There is a moment in Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters” (now in theaters) that draws more gasps and applause than any of the movie’s many jaw-dropping tornado set pieces – it’s a scene where Glen Powell, as hotshot “tornado wrangler” Tyler Owens, leaves a farmhouse in the middle of the rain. He’s wearing a white T-shirt that seems to have been spray-painted on his body and he starts to get a little wet, which is when people really lose it.
Both times that we saw the movie – first in an intimate screening room with a handful of other people and then at the movie’s Los Angeles premiere, which was packed with hundreds of people – that moment elicited a boisterous, audible response from the crowd.
And yet, it nearly didn’t make the final cut, according to Chung.
When TheWrap asked if he knew that Powell’s white T-shirt scene was really going to be a thing, he said no.
“You know, I tried to reduce that scene. I trimmed it down,” Chung said. “And my editor at one point said, ‘You’re about to face a mutiny in this editing office. You have been requested to please restore the full length of that shot or else there will be a mutiny.’”
Chung then asked who made this demand and his editor (the great Terilyn A. Shropshire) responded, “The ladies.”
Still, this wasn’t totally out of the blue. Chung knew while they were shooting that they had something special. “I didn’t plan it like that. When I saw it on rolling on the monitor then I was realizing what I had just created,” Chung said.
“Twisters,” which features the full Glen Powell T-shirt shot intact, is in theaters now.
