

(34:19):
balls are finally swept into the cyclone and everyone's like, yes, yes,
we're never gonna die the science balls, Like we still
don't totally know what they're doing.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
We don't.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
You're like, they're up there, they're up there, they're reading
the tornado information. Yes, the science balls.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
My thing was this, there's gotta be a better way
for them to get close to the tornado and for
them to release the science balls into the tornado because
they're just driving a bunch of trucks near tornadoes. Like
I'm like, yeah, can't they get in like a helicopter
and then have like I don't know, a T shirt
cannon launch the science balls into the tornado from afar?

(35:07):
Like everything they're doing is so dangerous, which is like, ye,
the plot of the.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
Movie, right, But it's like, you don't need a product
placement jeep to throw your product placement PEPSI helicopter science
balls into the cyclone, Like yeah, and I get My
brother and I were just I mean, this is maybe dark.
Brother and I were like, is her dad still up there?
Like what is her end game? Like her dad is

(35:33):
like up in the top of every cyclone sipping tea,
being like you go get them, Joe, just get these
science balls up there.

Speaker 4 (35:41):
Like grief looks like anything you know.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
Well, I know, but like we've covered this plot point
so much and maybe I'm just like being personally irritated
by it, but I just feel like there's so many
female protagonists that it's like you cannot conceive of what
would possibly be the source of their distress, and it
either goes to sexual assault or something related to their father.

(36:08):
And that's not to say that it is not a
very real thing that happens in the world. I've experienced both,
But like I do think it's just a very lazy writing,
especially when the creative team is majority men. I do
think it's like when men are writing like a problem
for women, they immediately default to their relationships with other men,

(36:32):
whether it is romantically or in their family life, and
this movie is guilty of both of those things.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Yeah, I agree. In any case, the point is that
it's very difficult to get Dorothy in a position to
release the science balls, and they're explaining all of this
to Melissa Bill's fiancee who doesn't know anything about tornadoes
because she's a therapist. We will find out that she's
a reproductive therapist, which I didn't know that was a thing.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
Which makes total sense. But it's like, the more specific
they get in pointing out how ridiculous the plot of
the movie feels Mollis's job is, the more I'm just like, oh, so,
not only is therapy ridiculous, but trauma in relation to
reproduction is even more ridiculous, Like you're just it's it's

(37:26):
like goofy, brainless ari ast shit that we talked about recently,
where it's like, why get so specific with something that
you're putting in there to either make fun of or
just serve as a plot.

Speaker 4 (37:41):
Point, Yeah, or demonize the way our estra keeps doing. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's weird. But anyway, the point is she's not
a tornado expert, so we the audience are like, why
are she and Bill even together if she doesn't know
anything about tornadoes? Clearly he needs to end up with Joe.

(38:04):
But before we can think much about that, the team
receives word about a tornado that's materializing nearby, so Joe
and her team get in their vehicles and a hall
ass in that direction, and then Bill and Melissa go
with them because Bill still needs the divorce papers from Joe,

(38:24):
and Melissa's like, well, I want to learn about tornado.
I'll come with you. On the way. Bill discovers that
another rival team of tornado scientists, led by Jonas Miller
aka Carrie Ellis of Saw One Fame, is also chasing

(38:45):
this tornado, but Jonas isn't doing it for the science.
He's doing it for money, because you know how lucrative
tornado science is.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
I love that line where they're like he's in it
for the money, not the science, and you're like, this
is actually, weirdly kind of what Bill Paxton is more
sensically accused of in Titanic, of like, yeah, he's doing
it for the money, not the Titanic, which makes more
sense when you know that there's money in artifacts from

(39:16):
the Titanic.

Speaker 4 (39:17):
He's searching for a diamond that is worth more than
the Hope diamond, So yeah, there's a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
But like they're just vaguely like, you know, Tornado money,
Like it's just you're just like.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
Maybe anyway, Jonas has a machine of his own, not
unlike Dorothy, and Bill is furious that Jonas stole his design.
So now it's a race between Joe and her team
and the evil mercenary Jonas and his convoy of dodge
Mini vans to be the first to collect the tornado data.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
This.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yeah, that's something I liked about the movie. It is
so transparently product placement. Ye, where it's like only pepsi
cans and jeeps will survive the storm or whatever.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
Yeah. Yes. And so while they're waiting to see when
and where this tornado actually like touches down, two women
talk to each other, Joe and Melissa. But oops, it's
about Bill, so it doesn't pass to the Bechdel test.
But Melissa is basically like, you're still in love with Bill,

(40:30):
aren't you? And Joe is like ti, he no, I
don't know, and it's clear that she did wonder.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Then Bill, who has agreed to join the group for
one day, he Spidey senses where the tornado is going
to form, so everyone drives in that direction. A tornado materializes,
but Bill kind of miscalculates and they miss their chance
to release Dorothy. To mention, Bill and Joe are almost

(41:02):
killed under this little like bridge thing, and Joe's truck
gets destroyed along with one of the Dorothy machines, though
it's established that there are three others. The team goes
back out again, chasing another tornado in the area. This
one turns into two tornadoes, then three, and they call

(41:25):
them sisters. So we've got some sister twisters on our hands.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Okay, we do, and they're determined to destroy Helen Hunt's family. Yes,
but the important thing here is that they're women apparently. Yes.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
Also, cows are flying through the air.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
I love it. Yeah, And that the CGI cow was
built off of the CGI zebra in Jumanji, which I
thought was very interesting. Yeah. They just were like, turn
that zebra into a cow, same color scheme, make it happen,
and they did.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
They're like an animal with hoofs go close enough. Yeah, Okay,
cows are flying around. But then suddenly the tornadoes dissipate,
but the storm chasers are still thrilled because like this
is like the beginning of a long day full of tornadoes.
Although Melissa is terrified again, she can't really hack it

(42:22):
in the tornado industry.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
I kept kind of like assuming based on how she
was styled and was reacting to tornadoes conceptually that she
was quote unquote from New York, Like it just seemed
like she wasn't from there, because that was something that
I was repeatedly bumping up against when I was overthinking
the plot of the movie, that there were characters in

(42:45):
this movie who were shocked that there were tornadoes, but
you weren't told that they weren't from Oklahoma. But that
makes no sense, like that they would be like, oh,
what is doing? What like even though there's rarely like
in the course of this movie seven hundred tornadoes in
the course of and I'm sorry, and I know someone's

(43:07):
gonna email me like tornadoes and twisters aren't the same thing. Well,
bad news. I didn't fucking know that. So anyways, like
these large cyclical storms, you know, usually twenty of them
don't happen in the course of a feature length film,
Like it still felt like Melissa was like what is this?
And I was like, are you not from here? Like

(43:29):
where are you from?

