The Extras - "The Usual Suspects" with Cinematographer Tom Sigel

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

Cinematographer Tom Sigel joins the podcast to talk about filming the 1995 cult classic THE USUAL SUSPECTS. Tom takes us back through his first meetings with director Bryan Singer and their collaboration on the filming style.  We also discuss the locations in San Pedro on the ship and at the old Harold Examiner Building for the interrogation scenes.  Tom talks about his collaboration with art designer Howard Cummings and the importance of that relationship in a movie.  We also discuss the stars, filming the famous line-up scene, and the legacy of the movie. Then Tom explains the color-correction and restoration process for the 4K release from Kino Lorber.We wrap up our discussion with a short reflection on Tom’s work with Bryan Singer on 2018’s "Bohemian Rhapsody," 2011’s stylish “Drive,” and the Netflix release in 2020 of the international action film “Extraction.”Purchase on Amazon:The Usual Suspects 4KBohemian Rhapsody 4KDrive 4KThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Ballard, your host. Today, I have a very special guest on to talk about one of my favorite movies from the 1990s,

The Usual Suspects, which is coming out on 4K from Kino Lorber in late October. Directed by a young Bryan Singer and written by a young Christopher McQuarrie, The Usual Suspects was also their first collaboration with our guest today, cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel. Thomas and director Bryan Singer subsequently collaborated on four of the X-Men movies, the Tom Cruise star Valkyrie, Superman Returns, Jack the Giant Slayer, and the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. and the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. Thomas Sigel has also worked with countless other prominent directors, including David O. Russell, Cary Gilliam, Nicholas Winding Refn, and Anthony and Joe Russo. Needless to say, we are very lucky to have Thomas on the show today.

Hi, Tom. Welcome to The Extras. Thank you. Great to be here. Well, I was looking at your credits and I realized you've been the cinematographer on a lot of my favorite movies over the years. So it's a real pleasure to talk to you. I appreciate you coming on the show. But before we dive into the discussion about The Usual Suspects, I wanted to ask you a little bit, you know, on your background, how you broke into the film industry. You know, I've been fascinated with movie making, image making, the arts. Ever since I was in high school, I dabbled in painting and I worked at a record store where I saved up my money, bought a little Super 8 camera, started making little movies. Then after high school, I got involved in documentaries and started

working on documentary films. Got to travel all over the world and see a lot of history being made in the process. But sort of more of the arts background that brought me there was always kind of on my shoulder, calling me back. And so I eventually found my way back into narrative and more controlled filmmaking. And probably the big transition was doing a film that was directed by Haskell Wexler, a very famous cinematographer in his own right. And he gave me my first feature film, which was called Portino. Haskell Wexler has won several Academy Awards for Coming Home, Bound for Glory. He was one of the cinematographers, Nestor Almendros on Days of Heaven. A really brilliant cinematographer, but filmmaker in

his own right. He did a lot of documentaries as well, very politically involved, very much social activist. And he really was kind of a bit of a role model for me, both as a cinematographer and as a way to be involved in cinematography beyond just camera work. Right, right. Well, then The Usual Suspects was your first collaboration, was it not, with director Bryan Singer? Is that right? Yes, it was. Yeah. I met Bryan on Theusual Suspects.

I interviewed for the job and hadn't really done very much up to that point. A few movies, small movies. None of them had really big stars or anything like that. So rather than just take scenes from the movies, I kind of made my own little movie out of all my favorite shots of the movies I had done up to that point. And I cut them into a montage and I showed it to Brian and he loved it. And I think it was in part the sort of filmmaking that I demonstrated in the making of that little reel that kind of attracted him. And Usual Suspects was our first collaboration.

He had really only done one very small little movie. When he was at USC, he got money from a Japanese company to do a movie called Public Access. So I think they made for around $200,000 and took to Sundance. And it got a lot of attention there. And that's sort of what put him on the map and got him Usual Suspect suspects at the ripe old age, I believe, of like 26 or something. He was very young. And that was his collaboration with Christopher McQuarrie as well. And those guys worked on public access.

