Director Lee Isaac Chung's childhood on a Heartland farm spun him full circle for 'Twisters'
Just a few weeks after Lee Isaac Chung's family moved to the farm on the Oklahoma-Arkansas border where he spent most of his childhood, they had their first encounter with the American Heartland's notoriously stormy weather.
"I could tell that my parents were scared, and they had never experienced anything like that. We were in a trailer home ... and my parents knew that we should have a shelter, but we didn't. We had just gotten to the farm," Chung recalled.
"So, we piled into my dad's pickup ā coincidentally, it was a Dodge pickup, like 'Twister' ā and we ... found this ravine where maybe we would go down and ride things out. Then, in the morning ā it was a night tornado ā we learned that it hit many miles away, and we weren't really in danger. But at the time, when I was a kid, I was scared. And that left a big mark on me."
Four years ago, the filmmaker broke out with his widely acclaimed, semi-autobiographical Korean American family drama "Minari." Filmed in the Tulsa area in 2019, "Minari" earned six Oscar nominations ā including two nods for Chung as its writer and director ā and achieved a historic win for scene-stealing Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung.
With "Minari" heralded as an intimate and deeply personal story ā Chung, 45, drew on his immigrant family's real-life experiences settling on a farm in rural Lincoln, Arkansas, in the 1980s ā many people were surprised when he signed on to direct his follow-up film: the stormy action vehicle "Twisters," a new, contemporary chapter for the 1996 made-in-Oklahoma blockbuster "Twister."
Just because it's a big-budget tentpole executive produced by icon Steven Spielberg, featuring rising stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos running from monstrous tornadoes created by legendary effects house Industrial Light & Magic, that doesn't mean "Twisters" isn't also a personal film to its director.
"When I read the script, one of the reasons why I felt, 'I have to do this,' is because I wanted to protect it. I wanted to protect the way that Oklahoma is portrayed," Chung told The Oklahoman.
How did director Lee Isaac Chung's farm upbringing influence 'Twisters?'
The morning after he and the movie's stars walked the red carpet at the July 15 Oklahoma City premiere of "Twisters," Chung sat down with The Oklahoman inside The National hotel to talk about filming the long-awaited follow-up to the influential disaster epic "Twister."
The historic downtown OKC hotel is just down the street from where principal photography began May 8, 2023, on "Twisters." Filming actually started with crews bringing in scaffolds, signs and sidewalk tables to temporarily transform a section of downtown OKC into New York City.
"Our production design team did incredible. ... Anytime anyone says we filmed any part of this outside of Oklahoma, that does irk me, because we worked so hard to base everything here," Chung said.
As he depicted in "Minari," Chung said he was just a boy when his father surprised his mother by buying a 50-acre Arkansas farm just outside of Westville, Oklahoma.
"I could walk into Oklahoma. It was that close. Half the (license) plates in town say 'Oklahoma' on them," recalled Chung, who was born in Denver, Colorado.
"My dad just wanted to farm. That was his dream, since he was in Korea: He wanted to come to America to farm and ranch. ... And I loved it. I was immediately excited to be living there. So, it was an interesting, fun time in our lives."
So, Chung naturally related to the story of "Twisters," which stars Edgar-Jones as Kate Carter, a Sapulpa farm girl whose affinity for tornadoes leads her become an aspiring meteorologist and storm chaser. But a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years prompts her to flee her home state for New York, where she reverts to following rainstorms from the safety of a computer screen.
Kate is lured back into storm season on the open plains by her friend, Javi (Ramos), to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. Back in Oklahoma, they cross paths with Tyler Owens (Powell, a native Texan), a charming and reckless social-media superstar from Arkansas who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his rowdy crew.
"The script had him from Texas. ... We can't have that. I'm sorry, but I'm an Arkansas boy, ultimately. So, I do have to do something for my hometown," Chung told The Oklahoman with a chuckle.
How did Steven Spielberg encourage the director to approach 'Twisters?'
Like so many other young film fans growing up in the 1980s and '90s, Chung fell in love with the movies of Jan de Bont, an in-demand cinematographer who made his feature film directorial debut with the 1994 thriller "Speed." The Dutch director followed up that blockbuster by filming "Twister" across Oklahoma, including in Guthrie, Maysville, Norman, Fairfax and Wakita, in 1995.