Speaker 4 (43:30):
I we don't, Well, she's not from New York because
she speaks with accents from the American South. I'm not
good at detecting what accents are from what regions of
the South.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
No, but it did feel dissonant to me. I feel like, narratively,
if a character did not know about twisters, it would
be stated or indicated in some way that they were
from in a region that did not experience twisters, right,

(44:01):
But that wasn't done.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
Yeah, we needed a line from Melissa where she's like,
I'm from Georgia. We don't get these here or something.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Right, like somewhere in the American South that just like
was not in Tornado Alley. But it was just bizarre,
like they I feel like you're sort of led to
believe that everyone is from around here. But she doesn't
understand what a twister is for class reasons, which doesn't
make any sense. No, Like, I love a class narrative,

(44:31):
but not knowing what a popular weather phenomena in your
region is due to class does not make sense.

Speaker 4 (44:38):
Right, because it's established that I think that she lives
there now, even if she didn't grow up in Tornado Territory, right,
she and Bill Paxston live there now.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
I just think it indicates how kind of like underthought
her character is, because I think the team at the
time we say everyone from this movie is generally from
Oklahoma from Tornado Ali, but there are characters who are
shocked by theoretically something that they would have noted about
for decades at that point.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Yeah, I don't know. In any case, the most recent
tornado dies down and the group pays a visit to
Joe's aunt Meg, played by Lois Smith. She makes them
steak and eggs and they share a bunch of stories.
They talk about a scale that measures the intensity of tornadoes.

(45:34):
The ones they saw today were F two's and F threes,
and even more intense one is an F four, and
then there's the rare but devastating F five And the
only one of the group who has ever seen one
of those is Joe, because that was the tornado that
killed her father.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
Another incredible narrative moment where Melissa, minding her own business,
is like, what is five me? Which is a fair question, yeah,
considering that she just moved to Oklahoma three days ago.
And then everyone's like, oh, and they answer so evasively
when it's like Helen Hunt isn't in the room, just

(46:16):
say say it.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
Also, the guy who looks like William H. Macy says
it's the finger of God and that's just a very
funny phrase.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
I think, Yeah, fingered by God, like it's just fingered
by God. There is so many awesome, creepy bizarro turns
of phrases in this movie, and some of them are
used in the context of her sexual harassment. But bear
with me. What is it the suck zone that's the
first jump scare.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah, phillipsy Moore Hoffman is always talking about the suck Zone.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Phillipsy Moore Hoffman's character, I don't know if it is written, improvised, whatever.
He is surprised, kissing every woman he meets. It's made
to see him charming. I love Philip Siberhoffman, and yet
I don't find this charming. Although sock Zone is funny

(47:10):
and I was laughing, I believe. Let me know what
you think here, I believe, and my brother and I
firmly because I did not remember what happened in this movie, Dodo,
it's like washing over you kind of effect. I firmly
thought that we were being set up, that Melissa and
Dusty were gonna kind of strike something up because they

(47:33):
are repeatedly nonsensically thrown together. Where ultimately part of why
I think Bill Paxton's character Bill is a bad guy
because he's like almost always like, no, I have to
be with my ex wife right now and my wife
to be you just have to hang out with this

(47:54):
guy I know who famously sexually harasses p and he
and it's Philip Subra hot Fin, so we're like, oh,
I love him, but like, you know, objectively, that is,
he's repeatedly putting this woman who he knows is wildly
out of her element. There are multiple points of this
movie where I don't know it's a blockbuster, but I'm

(48:16):
in a bad mood, and so like why does he say, yeah,
keep coming? Like at the first time she follows the Twister,
Bill doesn't know and that's why, like she's joined this journey.
She's freaked out. But it's like, you know, unturned territory.
And in the second Twister sequence it's like the love

(48:36):
triangles in a car there is you know, like sponsored
by Jeep and it's interesting. But after that, when they
go to Aunt Meg's house, why does she continue? Because
there is a cast off scene as they leave Aunt
Meg's house where Bill Paxton says, you go with Dusty

(48:57):
and she says okay, and it's like real, realistically, that
character is not going if she's continuing, she's going with
the one person she knows, not Dusty, who she met today.
Like I thought that in some draft of this script,
because I know there are multiple drafts of this script,

(49:17):
Like Joss Whedon revised the script, but then he got
a cough and then puld like whatever, But like the
script was revised in the way that blockbuster scripts are.
I believe that there is a version of the original
script of Twister where they're like, yeah, and then Melissa's
started dating Dusty. I'm glad she didn't, but it felt
like for a good portion of the movie we are

(49:40):
being led to like they are together more often than
she's with her fiance.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
Yeah. Anyway, what happens next, Well, the storm picks back
up again. You'll never believe it, but another twister is coming,
so the group heads back out to chase the next tornado. Also,
Joe and Bill are vibing. Melissa is in another car,
probably with Dusty, feeling uneasy. They almost crash into Jonas,

(50:08):
who is also heading into the storm, but Bill and
Joe get their first but things go wrong. A telephone
pole knocks Dorothy off the truck. All the science balls
go flying because they're just very loose in this barrel,
and she's crying. She's crying, she wants to stay hurt.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
She's science falls and because of her father trauma.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
Father.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
Right, this is supposed to be a reveal when you're like,
do you think I'm six years old? Which I guess
is like people who saw this movie were six and
maybe it was shocking for them.

Speaker 4 (50:41):
Maybe yeah. But Bill is like, you can't stay here,
it's too dangerous. This won't bring your dad back. Stop
living in the past and look at what's in front
of you right now aka me, which Melissa hears because
the radio slash like walkie talkie thing is picking up
their entire conversation. Somehow, we don't know why or how

(51:05):
that's happening, but.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
It's one of the science that one of the science
balls narts, one of those one of the science balls,
and I thank them as a team Melissa. I'm team Melissa, period.
And yeah, one of the science balls told Melissa, guess
what writing's on the wall, and thankfully she listened, and
even more thankfully to whatever subsequent writer was like, do

(51:28):
not just make her end up with Dusty like let
her return to her work as a doctor. Melissa wins
the plot because even even though at the end it's
like do do do do do? And they kiss and
they're back together, like two years from now, they're for
sure dead. Yeah, they have two years something. They're like

(51:51):
those the cologists that yes, yeah, yeah, and it's like
it's beautiful, but it's also just like, okay, that's kind
of like you're not me being like, okay, the volcanologists
that got swallowed by the volcano, that's their business, but
like kind of it is. And that's how I feel
about the Twister couple, Like all right, if you want

(52:12):
a twister or to suck you up instead of going
to therapy, like I just like don't have the emotional
energy to be like no, we should help them, like.