And then they famously, I guess, were asked what they were going to do next and kind of a little bit off the cuff, said something to do with the lineup. So that was your first teaming with them, which has borne a lot of fruit in terms of films you guys have worked on together over the years. But once you kind of, you know, got hired on to do the film, what was kind of the next steps? Did he send over the script? And did you talk about how are you going to approach the visual style? Well, they had given me the script beforehand. You know, I mean, I'd read it before I went in for the meeting.

You know, you don't really want to take an interview with a director if you haven't read the script, only to find out later that you hate it. But I liked the script. I thought it was really, really fun. It's ironic because I thought, my God, it's a lot of words. It's very, very wordy, you know. But, of course, that was part of Chris McCrory's brilliance and genius. So I met with Brian for the interview and, you know, we hit it off and

he hired me. And then I remember my first day of prep, I went to his home with my script and I opened it up to shot list or discuss the scene. I read the first page or so of the script and he started talking and talking and then here and there. And all of a sudden I realized like an hour had gone by and I'm still sitting there looking at the first page and I went, well, I guess this is not going to be a shot list type director. So that's how we began the prep. But at that point, we just dove right into it. It was a very limited budget and schedule. I believe, if I remember correctly, it was only 30 days of shooting. And it's one of those great films where you think it's sort of like a heist action movie, but when you really break it down, it's mostly people talking, but it has a kind of tautness to it and a kind of

snap to it that it always feels like it's in motion and there's action. And I think that had a lot to do with Brian's direction and the way that we decided to let the camera kind of be a factor in the energy of the movie. You said it was a fairly small budget and everything, but do you recall when you started filming what the first scenes were that you guys dove into? I don't remember exactly the first scene that we shot, but what I do remember really clearly is the first meeting we had right after we wrapped the first day where Brian and I were brought into the producer's trailer. And we're giving a lecture because we had shot almost 6,000 feet of film. And they had only budgeted for 5,000 feet of film a day.

And I was like, man, you know, this poor kid, he's just done his first day on his first real feature. And we made the day and they're giving him a lecture about how much film he shot. And I was amazed because Brian, like I say, I think he was 26 or something at the time. And he just said to him, you know, on all my movies, I always, you know, am economical with the film I shot. And I remember thinking, like, wait a minute, he's only done, like, two movies and just one little public access. But you know what? He's running with it. And it was just such a funny intro to the making of the movie and what was to come.

Well, I just recently watched the movie again, and I saw shots of the port of the movie and what was to come. Well, I just recently watched the movie again, and I saw shots of the port of Long Beach, of course. You guys have the ship down there, a lot of stuff down there in San Pedro. You have the Korean Friendship Bell there in Pedro, that location. Where else were some of the locations? Was it all in LA that you filmed? We did just a little tiny bit of shooting in New York, really more for establishing stuff. But yeah, it was all LA area. And the office,

the police office was the old Herald Examiner building. And that was a real challenge because it's a real building and it's not a set, not a stage. And we had just so much dialogue that we did in that set and particularly in Chaz Pimentieri's office. Well, it's not really Chaz Pimentieri. It's David Zane's office. It's the Raven's office. Yeah. Where they do all the interviewing of interrogating of Kevin Spacey. or interrogating of Kevin Spacey. And that room had a big impact in how I designed the style in which I wanted to shoot the film because I knew I had this terrible page count, huge page count,

small environment. How do I keep it alive, keep it interesting, keep looking at things from a different angle and a different perspective? So I found that if I sort of flushed the floor out like a dance floor, used the dolly and used the zoom, but kept the zoom so slow that you could never actually tell you were moving, but move the camera just a little bit, like three feet here, four feet here, because that's all I had to move. You know, it was not a big office by any stretch of the imagination. And so you're pretty much hemmed in. So I began that style of, you know, like maybe a five foot dolly move, like a compound move,

perhaps with a little bit of zigging and zagging and dance flooring and a zoom that could, like I remember there's one zoom, a lot of that was on the Panavision 24-275mm lens, and there was a shot that ends where he goes, I'm not a rat, which was all cut into it, of course. But that shot actually went all the way from 24-275mm over the course of the scene. Now, the scene is like three, four minutes long as written. You know, it then got cut up a little bit. So you could have that sense of motion all the way through it and never really be aware of it consciously, but always feel it subconsciously.