"Jan de Bont is a genius and a master and just a magician with what he does. And he's just behind so many of the movies that I love from the '90s that are adrenaline packed. 'Speed' is just a masterpiece. ... He's just that guy of that era," Chung said.
"I'm also a very big fan of Amblin films ... and Steven Spielberg and I, I felt, really connected on what this film ought to be and the level of heart that should be in here. He was encouraging me a lot to infuse this film with the way that I look at people and character."
Without Chung's desire to film in Oklahoma, Jill Simpson, executive director of the OKC Film & Creative Industries Office, told The Oklahoman that the Sooner State might not have landed the follow-up to the beloved "Twister."
"It wasn't a given that they would come to Oklahoma. ... To a lot of people, it seemed like a foregone conclusion, but the studio was also looking at Georgia heavily," she said.
Although he was encouraged to consider filming "Twisters" in Georgia for financial reasons, Chung said he had help in convincing the producers to let him make the summer event movie in Oklahoma.
"There was so much goodwill and effort to make that happen that it was great. It was inspiring: All of us were really believing in it and wanting it to happen. And that's the way that we got it done. That's the way that we also convinced the studio that we could do it," he said.
"Everything I needed was here, and the people who came to work on the movie, they were really great. It was great to see people who had worked on 'Minari,' within a couple of years, advancing in how much skills they had gained. ... I just loved seeing that this is a place where film is really growing."
How did the 'Minari' director weather Oklahoma storms to film 'Twisters?'
After filming "Minari" in the sunny, hot and clear summer of 2019, Chung admitted he had forgotten just how unpredictable Oklahoma's weather can be, especially in spring. The cast and crew of "Twisters" often found themselves dodging real-life storms during principal photography, which took place over 60 days in several communities, including OKC, El Reno, Chickasha, Midwest City, Spencer, Kingfisher, Calumet, Hinton, Fairview, Okarche, Kremlin, Burbank and Pawhuska.
"I was hoping by scheduling this movie to be shot in the spring, it would help us to have much more cloud cover, which it did. But often that cloud cover comes with lightning and incoming storms. So, we were shut down so frequently with this production, even though it was a very calm year when it came to tornadoes. So, we still lucked out in that regard," Chung said.
"But our assistant director, Dave Venghaus, he forbad us from saying the word 'lightning' on set, because it was just happening so much."
Executive producer Ashley Jay Sandberg credited Chung's calm in the storms for keeping the production on track.
"Isaac was our fearless leader. He really thought about how we could proceed in order to make our schedule," she told The Oklahoman at the OKC premiere. "Oklahoma is a character in our film, and there's such a love for it. And we really wanted it to honor the state and the landscape and the people."
As with "Minari," the director said honoring the people back home with "Twisters" meant depicting farmers in a way they're not often portrayed by Hollywood.
"The way that Kate's mom, (played by) Maura Tierney looks, I wanted her to look badass, because, for me, what she's doing is badass. I didn't want her to fall into these stereotypes, but instead show that she's like all the farmers who I know, who I grew up with: They are scientists, they're smart, they know what to do," Chung said.
"I do spend a little more time on this film than the first 'Twister,' (which) I think is much more of a quick ride. ... We're going to a farm for a little bit, things like that. But I just really wanted to do stuff with this movie that feels personal to me."
Having the chance to make a big-budget action movie, especially one in a part of the country that means so much to him, was not only "a wild ride," but also a rare opportunity.
"Not many people get to do it. I always dreamt of doing it, and it's hard to just say you want to make an action movie and have it handed to you. So, I feel like it did take working my way up and doing some action ... working on 'The Mandalorian' and the (upcoming) 'Skeleton Crew' to prove that I could at least handle a production like this," he said.
"It's something I'm still learning. I want to get better. I'm still trying to learn from that great Jan de Bont ... to see how he does things and how Spielberg does things. So, we'll see how things go."
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Why filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung returned to Oklahoma to make 'Twisters'