Speaker 4 (52:23):
Choice, Yeah, their life, their choice.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
They're consenting adults that want the twister to eat them.
Helen Hunt, if she had just had a conversation with Melissa,
Melissa could have referred her to someone who could have
helped out with that, or at least helped her understand
that better in a way that wouldn't involve her dying
by twister.

Speaker 4 (52:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
I wonder if they acknowledge in Twisters that Bill Paxson
and Helen Hunt absolutely got sucked into a twister and
died because they're begging for that to happen to them.

Speaker 4 (52:55):
I bet Glenn Powell is that his name? Yeah, plays
the son and the Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton died
in a twister accident, And.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Okay, so let maybe the third generation of someone who
refuses to go to therapy and also chase twisters with
an indie darling like fine, fine, I'm just tired, Caitlin, Like.

Speaker 4 (53:23):
I know, Jamie, I'm sorry. The point is that Melissa
overhears what's basically a profession of love from Bill to
Joe because the plot needed that to happen. So now
Melissa knows this and it's not great for her. She's sad.
And then during another lull between tornadoes, Joe signs the

(53:46):
divorce papers, but before she can give them to Bill,
another huge storm comes on very suddenly right where they are,
which is at a drive in movie theater, so everyone
has to take shelter. Then the torny heads to Wakita,
where Aunt Meg lives, so the group goes there too,
but not before Melissa ends her relationship with Bill, and

(54:09):
she says, bye, you can go on ahead, but I'm
not gonna be here when you get back.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Well yeah, which is a great moment for Melissa.

Speaker 4 (54:18):
Yeah, and she's like, I'm not even sad about it?
What does that say? And he's like, uh shrug.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
But don't worry. The movie will express no interest in
her from here forward. We have no idea no what happens, We.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
Do not, But the characters we are meant to care
about are Joe and Bill. They head to Aunt Meg's
house with the other tornado chasers. They see the destruction
along the way, families who have lost their homes. They
save Aunt Meg, who is trapped under the rubble of
her house, as well as her dog, Mows the dog,

(54:55):
and now weather reports are predicting a possible F five tornado.
That's one of those big nasty ones.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
That's a daddy killer.

Speaker 4 (55:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Then Joe has the idea for
how to make Dorothy fly, because she and Bill were
having concerns about not being able to get Dorothy up
into the tornado. But she looks at Aunt Meg's like
wind chime things and she's like, oh, let's fashion a

(55:25):
bunch of pinwheels out of Pepsi cans and attach them
to the science balls so that they'll fly up into
the tornado.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
Yeah. Thankfully this Tornado crew only drinks classic Pepsi. Yeah,
and they fashion the little propellers with the with the
logo visible. And my boyfriend's dad worked in product placement
during this era, and you're like, Okay, that was whatever

(55:55):
that ridiculous plot boy ended up being was hard fought
by some guy.

Speaker 4 (56:01):
It's like, no, cut the cans in a way that
we can see that it says Pepsi.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
The poor pa is that had to fucking like exact
o knife those ridiculous science balls. It's just I hope
that Helen Hunt got to keep a science ball.

Speaker 4 (56:17):
Hmmm, yeah, I'm sure she did.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Anyways.

Speaker 4 (56:20):
Anyway, so the team heads out again to chase this
impending F five twister. Bill and Joe place the third
Dorothy Machine in the path of this huge tornado, but
once again, something knocks it out of the way because
this twister is kicking up so much debris it throws

(56:42):
a semi truck at them. This is also when Jonas
and some of his team are killed by the tornado.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah, they're speared there. I sort of thought that, like,
I was kind of hopeful. I thought it would be
a fun plot point at least that like Jonas and Bill,
Bill would end up like their teams would end up
having to work together on opposite sides of the Twister,
and that Jonas could learn that, you know, that Joe

(57:11):
and Bill's approach to Twister via science balls was actually
thoughtful and like they would have to collaborate, but instead
he is he has like Saw like slasher movie style
killed for his hubris, which is also fine. Yeah, I
just don't understand why if that guy was going to

(57:34):
disappear for forty five minutes and then be speared to death, Like,
why even have an antagonist if it's that unnecessary.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
I guess it's to establish that you shouldn't be into
tornadoes for the money, and you should be in them
for the love of the game.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Right.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
In a way, Carrie Elwis is Carrie Ellis and saw
Bill Paxton is the other guy in Saw one We
want all yeah, and the Twister is Jigsaw and he's
playing a little game with these boys.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Exactly, except you don't get the satisfying flashback to show
that Carrie Elws was cheating on his wife in a
room that looks like every other room in Twister. That
is actually something I really like about this movie is
the movie is so obviously expensive and the action sequences
in this movie. I'm bitching a lot about the plot,

(58:28):
which I do think is nonsensical and ridiculous in the
way that a lot of nineties disaster movies can be,
with the exception of Titanic and others, But like, the
action sequences are awesome. It feels like speed, which makes sense.
It's the same director where it's like the wildest, most
elevated thing you could think of with a set piece

(58:50):
is what they do where Bill Paxon and Helen Hunt
are driving full speed in a jeep toward a house
in the middle of a twister, and he's like, we
better drive through it. And then we see them drive
through the house at every conceivable angle and it just
looks so expensive and dangerous and it's awesome.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
It's fun. Yeah, yeah, so that's about to happen. So basically,
Joe and Bill drive into a field and place the
last Dorothy and this time it finally works. The science
balls fly up into the tornado and collect all the
data that they've been trying to gather the whole movie.
But oh no, the tornado is still coming for them.

(59:35):
So Joe and Bill outrun the tornado on foot. Sure, yeah,
and don't worry.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
They linger for a long time in spite of being
at the top of their fields to not know to
run in the opposite direction of a twister, I just can't.

Speaker 4 (59:53):
Anyways, they're just looking at it and they're like, wow,
the majesty of nature.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Wow, should we kiss?