Yeah. I mean, that's a real kind of claustrophobic set in a way, right? That office, you know, Chaz is sitting on the edge of desk many times, just kind of almost right over him and everything. And when I saw that in the extra, you talk about that, that extra featurette that's on the 4k release, you're talking about that. And then I rewatched it and I, you know, I noticed what you were saying and that it's very subtle and it really brings you right into that, that final final line because i was going to ask you how you filmed in that because that's an actual location it's not like there's set walls that are falling away that you could set up your what we did there was it's a real location it's a real

building the old it's an old newspaper um office we found an area against some windows where we could build one wall. So one wall of it, the wall behind his desk, could come out, and we could put a camera back there. So at least we could get a little farther away. Didn't help much on the other side, but at least there, you know, you could sort of get behind the person sitting on the desk or whatever like that. Yeah, it was very tight, you know. Is that the wall that had all of the production design elements that VertWall is really reading, we find out?

That's the wall? Yeah. Yeah. Talk a little bit about the collaboration that you do as a cinematographer with the production designer, Howard Cummings. as a cinematographer with the production designer, Howard Cummings? Well, after your relationship with the director, that's like your next... The director is your wife and the production designer is your mistress. Because the art director can be your greatest friend or your worst nightmare.

And so the earlier that you get involved with them, and you make sure that she or he is giving you what you need to execute what you have to do, whether it's floating walls, whether it's windows, whether it's, you know, whatever the logistical aspect. But even beyond the logistical aspect, when the look of the movie is being given birth to, there's a lot of midwives. The look of the movie is being given birth to. There's a lot of midwives. And that relationship with the production designer is one that, when it's working, gives you the opportunity as a cinematographer to really have an input into the tonality of the movie. At the end of the day, no matter how beautiful your lighting is, the actors that the director puts in front of you and the set that the production designer puts in front of you and the clothes that the costume designer, you know, dresses people in are all going to impact the way the movie looks. So a terrible set doesn't really help you with all the beautiful lighting in the world. It's still going to be a terrible set and a terrible looking movie. So the earlier that you get involved with that production designer

and the more that you can establish a rapport where you find out together what kind of movie you're making and then try to have a collaborative process where you're putting out ideas and coming up with solutions. As you know, I mean, half of what you do in filmmaking is sort of creative inspiration, maybe, and it's like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if there was a spaceship that comes over here? But then the other half of it is the problematic part, which is like, oh, man, like, how are we going to get the spaceship to go from here to there

if it's kind of this and a that? So it's like that production designer is your sort of partner in crime in not only conceiving what the thing is going to look like, but figuring out a way that you can realistically do it. And of course, all of that comes under the aegis of your director. So the other kind of set piece that I want to ask about was on the ship. You filmed inside the ship, which is very claustrophobic,

and, you know, in the hallways and everything. And then on the exterior of the ship. Tell us a little bit about that filming. You have to remember, this is a very low budget film, a really, really low budget film. And the ship was located in San Pedro. And it had a long history. I believe it was back in the 20s or something like that. It had been a yacht of the Kennedys, and then it was put into service during the war at one point. The people who owned it when we were coming down to shoot were a bit shady. I remember there was a day when we came down to film and the port had shut them down because they had illegally dumped oil into the water. But it was a very real, very unforgiving ship in terms of no flying of walls, let's put it that way.

And just to make it even better, we were shooting on the shortest nights of the year. If I recall, it was in June or something like that. So it was a huge challenge. But, you know, it was so picturesque. The ship itself had such a great look to it that it was hard to miss, really, you know. And I think we tried to use that to our advantage. Yeah, I mean, I was looking at it. And, of course, you've got a lot of the scenes, the climactic part where they're, you know,

the gang's actually doing the heist, or that's what they think they're doing. A lot of that shot at night. And some beautiful shots there of the, you know, the harbor, the ship. You've got the guys in their different locations and, you know, that was a great location. It looked great, but obviously you're probably, what, working late into the evening on those. Well, it was, like I said, it was the shortest night of the year.

