‘Twister’ Could Be Star Bill Paxton’s Big Break On The Big Screen

As a child growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Bill Paxton’s sole exposure to tornadoes was watching “The Wizard of Oz” on television.

As the star of “Twister,” opening today, he’s become almost an expert.

“They’re like no other weather phenomenon,” Paxton said. “Fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes - they hit an area and affect everyone. But a tornado might kill everybody across the street from your house and destroy their home and not even break a window in yours. Tornadoes are almost a personal kind of thing.”

For Paxton in “Twister,” they’re exceedingly personal.

He plays a meteorologist who helps his estranged scientist-wife (Helen Hunt) try to launch instruments into tornadoes to record vital data.

That means chasing twisters across Oklahoma during the state’s biggest storm in 50 years - always racing to keep a step ahead of the whirling, darting monsters of the skies.

“Twister” is a costly, effects-heavy movie. It was executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Jan De Bont of “Speed” and co-written by Michael Crichton of “Jurassic Park” and his wife, Anne-Marie Martin.

With that kind of clout, Paxton expects the film to be “the picture to beat this summer - maybe one of the biggest box-office movies of all time. It’s gonna blow people away.”

Despite co-starring credits in such hits as “Aliens,” “The Terminator,” “True Lies” and “Apollo 13,” Paxton sees “Twister” as his big break.

“This movie is gonna put me over,” said the actor, who’s been pushing toward star status since hitting Hollywood two decades ago.

“No one’s ever tried to make this kind of movie,” he said of “Twister.” “But with modern technology and computer graphics, they’re starting to tackle disaster situations they couldn’t do with the effects of 10 years ago.”

Some effects were done on-camera, he said, “with wind machines and all that.” But many were achieved in post-production, by George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic.

“And I can tell you, those ILM shots are great,” Paxton said.

Scientists in “Twister” want to probe tornadoes to enhance warning systems for the erratic killers. They concoct a device dubbed “Dorothy” - a cross between an industrial washing machine and a flight recorder.

“We try to get in the damage path, put the package down and get the hell out, in hopes it’ll be picked up and send out readings,” Paxton said.

“Through the whole movie we’re racing against time as these tornadoes get bigger and bigger. Each tornado sequence (there are seven) is bigger than the last one.”

All this makes “Twister” “the greatest tornado movie since ‘The Wizard of Oz,”’ Paxton said.

“Twister” is patterned after a tornado outbreak of April 1974, when 150 tornadoes dropped over 13 states in a 48-hour period, killing 1,000 people.

Paxton can recite such statistics in his sleep. While filming in Oklahoma and Iowa, he learned much about tornadoes, including the fact that they’re only a small part of a much larger system.

“There’s this whole architecture of air that supports a tornado that might go up 70,000 feet - about five times the height of Mount Everest,” he said.

He calls tornadoes “a weirdly American phenomenon. They don’t occur anywhere with the frequency or ferocity that they do over the Central Plains of the United States.”

Paxton sees “Twister” as the vanguard of a new wave of disaster movies, a genre that was last in vogue in the mid-1970s.

“There are a lot (of scripts) in the pipeline about floods and volcanoes, and I think it has to do with the end of the millennium,” he said.