Speaker 4 (59:59):
Also, no point are they wearing any kind of like
protective gear, like, no weather appropriate clothes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
No, because Helen Hunt has to be wearing a tank
top or the movie cannot be released.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
Yeah. Anyway, so they go and they hide in a barn,
and the barn is full of so many pointy tools,
and the tornado is throwing the sharp pointy things at them. Yeah,
it's tearing the barn apart. Joe and Bill almost get
blown away, but then they anchor themselves to some pipes
that are secured in the ground via some leather belts. Okay, kinky,

(01:00:37):
and this tornado dissipates and everyone is safe, and Joe
and Bill kiss on the lips about it. In front
of all of their friends the end. So that's the movie.
Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss,

(01:01:02):
and we're back.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Yeah, this movie is I don't know, There's a lot
of interesting things going on with it. It's tricky because
our podcast obviously addresses the narrative, story and characters the most.
That's not necessarily what this movie is about. That's not
why this movie made a ton of money. It is

(01:01:26):
very much, I think, a really great example and even
though I've just been an hour being like, oh, the
story sucks, but I think that we are given interesting,
compelling characters where you know, this movie is directed by
and I'm honestly afraid to try to say his name
because I feel like I'm wrong. He's Dutch. His name

(01:01:47):
is Jean Debant. This is not the first time we
have covered his work, because he also directed Speed, and
he was, you know, tangentially involved in a number of
other movies that we've covered. He started as a cinematographer,
which is I think a really cool, like career pivot,
because you just get movies that are narratively less good

(01:02:10):
but look cool. And that's Twister to a fault written
by Michael Crichton, as well as his wife co writer. Yeah.
Co writer Anne Marie Martin, who was then married to him,
had also previously been an actor.

Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
Yeah. I think this was the only movie she wrote,
or at least the only movie she was credited on. Yes, Yeah,
she mostly worked as an actor.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
It's hard to you know, as far as writing goes.
You know, Michael Crichton, I feel like, is the big
name involved. But it is kind of hard to know,
like who to get annoyed with because it's the blockbuster,
and also because this movie did famously go through a
lot of rewrites. Josh Whedon was a rewriter. It's also
implied that the actors had a lot of say and
there was a fair amount of improv in the action

(01:03:01):
of the movie, because there was an incident where Helen
Hunt and we don't know what this is even in
reaction to I'm assuming she's right, but I don't even
know right that Helen Hunt was said to have been
frustrated with the interactions that had been originally scripted between
her character Joe and with Melissa, saying that it felt

(01:03:21):
very like shrill and shrewy and argumentative. Yeah, katty was
the word that she used, so basically like she felt
that the interactions between them were sexist. And so I
don't know if that means what was there was rewritten
or just cut, because what we get between these characters
is very minimal, which I think is a huge lost opportunity. Yeah,

(01:03:45):
this movie is supposed to be like Tornado Alley His
Girl Friday, and I still feel like His Girl Friday,
a movie that came out over half a century before,
still is a little more thoughtful in its characterization of women.
And so time is a flat circle. But the thing
is like, we're given a love triangle, and I like

(01:04:08):
both of the women in this love triangle. I don't
hate Bill, but I don't like him. I like Bill Paxton,
I don't like Bill the guy. Yeah, but whatever, Like
you know, we're given three interesting characters who are struggling
with their own individual things, but I just feel like
they're kind of like unevenly characterized.

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):
I well to come to the movie's defense, okay, because
I enjoyed the movie, and I think there are some
interesting things as it relates to gender, where a lot
of movies would be about a guy who really won
something and he's going out and he's doing it and

(01:04:51):
there's a woman who he's allowing to tag along. That
is not the case here. It's pretty flipped where it's
you know, we do have dual protagonists in Bill and Joe.
I would argue, So you have a man and a
woman at the center of this story, and they kind
of share protagonist functions. They have the same overall goal

(01:05:12):
as far as like gathering the data on the tornadoes,
but it's the woman who has the backstory that we
know about, which is giving her a more clearly defined motivation.
He is the one with a subplot with his relationship
with Melissa, but that kind of peters out and it

(01:05:34):
turns into a romantic subplot with Joe. Another thing is
like he was the one to design Dorothy. Joe was
the one to actually like build it and see it
into fruition. She's the one who's still doing the storm chasing.
She has a team of men mostly and we'll talk
about Haines, but you know it's well mostly men.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
Yes, I hear what you're saying, and I do think
that there are things that are subversive, and I think
ultimately just gender swapped to what a traditional narrative would
be and for nineteen ninety six that is impressive, But
I still feel like there's a lot of tropes present
where it is one thing to say, like, yes, she
is in a what I'm assuming I don't know shit

(01:06:15):
about what Tornado science was like in the nineties. I'm
assuming that most science was still male dominated in the
nine Times, right. Oh, so the fact that she has
a majority male team working for her is subversive, But
also it just feels swapped. It feels like, you know,
there's a world where you could you could flip the

(01:06:37):
characters of Bill and Joe. I'm glad that it's not
that way.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
It does feel swapped, But I would argue that this
movie is doing better than a lot of similar blockbuster
movies from this era by having a strongly motivated woman
in Joe who we know things about, who is helping
to drive the narrative in significant ways, because again, similar

(01:07:02):
movies from this time would generally only position the woman
as a love interest to the male lead, or maybe
the woman would be allowed to tag along, but wouldn't
really be allowed to do anything and wouldn't have any
expertise in what they are trying to accomplish. And so
I think this movie. I think Twister could be considered

(01:07:25):
an example of a stepping stone movie for more meaningful
inclusion later on.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
I agree, I mean, I agree to some extent, but
I just feel like the ways that it's subversive still
feeling it's leading on a lot of classic crutches, which
is like, yeah, the things that we know about her
are exclusively in relation to the men in her life,
and so this is still not a world where her

(01:07:54):
relationship to women has informed the direction of her life.
That her father died in a cyclone, and that that,
like her father's death, we are led to believe repeatedly,
is what led her to pursue her current thing. That
is very normal for a kid to want to pursue
something based on a passion or event that happened in

(01:08:18):
their formative life. But again, it's just all related to men.
And even though we are given Aunt Meg, who is
a you know, obviously a very formative and prominent woman
in Joe's life, all wes see Meg talk about is
Joe's relationship to Bill, and we see Joe in you know,

(01:08:44):
very like nineties pg. Thirteen or whatever. This ended up
being like a very blockbuster like contemplative. My hair is dry,
but I'm in the shower scene thinking about, ugh, I
love Bill so much. And then she gets out and
then her aunt is like, don't you let Bill so much?
And She's like, I don't know, And so we're given

(01:09:04):
I think the framework of like, yes, in the abstract
like she is. I think like she's. I think it's
like a very girl power thing where she is ostensibly
in charge, but the things that we learn about her
have nothing to do with her power, have nothing to
do with her sense of authority. It's very Quippi, and