So if you think about it, you know, June, I think it was the shortest nights of the of the year so if you think about it you know june i think it was june you're sometimes not getting dark till you know 8 8 39 o'clock at night right and then so you actually only have six seven hours of night so we didn't have much daytime there you know we had uh almost none to be honest so we tried to know, each day to like pluck off a day or two shot and then jump in there and do the rest in as fast as we could. That was one of the only days that we had a second unit because it was the only way that we were going to get through the work on the ship. And it was only, we only shot there a couple of days, 30 day schedule for the whole movie. So one day we brought in a second unit camera. Otherwise it was just all, you know, one camera.

Especially for that explosion. You probably needed that second unit for the explosion. Yeah. We had two cameras on that. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah. That was like the one day when I got to have a steady cam, like spend the money on that

one. Right. Well, the iconic scene, I think it's, you know, it's on the poster. I got to have a Steadicam like... Spend the money on that one, right? Yeah. Well, the iconic scene, I think it's, you know, it's on the poster. It was the original kind of concept. And that's the lineup. Where did you shoot the lineup scene? And tell us a little bit about the filming of that scene.

The lineup scene, you know, we built that set. I believe it was also at the Herald Examiner, but it was really just a wall. And then we built another wall in front of it with, you know, the observation window, kept the people in the foreground sort of unseen completely sort of silhouette. And it's one of the great excuses for just being flat light, because that's what they would have in that situation. And you create contrast by falling back and showing the sort of silhouette quality of the foreground. You know, the sort of famous story of that scene is how these guys couldn't stop laughing. Because, you know, Brian and Chris used it to play as kind of irreverence and, you know, these like wise guys, both like criminals and like wise guys like wisecrackers.

But it really came from the fact that those guys were actually having a great time together as an ensemble. And they were goofing around a lot and provoking each other a lot. So ironically, it worked for the scene. But when they're cracking up in there, that's totally real. They're just like barely holding it together. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. So it's a good time to talk about the cast. We had a cast of younger actors that have gone on to just have amazing careers. I mean, Gabriel Byrne was a

star then, Kevin Spacey, but a lot of those guys were not as well-known. What was it like working with them? Yeah, I mean, Gabriel was pretty well-known, but the other actors were really quite unknown. Even Kevin Spacey, he had gotten some attention for something right before it, but was pretty much sort of a character actor, kind of unknown actor. And without question, this launched him to another level. You know, his performance was extraordinary. And Benicio Del Toro, you know, who, you know, was really unknown at that point. I did do another movie with him, but this was long before he became any kind of a leading

man or a known face. So I think, you know, Brian did a terrific job of casting and they had a great balance together. You know, I think the best in each one of those guys was definitely brought out. Yeah. I remember, you know, watching the movie, obviously, when it came out and it was obviously an ensemble cast. It was really great. It's told through the perspective of the criminals. The detectives are kind of, you know, was I guess he's more of a customs detective or customs inspector of some kind. You know, he has to play the, the guy who's the heavy on, uh, verbal and even the line where he's like, I'm, you know, I'm going to get to the bottom of this cause I'm smarter than you. It was really great. And that the humor sometimes came from that fact that you as the audience,

you just know that that's not going to be the case because of the voiceover that's coming from verbal. Well, you know that because you've seen the movie before. But actually, I think one of the brilliances of Usual Suspects is that you don't know that because the scene is being done as like an interrogation, and it's the sort of structure, being done as an, as like an interrogation and it's the sort of structure, the skeleton of,

of the film, that interrogation really becomes like a voiceover. It becomes a narrator. Right. And the great news is that it's an unreliable narrative. Right. Like almost everything that he says is complete bull. So you're being given a, and it's one, you know, not only to the writing and Brian's directing, but you have to really appreciate the performance of Kevin

Spacey that he really does sell the idea of this pathetic, you know, kind of petty criminal that you almost sympathize for because like, you know, he's just some poor schmuck who got sort of bullied by this uber criminal. And you realize only at the very end when he walks out in the street that, oh, wait a minute. I mean, it's one of the great twists of, if it wasn't for that twist, I don't know that we would, for all the other good attributes of the film, I don't know that we'd be talking about it today. Yeah. You walk away and you, you know,

you walk away from watching that movie in the theater and you're just talking to your friends. I mean, you can't go home. You're like, okay, we have to go get a beer or coffee or something to talk about this. It's one of those kinds of endings. Well, the legacy of this movie, I think it endures it's, you know, the script itself won a Academy award. Kevin Spacey won an Academy Award. It really propelled the career, I think, of everybody involved. What's your thoughts about the legacy of the movie? It's one of those movies that I think has found a very strong cult

following and really beyond a cult following. It's one of those movies that, you know, didn't really do a huge box office. It was successful only because it was made so cheaply. But it clearly was a very defining film in terms of the sort of, you know, modern noir and this fascination with the whodunit and thriller. Right. And its style. So I think it really formed a lot of films and filmmakers that came afterwards.

