Jan de Bont graduated from being the director of photography on one of the most influential movies of the action genre, Die Hard, to coming out the gate with a one-two punch in his directing career with his own game changers, Speed and Twister. The Hollywood Reporter recently sat down with de Bont as Speed celebrates its 30th anniversary and Twister gets a new 4K UHD release in light of the upcoming sequel, Twisters. Interestingly, as the new movie touches down in just a few days, the Dutch director reveals that not only did no one reach out to him, but he wasn’t even aware of the sequel until he watched the trailer.
When asked if anyone from the Twisters production sought any advice from him, de Bont revealed, “No, I didn’t know that there was [another] movie until I actually saw the first trailer, which was not that long ago. (Laughs.) If you want to make a sequel, it should really be a sequel. It should be about the same people. It should be the same continuing story and saga of the same group of people, preferably in different circumstances that are even more interesting and more exciting. But to make a whole different story [like Twisters], then you shouldn’t really call it a sequel in my opinion.”
After Speed became a smash hit and solidified Keanu Reeves as an action star while making a new star out of Sandra Bullock, de Bont also became the new hot director. He knew he could follow his debut with Twister after reading the script and visualizing the movie. He recalls, “When I read the script, I immediately saw the possibilities. I felt like I could make Twister into a really high-energy movie with real people in it, and preferably not movie stars, but actors who looked like they could have been storm chasers. I already had so many ideas for how the twisters could work and how to attack the whole plan, and I just felt extremely excited about it. So, in my head, I had already made the movie, almost. I was so sure of it.”
The director also reflects on how fan-favorite character, Dusty, was brought to life by Philip Seymour Hoffman, “He was so completely ready to make a character for himself in the movie. In the script, he was in a lot of pages, but there were very few scenes with him on his own or with somebody else. So he created a character almost from day one, and everybody was surprised by that. What was also amazing was how witty he was. He could create such a light tone and humor that it would relax all the other team members.”