(01:09:26):
it's all in relation to the men who have driven
her story before and like during the actions of this movie.
So I just kind of don't buy it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:39):
No, I see that it is very like surface level.
I mean again, this is like, yeah, it's a blockbuster,
that's not.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
I just don't think this movie is like subverting or
informing the future in any way like whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:09:53):
No, but I'm just like thinking of other movies from
this era that like do such a shittier job. So
I guess maybe I'm giving the movie too much credit
because I'm comparing it to other like very sexist movies
from the mid nineties, not to say that it's doing
a great job, but again, I think better compared to

(01:10:13):
so many of the like extremely sexist action blockbusters from
this time. I do find it interesting that the movie
kind of explores this power struggle between Bill and Joe,
where for the most part, again Joe is leading a
team of men who we never see like question her

(01:10:34):
judgment or question her authority or try to undermine her
the way that men who work under women often do.
We don't see that, and I found that refreshing until
Bill comes into the mix, and then there's all the
ways this like no we need to go over here, No,
we need to go over here, No I'll drive, No
I'm driving.

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
Which again does feel very like and just because I've
seen his Girlfredda recently, Yeah, I kind of liked these sequences,
even though they feel out of place in the nineties
disaster genre. But they are kind of like weirdly copy
pasting these like thirties Quippi like no, yes, no, yes,

(01:11:17):
I don't, you don't, let's kiss no, like that sort
of like back and forth Frank Capra era dialogue into
the nineties and it doesn't totally work, And I thought
it was really weird until I knew what they were
trying to do, and it's still really weird. And it
feels like that, like, based on what I was reading,
felt like it was kind of a director thing where

(01:11:39):
it was written one way and then the director decided
on set that it sounded weird and then encouraged the
actors to improvise, which probably made it a little weirder.
And I don't know. I like a lot of the
setups that happened in this movie, Like a love triangle
in a jeep driving toward a twister is a great setup.

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
That's a winner, but.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
The way it plays out not as good.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
I do imagine that a lot of this, like power
struggle between Joe and Bill, is more about their relationship history. Yes,
because totally they're married. They were, they are married. They
apparently split up but didn't officially divorce. Yet we find
out that Bill was the one who walked out. According
to him, it was because Joe wasn't a great partner.

(01:12:29):
He says that you know, you have you had no
idea what it meant to be married, commitment, stability, supportiveness,
a house, all kinds of neat stuff like that hilarious
line of dialogue.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
Yeah, which just feels Yeah, that feels like very like
bullet points of like I just googled marriage, right, which
is very I don't know. I liked that line too.

Speaker 4 (01:12:50):
Yeah, it was funny, but yeah, I don't know. It
was just interesting that again, like the reasons for their
breakup and the reasons that Bill sites as Joe not
being a great partner are often things that are attributed
to men when they're not when they're not great partners
and relationships. Again, it just feels like maybe another gender

(01:13:13):
swap thing. But the lazier thing would have been to
make Bill a very stereotypical tropy man and to make
Joe a very agree with that stereotypical tropy woman, and
the kind of flip side.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
So I do agree with that. I like that Joe was,
you know, presented as the one who is too sucked
up in work to be able to commit fully to
the relationship. I don't think it was fully demonstrated what
Bill was doing to fully demonstrate, because it is also
sort of implied that he was also very consumed with
his work. But I feel like the fact that he is,

(01:13:47):
you know, it seems like in this very misguided rebound
relationship with someone who who does want to settle down,
which it seems like is what Bill wanted and what
Joe was unable to really give him in their marriage.
Does demonstrate that, like they wanted different things. Again it's
blockbuster logic. I don't really know what happens in the

(01:14:09):
course of them almost dying while driving into six twisters
in two hours, Like how that demonstrates that Joe is
actually now ready for a long term relationship like maybe not,
maybe not, but but I mean, yeah, no, I did
appreciate that like that in this like fairly common relationship

(01:14:30):
dynamic is swapped in a way that was I think effective.
I guess I just didn't understand narratively, like how it
was resolved they're the events of the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:14:45):
Is the movie's not interested in that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
Which is why I honestly found myself getting a little
I mean, I think, like Bill is arrogant, but to
your point less characterized than Joe. But I found much
of what wasarized with Joe to be very frustrating, Like
it felt like the way she was characterized was pretty
standard for a woman character is like my hero's journey

(01:15:12):
is begun by something something my father and is continued
by something something my husband, and like there is this
implication of ambition and that we know that that is
a lot of what drives her. We know that's a
lot of why her marriage failed. But it doesn't seem
like she really meaningfully grows throughout the movie. I don't

(01:15:33):
really understand what changes about her. It almost feels like
it almost diminishes why they broke up, which it seems
like was they wanted different things, and I don't think
that changes at the end of the movie. I just
think they have whether they've gotten horny from another like
half dozen natural disasters. Like, I don't think that anything

(01:15:54):
has changed, which is why I'm team Melissa.

Speaker 4 (01:16:00):
Talk about Melissa, although really quickly before we get there. Uh,
it's in this scene where Joe and Bill are discussing
why their marriage failed, where some very dated views on
therapy come up, where.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
Well, that's Melissa's whole story. It's a whole runner where
it's like, yeah, oh my god, if you're in therapy,
you're ridiculous, because actually you could be driving into a
twister and it's like, well, guess what if any of
these motherfuckers had bended therapy? They wouldn't be driving into
a twister, so you know, match point.

Speaker 4 (01:16:36):
Yeah, but yeah, just in general, the suggestion that someone
might need therapy is taken as a grave insult.

