As filming on the action vehicle "Twister" was storming across Oklahoma in 1995, Alison Naifeh got her first experience scouting locations on a movie.
Working as a production assistant for the "Twister" locations department, the Enid native realized she was exactly where she was meant to be.
"I stayed full force in locations ever since ... and more than 25 years later, I've had a chance to work on some great features and a lot of great commercials in our state. And I love it," Naifeh told The Oklahoman by phone from the road in the Sooner State as she was working on her latest film project.
"And to do 'Twisters,' what a full circle. I was crying after the premiere. I'm so blessed. I'm so lucky."
From bustling downtown OKC to tiny Fairview, here's where 'Twisters' filmed in Oklahoma
Nearly 30 years after the first blockbuster was filmed in the Sooner State, Oklahomans are eagerly looking for familiar places depicted on the big screen in the long-awaited follow-up film, "Twisters."
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Directed by two-time Oscar nominee Lee Isaac Chung, who grew up on an Arkansas farm near the Oklahoma border, the standalone sequel follows a new group of storm chasers, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, emerging heartthrob Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos, as they track powerful tornadoes across Oklahoma.
Like "Twister" before it, this summer's "Twisters" took its production team all over the state: Throughout 60 days of principal photography in 2023, "Twisters" engaged with multiple communities statewide, including Oklahoma City, El Reno, Chickasha, Midwest City, Spencer, Kingfisher, Calumet, Hinton, Fairview, Okarche, Kremlin, Burbank and Pawhuska.
Here's what to know about what scenes filmed where in "Twisters:"
Downtown OKC filled in for New York City in 'Twisters'
Although "Twisters" filmed on location mostly outdoors in rural areas of Oklahoma, principal photography began May 8, 2023, in downtown OKC. Filming started with crews bringing in scaffolds, subway signs and taxi cabs to temporarily transform Park Avenue between Broadway and Robinson into a New York City street scene.
The Gilded Acorn patisserie played the part of the NYC coffee shop where Edgar-Jones' Kate meets up with her old pal Javi (Ramos), while Corporate Tower doubled for an NYC branch of the National Weather Service.
"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 told The Oklahoman in a July interview.
OKC's Prairie Surf Studios gets in on the 'Twisters' action
Also in downtown OKC, Prairie Surf Studios served as the production's headquarters, and the "Twisters" team built the interiors for several key scenes on the soundstages at the former convention center-turned-movie production facility. That includes interior shots of the barn where Kate built her childhood lab when she first started studying tornadoes.
Although the historic Centre Theatre is a real place in El Reno, where filming on "Twisters" also took place, the interiors of the vintage movie house were built on Prairie Surf soundstages. "Twisters" production designer Patrick Sullivan, who got his show-biz start working in the art department on 1996's "Twister," reimagined the inside of the Centre Theatre as an ornate mid-century Art Deco cinema palace, which is ripped apart by a monster tornado in the movie.
In the frightening prologue of "Twisters," college-age Kate and her young colleagues go against their better judgment and seek shelter from a massive tornado under an overpass. The actual overpass depicted in the movie is at the intersection of two state highways — OK-81 and OK-3 — in Okarche, and some filming took place there.
Because of all the weather effects and stunts involved with the sequence, though, "Twisters" crews built a partial overpass on a makeshift back lot near Prairie Surf. Completely enclosed in blue screen, the hulking set piece on the old Fred Jones dealership lot grabbed the attention of downtown OKC denizens when filming started.
OKC airport and trailer business also have cameos in 'Twisters'
OKC's Will Rogers World Airport doesn't get its cinematic moment until the end of "Twisters," as Powell's Tyler Owens decides to chase after Kate. (It's also where they ultimately don't kiss, to some fans' dismay.)
A family-owned OKC business, J&J Trailers, 4318 Newcastle Rd., also gets a cameo in "Twisters" as Kate, Tyler and their fellow storm chasers look for a new trailer for an experiment in disrupting a tornado. Local actor Darryl Cox plays the mild-mannered salesman who waits on them.
El Reno's water tower and Bickford Avenue get their close-up in 'Twisters'
El Reno gets quite the close-up in "Twisters:" Not only is the Canadian County seat the final Oklahoma town to get torn up by a terrifying tornado, but it also is the only Sooner State town in the movie that's actually named for the location where it was filmed.
A stretch of Bickford Avenue in El Reno's historic downtown is prominently featured in the movie's heart-pounding climax, as a storm whips through a farmers' market, overturns the Heritage Express Trolley and sends the storm chasers fleeing into the aforementioned Centre Theatre. Chung was inspired to add the sequence with the trolley after scouting in El Reno, and crews built a replica of the state's only rail-based trolley for filming.
