A dear friend of mine took me to a screening of Twisters last weekend because I really needed a big, sloppy piece of entertainment that wouldn’t tax my mind too much.

Well, I got it.  And so much more.

See, what I had in mind was a movie about a series of larger than life tornados (Note: Think Sharknado but only slightly more real) and the people that chase them.  

An insistently loud diversion from the red-state, blue-state, red-fish, blue-fish fight we’ve been having and clearly will be having for the next three and a half months and beyond about the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Or, as the mental crib notes I must now carry everywhere with me these days refers to it:

Democracy vs. Dictatorship.

I so wanted to listen to a big pop soundtrack of songs serving up truly over-the-top music cues for all sorts of inclement weather in the Tornado Universe.

The massive winds and rain and hail balls the size of softballs leading into a big funnel cloud of crazy, played out to a bunch of Journey-adjacent type tunes.

That could then be the start to all sorts of weather-related camp references. I doubted that it would happen but part of me was also secretly hoping for samplings of Baby, It’s Cold Outside, Wind Beneath My Wings and okay, yes, It’s Raining Men.

Yeah, I was a gay kid brought up on 1970s disaster films like Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno and Earthquake.   

So sue me. 

And no, that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the havoc extreme weather wreaks on a community.

I live in Los Angeles, in a drought, in the dry, dry hills.  Big rocks periodically fall on us from above when we’re standing in our very small outside patio. As for earthquakes, we and most of our neighbors have been priced out of the market to insure against them.

So yeah, this is personal.

But…..what price release?

In these turbulent times: Release. Trumps. Everything.

Bigly.

You may quote me.

Anyway, no such luck on my Twister movie screen.

I got exactly what I was trying to avoid since I knew in a few days I’d be sitting through all four nights (Note: So you don’t have to) of a fascist-themed, theocratic, tent revival-style Republican Convention backed by the nominee’s signature campaign rally tune, Lee Greenwood’s country megahit, God Bless the USA.

But in the movie’s case it came early in the form of an ear-pounding soundtrack of continuous country music, from many artists, played out in various red state America towns.

And all done amid banal dialogue, serviceable special effects and countless reminders of how small town red America is where the real people live.

Especially compared to how the primarily Oklahoma-based Twisters presents New York City – a crowded, impersonal and generally undesirable concrete jungle where no feeling person’s soul could ever reside.  (Note:  Or could, deep down, truly want to).

In retrospect, it should have seemed to me not so much prescient but predictable that the aforementioned RNC ran with the same theme as it went on about the “crumbling, crime ridden” blue state cities all the way down to its final Hannibal Lecter finish line. (Note:  You have to listen to the final speech on the final night to see how Dr. Lecter fits in.  But since I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, you might just want to trust me on that.  OK, fine, click here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

As for Twisters, I promise I do not exaggerate.  Early on there are indeed a few scenes in the Big Apple, but they only serve as a place where our forlorn, dead-inside country girl heroine MUST be taken away from in order to be brought back to life in the heartlands of her hometown in Oklahoma.  (Note: A place that in real life just passed a law that mandates the Bible be taught in public schools).

There she can be among residents from other red states who have gathered to chase more tornados and discover that, of course, it’s the MIT graduate from the east coast that is the one most dedicated to the movie’s principal, land-grabbing villain  (Easter Egg Note: David Corenswet, our soon-to-be Superman, plays the MIT guy, so I can’t honestly sit here and tell you those scenes didn’t possess a certain…dreamy appeal).

And in the course of that discovery, our heroine gets to almost literally be born-again by using her homespun instincts and high school research to correct her traumatic past and symbolically save what she left behind – HER PEOPLE and pretty much anyone else who will ever be at risk in her state and places like it.  (Note: New York City does not have tornadoes).

But just a moment, saving the world is not enough in these movies, right?  And as Project 2025 and the RNC’s newly minted vice-presidential nominee has said, it’s especially not enough to be a single woman.  You GOTTA find love.  If not for the first time, then once again. (Note: No Spoilers here). Because your most rewarding accomplishment will be to procreate.  (Note 2: Whether you want to or not).

And here she is given THE perfect rogue hick on the outside, but smart and caring and MANLY man on the inside (Note: Ok, AND outside) type of guy. 

He’s young enough, (though not TOO young), blonde enough (well, highlights) and red state movie star enough (with blue state indie movie cred) enough   —  Glen Powell!!!

Ever heard of him?

It’s all sort of the right idea if this whole thing were set in the 1980s or the 1950s and not in 2024 – where almost every young person in the world – even in New York City –  rates climate change as one of their top two most important issues of the day, and the destruction of life in small towns AND big cities, as well as overseas locations they’ve never been to but see in video images everywhere, an international, global catastrophe. 

I’d be wrong to expect anything approaching nuance from a merely escapist film, but as you might have gathered at this point, Twisters is much more than that. 

Its subliminal messages of the worth of the hard working people of small town America – whose only form of leisure seem to be joyrides in big wheel trucks, rodeos and drinking beer – and their destiny as helpless, ignored victims in cultures devalued by those living in big cities, couldn’t be more timely. 

It reinforces every stereotype of red vs. blue, feasts on them, swallows them whole and then deftly spits them back at us in the form of exclusionary, jingoistic middle-of-the-road mainstream American entertainment. 

You can cast Anthony Ramos as the country girl’s high school friend and slide in that he’s originally from Miami, or throw in one of two other brown or mixed race actors as young people with short screen times (Note: In real life, Oklahoma is 75% white and no non-white group accounts for more than 6% of the population), but for the most part the message here is clear:

There is a real America and there are real Americans, mostly white, who built this country and farmed.  And they have been left to die from the elements by power brokers who don’t care or elite, overeducated brainiac city dwellers who really don’t care.

The only ones who can truly solve this problem are the smartest of the smart from the red states.  Because they are the only ones who will take the time to figure anything out because no one on the outside give a thought about red state people like them.

If only there were a larger than life, POWERFUL leader from a big blue state like New York who would move heaven and earth to help, they’d be open to that city slicker. But in this movie world and in real life there really isn’t anybody like that.

Right???  

RIGHT?????

The key word is “right.”

On the bigger question of escape – there is none.

At least this year.

Luke Combs – “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” (from Twisters)

PS – Twisters opened to more than $80 million in the U.S. this weekend, about the same level as Oppenheimer did last year.  It looks to be a MAJOR summer hit.  Make of that what you will.