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:16:45):
Bill Packson's character is like, what could I possibly need
therapy about? And it's like, sir, everyone needs therapy. That
is not an insult, that's just a neutral statement.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):
But I thought that unintentionally, that plot point actually ages
very well because you know whatever, like eighteen years later,
it's so obvious that everyone on the Twister team needs
therapy and they actually look sillier. But yeah, at the time,
it's very clear, like it's such a well because this

(01:17:14):
movie is I think, you know, sort of like Control
see Control VD, out of well worn tropes in a
bunch of different genres ranging a half a century to
make this movie work, and that's one of them. And
I feel like that is really prominent from the eighties
to the two thousands. I think the first time that
we talked about it in detail on this show was

(01:17:37):
during Freaky Friday, and also in the Santa Claus Neil
is a therapist, Like it's just a very well worn
trope and that the person it's weird because I feel
like they're sort of made to seem like, you know,
rich people and their problems, which has a lot to
do with access to mental health care. But I feel

(01:17:59):
like that the problem is like it's made to seem
that like therapy is something that is only for rich
people because it's fake, not that therapy is something that
is accessible to rich people because of how healthcare is
structured and almost everyone would benefit from it anyways, that's
what's happening here and the vague people. I feel like

(01:18:21):
that's always I want to say. In Freaky Friday, it's
like Jamie Lee Curtis's character is calling someone named Jonathan
over and over and over who's calling her with the
same problem that is made out to be very ridiculous
and very absurd. And we see that with a couple
of characters in Twister, where Melissa is talking to the

(01:18:43):
same few clients and it's made to seem like they're
very weak and very pathetic for seeking out her help,
and that Melissa is slowly realizing that there are bigger
problems than mental health. Because you could have accidentally assumed
that when someone said they drove into twisters for a living,
they were speaking metaphorically, which is all so ridiculous. Like

(01:19:08):
I was so I mean, I was very glad that
this movie subverted, or at least at best avoided what
I thought would happened in a movie in nineteen ninety six,
which is that they would just push her off on
someone else. And I did think she was being pushed
towards Dusty in multiple scenes. Thankfully that doesn't happen. She

(01:19:32):
walks away. It's her idea. I do kind of like
it feels abrupt, and I do wish that she had
had a more meaningful interaction with Joe. Yeah, but for
nineteen ninety six, it was on her terms. I do
think she walked directly into a twister and was dead

(01:19:54):
twelve minutes later. But fine, but it is her whole
profession is still unequivocally made out to be ridiculous, and
that's just like a trope.

Speaker 4 (01:20:05):
Yeah, very representative of the you know, extreme stigma surrounding
mental health and therapy at the time. So in the
movie is just taking the thing and reinforcing it. As
far as Melissa's like function in this story, she's there
to create this you know, pretty classic love triangle situation.

(01:20:30):
I will say at least she's not characterized as being
like mean and awful the way that like Well, to
reference another Lindsay Lohan movie, Meredith from The Parent Trap,
it's more that she's just like not compatible with Bill.
They don't share the same core interests and that's why.

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
And I did really like that she was the one
to say and I'm not even really sad about it. Yeah,
Like I feel like it is implied that and again,
it would have been helpful if we knew because with Bill, well,
I agree, it is unusual that we know the most
about Joe of anyone in this movie. We at least
know with Bill that it sort of seems like he

(01:21:12):
wanted to be in a stable, more traditional marriage and
career and that is why he ended up with Melissa.
We don't know why Melissa ended up with Bill. We're
not even totally sure why she's from and why she
doesn't seem to know what a twister is. But I
do like that, at the end of the day, that

(01:21:34):
she is the one to state the problem, say that,
like they have very likely been incompatible the whole time.
I do think it's annoying that she says the thing
I was predicting with my brother that she would say,
which is that clearly she needs you and is not

(01:21:57):
allowed because the thing is we love trying. There is
this implied graciousness to the third party that I would
love to see subverted. But Melissa is a class act.

Speaker 4 (01:22:10):
She's about she's two accommodating.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
Maybe I just would love to see more people who
okay in future love triangle movies. And it has happened,
but I would like to see it more that the
third party who ends up with no one in the
love triangle is pissed off about it, even if the
other two people belong together. They're like, yeah, well, what

(01:22:34):
the fuck? This feels horrible? Yeah, kind of like James
Marsden in The Notebook, you know, like, well, what the fuck.
I'm a nice person. I deserve love, I imagine, and
look at my life. I mean, I imagine.

Speaker 4 (01:22:49):
It's a case by case basis thing where yeah, sometimes
it makes sense for the person to be like really
hurt and upset.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
And I'll tell you what though, Like there's so few
people that are like, you know what, it makes sense.
You're totally right for each other. And I realize this,
and I don't need help getting out of the.

Speaker 4 (01:23:07):
Twister, especially because he takes their truck, So how is
she even gonna drive away anywhere?

Speaker 3 (01:23:13):
Else? She dies, Caitlin, I hate to break it to you,
but she does not make it out of the two
subsequent twisters that happen after her characters exit. Where does
she go?

Speaker 4 (01:23:24):
Where does she go? Well, here's the thing I think of.
A sexist choice would have made Melissa, you know, once
she realizes that Bill and Joe are destined to be together.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
A lot of.

Speaker 4 (01:23:37):
Especially you know, writers who are men, would have made
Melissa be really cruel to Joe and be like really
possessive over Bill or something like that, which could at
least have the potential to feel very like, oh, women
in conflict with each other in a way that like
men don't understand because women are petty and their caddy.
So at least that didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
Did you not feel that the converse we had between
them was like inherently that I mean, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:05):
You mean in the diner or whatever, when she's when
Melissa's like, you're still in love with Bill, aren't you?

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
A little? Yeah, it felt like a little bit of
like a little bit of that conversation was in that
conversation doesn't accept in passing pleasantries past the Bechdels desk
because they're talking about Bill the whole time, which is
what they have in common. But like that conversation to
be did feel a little bit like both of them
were very uncomfortable, which makes sense. I don't know, maybe

(01:24:34):
I'm overthinking it, but like I.

Speaker 4 (01:24:35):
Think it could have been worse. I guess I was
just like primed for worse in the nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:24:40):
Yeah, but I just like it's in a world where
they were given something to bond over and talk about
that wasn't the mutual guy they'd fucked.

Speaker 4 (01:24:51):
Fair. Another thing that kind of rubbed me the wrong
way about Melissa's character is that she becomes this sort
of like audience insert character in the sense that like,
she's the only one who doesn't know anything about tornadoes,
and the movie assumes that the average viewer won't know
much about tornadoes, and the movie needs a way to

(01:25:12):
deliver exposition so that the audience can understand what's going on.
So you see a lot of other people, mostly men,
explaining stuff to Melissa, And I'm always wary of a
story that requires a bunch of men explaining stuff to
a woman. Now, granted we see Joe explain things here
and there to Melissa as well, but it just it

(01:25:36):
still pings for me when like, yeah, the character who
needs to have a bunch of exposition dumped on them
to be like one of the few women in the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:25:46):
I agree, And I also think that's like part of
why I get even more defensive of Melissa's character, because
she is ultimately the audience insert because most of the
science in this movie, based on my research, is made up,
and so you do need someone to explain.

