TWISTER & Goo Goo Dolls’ ‘Long Way Down’

Perfectly average.

That’s the type of song playing in that type of van driving across that type of land in that type of movie. Average. Perfect.

You probably remember the film TWISTER from 1996: the cow that twice flies across the screen, Helen Hunt’s glorious hair, the drive-in movie complex playing THE SHINING before it gets ripped apart by a tornado. You might remember it as a half-decent flick you saw once and don’t need to see again. Why would you? It was fine, average.

There’s a scene where Bill Paxton, his ex-wife in the film Hunt, and his new fiancee Jami Gertz get tossed around by a pair of twisters while driving down a road in the film’s setting of Oklahoma. Middle America; average. When they escape unharmed, Paxton and Hunt celebrate while Gertz emerges from the back seat visibly distressed. A few seconds later, their cadre of storm chasers catches up with them, a car radio blaring The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Long Way Down”.

The moment is brief, just long enough for the viewer to hear the chorus through once. But it’s also an illustration of how TWISTER and “Long Way Down” are the perfect pair in average entertainment.

Average is necessary. You don’t always have the stomach to sit through a Stanley Kubrick film or a Radiohead epic. Average is Sunday afternoon when you stumble upon TWISTER on television and watch the rest, forgetting your hangover. Average is an unsophisticated tune that gets you in the gut when your brain yawns with boredom.

But TWISTER and “Long Way Down” are perfectly average. The film is a reminder that the 1990s did absurd adventure excellently. The 90s had money to afford a deep cast of stars and character actors, making each scene worthwhile. Bored at the idea of a love story shoe-horned in to a disaster movie? Watch Paxton and Hunt develop great chemistry. Find quirky supporting cast members predictable and exhausting? Deal with Philip Seymour Hoffman explaining “the Suck Zone” in pot-infused detail or Alan Ruck delivering lines like “Honey, your car’s in a tree around the corner.”

It’s Hoffman’s van that approaches the three twister escapees with Goo Goo Dolls on the radio. A whatever band from a bloated era of whatever bands who, if they simply shouted out three chords, they’d be a sure-fire hit for at least a few years back then. And of course Goo Goo Dolls would be playing on the radio in Oklahoma. Easy rock pervades this film: Van Halen, crap-era Chili Peppers (or just “Chili Peppers”), Shania Twain, Soul Asylum. The Dolls aren’t just making a buck off some exposure, they’re part of the movie’s landscape.

The movie and the song are extra fat that could be scraped off the decade without anyone noticing. But doing so would be to miss out on what made that opulent decade what it was. You had your choice of disaster movies and alternative-lite bands and while more isn’t always better, the fact that there were so many attempts at this kind of entertainment means that there are dozens of these forgotten gems still rattling around the attic.

TWISTER is miscast an average movie you can turn your brain off to. It’s proof of how average can be done perfectly, enjoyably, and without irony. Because sometimes a simple shot to the gut can make your brain hum along in unison.

by @JoePack