And because of that, it's probably been given more of a life almost since its release than it did during the time of its initial release. So, you know, I find that for, you know, having done over 50 movies, you know, people very often say, oh, you did Usual Suspect. I'm like, yeah, I was like in my 20s. You know, like, wow, that's. Yeah. And I was thinking, you know, I was kind of growing up in that that time period after college as well.

And so I was thinking back and I realized, you know, wait a second. It was the 90s were just this amazing decade for independent films. I mean, you had El Mariachi and Reservoir Dogs in 1992. You had 94, you had Pulp Fiction, Clerks. You guys came out with Usual Suspects in 95. It was a great time when you look back for those kinds of crime, action, violent, independent, whatever you want to say, films. And a lot of those filmmakers were very young in their career. Yeah, there was a real, I think there was a real love of the sort of modern gangster movie,

you know. And I always tell the story that right after Usual Suspect, I got offered another kind of movie like that. And I really liked the director. He was really interesting, but it was like too much in the same genre as Usual Suspects. So I politely declined. And that was Paul Thomas Anderson. But I think that generation of filmmaker sort of brought life back to the old style gangster noir film, but with a modern, more contemporary twist. Yeah, it's a great era. And I'm so happy to see this film coming out in 4K. Let's talk a little bit about the remaster. What was kind of your involvement in that in terms of looking at it or reviewing it? So we just recently did a 4K master that was colored by Blake, David Blazingame, who was a really talented colorist over at a place called DupliTech.

And it was a really interesting experience for me just revisiting the film, having done a film finish on it almost 30 years ago. And now looking at it digitally, I had done a, you know, TV version of it, you know, when it first came out. But this was like looking at it anew. And it was a really interesting challenge because, you know, you have such powerful tools in the DI, you kind of want to reshoot it, but then you can't. The whole point is to preserve the authenticity of the original film. So I found it really interesting to constantly go like, oh, I could, but no, that's not the way it was in the original. The one thing that is interesting about it is the challenge of replicating what you got in a film finish back when it was first released.

Because the film at the time was not only done on, you know, 35 millimeter film, but it was also shown in a film projection. You know, a release print that had been done through an internegative and an interpositive. a release print that had been done through an inter-negative and an inter-positive. So you have to kind of figure out how much is it acceptable to sort of do something that's cleaner and how much, like, what can you do to replicate the experience of what it originally was, you know, up to a point. Because after all, why are you doing it in 4K? Right. you know, up to a point because after all, why are you doing it in 4k? You're doing it for a higher resolution, but you're really doing it to replicate what originally existed. Cause especially not being the director, like I didn't feel it was,

you know, my place to be reinventing the wheel. So how does it look? I think it looks great. Yeah, it was wonderful to see. I love the fact that it'll hopefully get back out into the world in a truer form. Yeah, and I think you mentioned in the featurette that this is as good, if not better, than it looked when it was released in the theaters. Yeah, you know, like most cinematographers, I love film and I do have my nostalgic sentimentality toward film. But I don't think I really miss film projection. You know, I don't think I miss film dirt or film bouncing in the gate. So when you see digital projection, I just find it in a funny

way more cinematic because it's really purely what was in the camera, not the degradation that comes from all of the other generations of printing and the flaws of film projection. Hi, this is Tim with a quick message. I know some of you have books or films or work in the entertainment industry, and maybe you've thought about going on a podcast or launching your own podcast. Well, I can attest to the fact that launching a podcast is a lot of work and not necessarily something you want to try on your own, but podcasting is also a great way to connect with your fan base and to get the word out about your book or show or film festival or the latest about your business.