Speaker 4 (01:26:04):
Made sciences to you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Yeah, but it's made that she's very naive and is like, way,
what is this? But it's like, yeah, this is made up,
but yeah, but it is like recontextualized as a woman
who needs something to explain to her, mainly by other men.

Speaker 4 (01:26:21):
Well, something else I noticed is that the two characters
in the movie who speak with accents from the American South,
Melissa and Jonas, are the characters who were not rooting
for Obviously, like Jonas is the villain, Melissa is positioned
as someone who ignorant, is like an obstacle ignorant and yeah,

(01:26:42):
like an obstacle for Bill and Joe and ignorant. I mean,
what I'll say is that at least the movie doesn't
depict them the way a lot of media depicts people
with Southern accents as being like unintelligent and inarticulate and
like backwards and all that kind of stuff. Both of
these characters are highly educated. One of them is a doctor,

(01:27:05):
one of them is a scientist.

Speaker 3 (01:27:06):
But they are and I would say that they're still
both ignorant.

Speaker 4 (01:27:09):
Well, that's what I'm saying, Like, the two characters with
Southern accents are the ones who are like positioned as
obstacles and who are positioned as like not having either
the same like intuition about tornadoes or just being completely
ignorant of them. So I feel like there's still like
a demonization of the American South in that regard.

Speaker 3 (01:27:30):
Which, again, like if that is the case, it makes
no sense because they all appear to be from the
same area that.

Speaker 4 (01:27:38):
I mean, we have no idea, I guess, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:40):
But but even that is like speaks to a lack
of characterization. Right.

Speaker 4 (01:27:45):
The only character we know where they're from is Joe
because we see her as a kid in Oklahoma. I
guess we don't really know where anyone else is from
where we can only assume the only.

Speaker 3 (01:27:55):
Person we know is because of Daddy trauma and the
way of Aunt Meg. Who Aunt Meg is. I feel
like kind of a quirky, older woman, kind of stock character,
and this stock character exists across gender boundaries, and I
appreciate it, releast that she's there to sort of expand

(01:28:16):
the characterization of Joe and that they have a very
close bond, and that you know, Meg has a close
bond with the entire storm crew. But again, the only
thing you see Aunt Meg and Joe talk about is Bill. Yeah.
If I got out of this shower and my aunt

(01:28:39):
immediately started talking to me about how the man I
recently divorced downstairs should actually still be my husband, and
I don't care that his fiance is down there like
he's here. You might as well go for it. It's
just a movie, a man road. I know, Anne Marie
Martin has her I don't want to like discount the

(01:29:01):
fact that there was a woman co writer, but it
just feels very like YadA YadA, patriarchal, Like, Okay, we
have to have these characters interact. I don't even feel certain.
I don't know like, do we know is Aunt Meg
her father's sibling.

Speaker 4 (01:29:19):
Yeah, we don't know. If it's her brother who died
in the tornado, We don't know, if it's her brother
in law. We don't know if it's just like Aunt
Meg used colloquially but like not a blood relative. Yeah,
we don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:29:32):
Yeah, so, like the movie is badly written, is my point.

Speaker 4 (01:29:36):
Also, Aunt Meg is more excited to see Bill than
she is her own niece, than she is deceived Joe.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
She's more more happish, She's more like Dusty King, like
you know, and not to say that, like your relatives
cannot perform more excitement to see others than you like
been there, But regardless, like it just feels all very
like half cooked, and it just feels like Aunt Meg

(01:30:06):
is put there because at the end of the second act,
we have to pull Aunt Meg and her Golden retriever
out of the rubble because YadA, YadA, YadA, and it
ultimately serves to make Bill Paxton look like a hero
because he saves her and the dog with Joe, but
at the end he goes back twice and it's you know,

(01:30:29):
I just think that like even the most consequential relationship
between women in this movie, which I do think is
between Joe and her aunt, is still almost exclusively in
reference to men. So so whoops.

Speaker 4 (01:30:47):
The last thing I want to talk about is the
one other woman on the storm Chaser's team, Missus hat
missus Hat aka Haynes. Once again, the actor played Haines
is named Wendell Josepher. There's not much to say because
you barely see her on screen, You barely see her

(01:31:09):
and Joe interacting. You would think there would be some camaraderie.

Speaker 3 (01:31:13):
I would guess, and I hope. I wonder if this
is true that all of the science side characters outside
of Dusty were written to be gender neutral, and yet
only one.

Speaker 4 (01:31:26):
Woman was cast. Yeah, that is very frustrating. Maybe someone
would argue, well, realistically, the people who were doing Tornado
science back then were predominantly men.

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):
Yeah, well, guess what, bitch is the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:31:41):
It's a movie, and you can do whatever the fuck
you want. Yeah, and again, the most frustrating thing to
me is that, like, you rarely see Haines and Joe
interacting in a situation like that, where like, because I mean,
we've been there in the comedy sphere where like We're
two women on a show that has like eight other

(01:32:03):
men on the lineup, and you like develop camaraderie with
the other people who are like you, and you would
think there would be more camaraderie between Joe and Haines.
But again, you never see them interacting because the movie
doesn't actually care anything about Haines. So Bods, that's frustrating.

(01:32:25):
Oh whips, Do you have anything else you'd like to discuss?

Speaker 3 (01:32:29):
No, this movie, I think vague like passes the Veccal
test in the way that maybe we should have defined
it at the begin name, because I feel like this
movie does pass the Bechtel test, but in ways that
we generally find to be unsatisfactory. It's pleasant trees, it's hello's,
it's quipi asides. I think it does technically pass the

(01:32:50):
Bechtel test, but in terms of like meaningful interactions, I
would say, no, it doesn't.

Speaker 4 (01:32:56):
I think. Yeah. The closest thing would be a line
where Joe says to Melissa, if you have to pee,
do it now, because there's nowhere to stop along the
way on our path of tornado chasing.

Speaker 3 (01:33:09):
Which is useful information but could be cut from the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:33:12):
Could be cut Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:33:13):
That's the thing is like, I feel like there's very
at this point because, as we talk about all the time,
the Bechtel test is a general metric just to get
a feel for are people of a martialized gender interacting
in meaningful ways in this movie? And I do feel like, well,
there are subversive elements to the movie. The answer to

(01:33:35):
that question is no, No, that women are not interacting
in subversive ways. They're only interacting in relation to men,
even though there are ample opportunities for that to not
be made the case. And so it feels to me
like a classic nineties version. I mean, I know I
say nineties, I mean I know that it happens in
every generation where every generation feels like feminism we actually

(01:33:59):
got it right, and no one has, including our generation, right.
But like this feels like a very third wave nineties
version of like, yeah, we get it, and it's like, no,
you don't, because you were still talking about Bill Paxton
the whole time, and so for me, it doesn't pass.