The world's fried onion burger capitol had almost everything the script required, except that its vintage metal water tower wasn't near the theater where the climactic action takes place. So, the production team 3-D scanned the distinctive water tower and digitally relocated it several blocks from its real-life location.
Also, the "Twisters" team painted a custom mural for the film that can be viewed on the outside of JKM Jewelry, Gifts & Locksmith, 101 N Bickford.
Midwest City and Spencer fill in for Stillwater in rodeo and motel scenes
In one stormy action sequence, Tyler and Kate attend a down-home rodeo in rural Stillwater, only to have a nighttime cyclone come tearing through. They flee to a modest motel across the street and eventually take shelter in the in-ground swimming pool.
Those scenes were filmed in the Midwest City and Spencer area rather than in Stillwater. Although it didn't have the pool, the filmmakers booked the Colonial Motel, 8717 NE 23, to be the location of what Powell called "one of the most incredible action sequences of all time." Crews dug the pool and built a temporarily extension to the motel's main unit for filming, eventually returning the building and its grounds to their original state.
The privately owned Brewer Field, an empty lot across the street from the motel, served as the ideal spot to build the movie's Stillwater rodeo arena. The production team built a metal-roofed grandstand, ticket booth, announcer booth, concessions stands and 10 vendor spaces where extras could sell cowboy hats and saddles. They dressed the walls with faded Hatch Show Print posters — iconic woodblock prints promoting the likes of Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton — to give the new construction some history and character.
Chickasha's 'Twisters' movie moment gets stretched out by actors strike
One of the three Sooner State towns to get ravaged by tornadoes in the standalone sequel, Crystal Springs is a real place outside McAlester. But it is played by Chickasha in the movie, with the look of the shuttered Wan Dora Tavern inspiring Chung and his team to center production on S 17 Street between W Iowa Avenue and W Dakota Avenue.
The production purchased three largely intact houses from a demolition company and artfully destroyed them so that the wrecked interior would be visible. Crews dressed more than four blocks of destruction and debris, but before filming could take place, production had to be halted last July due to the actors' strike.
To preserve the structure of the houses, they were wrapped in heavy-duty plastic and boarded up. The cinematic debris was pushed into the yards, and a chain-link fence was installed around the Chickasha properties. And they stayed that way for months.
When production geared up again in late 2023 after the strike ended, it took crews about two weeks to get the four-block set camera-ready.
Cinematic cyclones tear through Kremlin, Fairview and Burbank
The inoperable Lone Ranger gas station near Fairview is where audiences are first introduced to Powell's Tyler and his colorful team of Tornado Wranglers. Also in Fairview, Kate exchanges verbal barbs with Tyler and his team at the quaint Heritage Inn, 911 N Main, and Oklahoma musicians Ken Pomeroy, James McAlister and Max Rainer sing "Wall of Death" around a campfire.
The storm chasers also make a stop at the Midway rural truck stop and convenience store off U.S. Highway 81 near Kremlin, which is about 20 miles south of Wakita, where much of the filming took place in 1995 on "Twister" and where Twister The Movie Museum still pays homage to the original film. (Filming in Fairview and Kremlin is the reason Powell was staying in Enid when he made the decision to adopt a dog, eventually becoming a proud "dog dad" to the adorable Brisket.)
A private ranch in Pawhuska also was used for some of the campground scenes, and storm-chasing sequences were filmed along the roadways of nearby Burbank, including action-packed scenes where a twister rips through a wind farm and where Tyler and his pals shoot fireworks into a funnel.
Kingfisher Centennial farm stands in for Kate's childhood home
Although Edgar-Jones' character hails from Sapulpa in the story, none of the filming on "Twisters" actually took place in the Tulsa suburb. When Kate goes back home to the farm where she grew up, her mom (Maura Tierney) is waiting for her at a secluded house near Kingfisher.
The Kingfisher County Centennial farm owned by Julie and Jerry Hau was a location that Naifeh said she initially scouted for the movie "August: Osage County" but ultimately wasn't used for the 2013 drama.
"I found this farmhouse, and I fell in love with it. What's crazy is I couldn't find my way back to it because the bridge had washed out to it off Highway 81. ... I spent days in the county assessor's office in Kingfisher County, going, 'Here's my photo files from 12 years ago from "August: Osage County." I know that this still exists,'" said Naifeh, who traveled across Oklahoma as a locations scout on "Twisters."
"We scouted the entire state for this movie. ... But (that's) an integral part of her story, because it really unfolds her past and her passion, and with the farmhouse and the barn, it's magical out there."