So if you're interested in learning more about how you can use podcasting, send me an email at info at the extras.tv or look for the link of the show notes. Now back to our show. Before I let you go, I did want to ask you because I'm such a fan of you and your career. This film launched you and Brian into quite a collaboration. I mean, you guys did the X-Men films together. You did Valkyrie. What kind of fueled that collaboration? Obviously, this movie, but what about it fueled that collaboration for so many films?

I don't know. You know, I think that for whatever reason, it worked on Us suspects. There was a chemistry there that, you know, we both got the best out of each other, I think. What initially to me was, oh my God, I'm not getting any kind of shot list or anything from this fellow actually turned into a tremendous creative freedom, which, you know, I'm very grateful for. And, you know, Brian, I always had a tremendous amount of trust in his taste level and his acumen about storytelling and about doing things in an elegant and really classy way. So I enjoyed delivering stuff for him, knowing that I could trust him to always sort of go for the best look, the best cut, the best storytelling. And it worked, you know, I mean, it wasn't without its, you know, ups and downs. And certainly over the course of 10 movies, a lot of it wasn't necessarily smooth. But at the end of the day, the product was good.

And, you know, sometimes you have to go over those potholes to get to the finish line. Well, you guys have had a tremendous amount of popular success with many of those films. But I did want to skip to maybe it was, you know, your last collaboration here, but that was Bohemian Rhapsody, which came out in 2018, which obviously won a ton of awards. It won the Oscar for Rami Malek for actor, and it won for your collaborator, John Ottman, for editing. I haven't brought him up yet, but tell us a little bit about that experience on that film. Well, Bohemian Rhapsody was a great experience,

and I love the music. I love Queen, being in London and being in London for London and really celebrating that period of music. And it was interesting because early on, Brian told me that, you know, there was going to be a PG-13 movie. And, you know, Freddie Mercury was known as this sort of, not just a gay icon, but like a real sort of icon of the hedonism of the 70s and the 80s, you know, and this sort of decadence and partying and promiscuity, all of that kind of aura that was around the culture at that time. How do you tell that story as a PG-13? And what he said to me was, he says, you know, I want to introduce the music to the biggest number of people possible. I want kids that weren't born then to find out about Queen and fall in love with Queen.

And I think, you know, we were successful in that. You know, it's not a whitewash of who he was. And it's not a whitewash of who he was. It deals very heavily with his death from AIDS and what the horror of the beginnings of this disease coming pandemic was. But it was also a celebration of the music. And I think that's what was important to him, that the movie celebrates the music. Yeah, you guys achieved exactly what your goal was. It was unbelievable to see young people with their Queen songs and even young people as early as elementary.

I mean, you just hear now Queen ever since 2018, the familiarity of Queen and the popular culture and the revival of songs was amazing. And as a fan of Queen as, as well, it was tremendous to see it embraced by the younger generation. Well, I want to jump back a couple of years before that to 2011 to a film that I really am a fan of, and that's Drive.

And that was directed by Nicholas Winding Refn and stars Ryan Gosling. I was rewatching that a while back. It really is visually stunning. Maybe you could tell us just briefly a little bit about your approach to that film. I mean, as you can tell, I'm a fan of noir, Usual Suspects, and this Drive also has that noir element to it. Talk a little bit about working on that film. element to it. Talk a little bit about working on that film. Well, Drive was another great experience with a small budget and a tight schedule. Nick Reffin, European director, and it was his first movie in the States and first movie in Hollywood.

And I think he was in part fascinated with Hollywood and with LA. And he really wanted LA to be like a character in the movie. And this was when the Alexa camera had just been made and came out. And I totally fell in love with what it could do in low light situations. And so Drive really became kind of, you know, the metaphor is that a sort of exploration of the dark side of L.A. culture. And we did a lot of it in the dark. It was a fascinating experience. And, I mean, working with Ryan Gosling, too, and watching his whole process and his process with Nick was really, really fascinating. So, you know, Drive was one of those great moments where the right director with the right script, the right actor just all came together in a way that, you know, is very hard to replicate.

Well, this podcast is not about Drive and it's not about Bohemian Rhapsody, but it is about you. And I appreciate you taking the time to talk about them briefly. I did have one other film that I thought was worth talking about that is a Netflix film. And I watched it recently and that came out in 2020 and that's Extraction. And I know that you're a big proponent of films being watched in the theater. And I don't think you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Extraction had a theatrical release.