Speaker 4 (01:34:17):
There also would have been a great opportunity because there
is a scene early on where Haines tells Joe about
I think it's the first tornado that arises in the movie,
but Joe does not respond at least to Haines. She
like then addresses the whole group and it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:34:33):
Yeah, she just like turns to the boys.

Speaker 4 (01:34:36):
It could have been so easy for Joe to be like, wow,
thanks Haines, now we know your name, and what else
do you have to say about this? And there could
have been a couple back and forths that would have passed.
But the movie didn't do it. So yeah, spiritually I
would say no, the movie does not pass the Bechdel test.
But our nipple scale, where we rate the movie on

(01:34:57):
a scale of zero to five nipples ba on examining
the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I mean, as
much of a rump and a fun time I think
it is, I still will only give it. I'll give
it like one and a half maybe two. I'm feeling
a little generous just because I think it does some

(01:35:19):
interesting things. Compared to similar blockbuster movies of this same era.
Most other movies from this time and that were of
the same ilk did way worse. They were so deeply
sexist and like outwardly hateful toward women, Whereas this is like, well,

(01:35:41):
what if a woman was in charge, and what if
we knew more about her than any of the other
characters who were men, and you know, a few things
like that, and I think that there's something to be
said for that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:53):
Not a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:35:54):
Again, it's not doing the best job ever, but by
nineties standards, I was vaguely impressed. It's a very, very
white cast, no diversity whatsoever. The treatment of therapy and
mental health is dated and is presented in such a
way that perpetuates the stigma of mental health and therapy.

(01:36:19):
So there's not great things in it. But I don't know.
I like Joe's a character. She makes jokes, she makes quips.
She says, I'm gonna head southwest to the counter. Oh,
how was the tornado? It was, Wendy. These are funny
lines that I laughed at, and so I like her.
And I'll give the movie two nipples, and I'll give
one to Toby the dog, which is Joe's childhood dog,

(01:36:43):
and I'll give the other to Mose the dog and
Meg's dog. The end.

Speaker 3 (01:36:49):
Yeah, I'm gonna think this movie one and a half
because I do think that it is like vaguely subverting stuff,
but in a way that is very unsatisfactory. I feel
like the success of this movie mainly is that, like
you were saying earlier, and I wish yeah, Like I
think I was too irritated by other elements of the
movie to fully appreciate, but that yes, Joe is the

(01:37:10):
best characterized person in this movie, and that is rare.
I still think she's mainly characterized as it pertains to
the first man she met and the man she married,
which is very reductive and to me, reeks of a
story that is written and shaped by primarily men. I

(01:37:31):
also think the way that she is like clothed and generally,
I mean, it's not excessively harping on her body, but
if you look at the way that her team is
clothed versus her, it's obvious.

Speaker 4 (01:37:45):
That she's showing more skin.

Speaker 3 (01:37:46):
This movie came out two years after Jurassic Perk, and
she is dressed far more scantily than Laura Durd's character.
Like it just feels a little more and which sucks
because I think Helen Hunt does a great job in
this week. I think she's really talented, and I think
that the physical endurance, which we didn't really get to,
but the fact that like Helen Hunt and the entire

(01:38:09):
cast of this movie were obviously put through because so
much of the movie were practical effects, which again I love,
but that you know, Yon Debant was kind of a tyrant,
a bit of a James Cameron, which makes sense as
he was considered as a director for this movie, but
he was busy with Titanic. But everyone was put through
the physical ringer. But the only person who was called

(01:38:32):
out as being a little clumsy was Helen Hunt. Yes,
and Helen Hunt stood up for herself in retrospect when
she knew of that quote. And it's just like it's
even being a better characterized movie in a blockbuster as
a woman is still entrenched in this theory of the
time sexism. I am very in a lot of it

(01:38:53):
is because I have no nostalgic attachment to this movie,
but like watching it, I just don't feel a lot
of reasons to excuse that. And I think Helen Hunt
and Jamie Gertz give great performances. I think their characters
are really good, and I feel like they're underserved and

(01:39:15):
ultimately two greats of twentieth century cinema into twenty first
century cinema because obviously I mean Phillip Seymour. Hoffman's later
performances are incredible. I would also shout out Bill Paxton's
performance in night Crawler, one of my favorite movies, is

(01:39:35):
a great later performance from him. Unfortunately they're no longer
with us. It's a great way to end, obviously, and
Alan ruck in the entirety of succession, like you have
a lot of great actors here. But ultimately, yeah, I
understand why this movie was kind of forgotten in spite
of making half a billion dollars in nineteen ninety six money.

(01:39:58):
And that's saying something. It does just feel like the
best elements of better movie is put into a movie
that is pretty good.

Speaker 4 (01:40:08):
And I guess we'll find out what Twisters is all about.

Speaker 3 (01:40:13):
So you have a feeling. I have a feeling.

Speaker 4 (01:40:15):
Is it gonna be about Twisters? Do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:40:17):
Yeah? And I don't think that anyone cares, so yeah,
I'll give it one and a half nipples. I'll give
one to Helen Hunt and I'll give half to Jamie
Gertz because I think and the character of Melissa, because
I think that they were great and that this movie
would have been vastly complicated in a good way, because
This movie needed more interpersonal conflict versus random twisters between

(01:40:45):
the two women at its center. It would have been
amazing if they formed an allyship and forced Bill to
reveal information about himself, but no one was thinking this
hard about it, and so I just felt a little
underwhelmed by the product. One and a half nipples from Jamie.

Speaker 4 (01:41:07):
Well, listeners, that's our twister episode. You can follow us
at Bechdel Cast on Instagram. You can go to our
Patreon aka Matreon, where we have two bonus episodes every
month on a brilliant, genius, amazing theme that we cook up,

(01:41:28):
plus access to the back catalog, and that is found
at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast and it's five
dollars a month. Wow. And then we've got our merch
store teapublic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast where you
can buy a bunch of merch that Jamie designed.

Speaker 3 (01:41:44):
So do it.

Speaker 4 (01:41:47):
And with that, Jamie, let's get in a truck and
drive away from the twisters toward safety. Bye Bye. The
Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Drante
and Jamie loftis produced by Sophie Lichtermann, edited by Moe

(01:42:10):
La Boord. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan
with vocals by Katherine Voskressenski. Our logo in merch is
designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo.
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