But when I watched it, it is shot for theatrical. Your wide shots of the city, the slums, whatever it might be, the different shots of India and wherever you, I did want to ask you actually, where did you shoot it? But it is so cinematic. Can you talk a little bit about the experience of working on that film and within that, knowing that it was going to actually play on the smaller screen for almost all the viewers? Well, when I shoot a movie, I don't really think about like, oh, it's going to be on a small screen. I really try to think about it.

So I'm shooting a movie. I'm going to shoot it the way I would shoot a movie. Extraction was a film that when I was first offered it, it was at the tail end of Bohemian Rhapsody. And I actually didn't really want to do it. But they said, meet the director. And I was like, oh, he's this stunt coordinator guy. They said, meet the director. And I was like, oh, he's this stunt coordinator guy.

You know. So they set up a meeting, and it's in a vegetarian restaurant. And I go, hmm, that's interesting. So I go and I meet this, because it's an action movie. I'm talking about some macho guy. So I go to this vegetarian restaurant, and I meet this guy with a big beard and he starts talking about the movie and he says, I want to do an arthouse movie disguised as an action film. And as soon as he said that to me, I thought, okay, I think maybe I'll do this movie.

Because I thought it's, you know, Tom, careful with your stereotypes. Just because he's a stunt coordinator doesn't mean he's not thinking about story and character. And sure enough, he was. And Sam Hargrave, who's now at the tail end of completing Extraction 2, was a force of nature. He's an amazing guy, incredibly hardworking, disciplined, clearly knows the craft of action storytelling, what to do with the camera, what to do with the actors, what to do with the pacing. But he's much more than that.

He's a real visualist. He's a real storyteller. And he had a very unusual, not typical background for that kind of work. And it was a tremendous collaboration. And I'm like really fascinated to see what they do on the sequel. I was working on another project for the Russo. So I didn't do the sequel, but I'm sure it's going to be amazing. Where did you end up filming a lot of that?

Extraction was filmed in India, Thailand, and a little bit in Bangladesh. Okay. Yeah. That's amazing. And I loved the international locations and everything. Now, I did want to ask you about a scene in that film that I'm like, I have to ask you when I get the chance. It's about 38 minutes into it. The main character

and the boy are in the apartment. And it looks to me like you have a steadicam with a continuous shot where you're just going around that apartment complex and he is being attacked by one policeman after another. You know, was that a Steadicam shot that was that long? I believe what you're talking about in extraction is the one-er. We had about an 11-minute sequence that was all meant to look like it was one shot. And it's more than just the apartment complex. It goes in and out of cars. Yeah, he falls down.

It falls off roofs. And it's actually comprised of what we call stitches. There's probably over 30 pieces that were all blended together. And I'm sure in the sequel, there's going to be one like that that will be even bigger, you know, longer and even more spectacular. But ours involved very careful planning of where all the stitches happen, how you blend one shot into another, how you blend the action from one into another. And initially, I was thinking, well, you know, we're just doing this, you know, like, is this just like a gimmick? But I think one of the things you have to really give Sam a lot of credit for is that that one-er really was immersive.

It became a way that from an audience point of view, you were completely sucked into these characters. You were in the moment with them. You were in the truck with them when they were down. You were running down the hall with them. And there's a really interesting shift where you're sort of following Chris Hemsworth character the whole way through. And then all of a sudden you're with the boy and then back to Chris Hemsworth. So that was, you know, took weeks of planning and a couple of weeks of shooting.

I believe there was something like 35, 36 separate pieces that all had to be blended together to create the illusion of the single shot. Well, the illusion worked. And as you said, it really draws you in because, I mean, I'm watching it and just the camera following Hemsworth there, then to the boy and Hemsworth then pops back in, you know, and the people coming around the corner. I mean, the action is nonstop because of the way it's put together. It's fascinating and it works. And I would love to see that scene on the big screen to our point a little bit earlier, because I watched The Raid, which is another terrific, obviously, action film that takes place in an apartment. And you get a lot of that same kind of action, right? that takes place in an apartment. And you get a lot of that same kind of action, right?

Where you're in the hallways, you're in the balconies, you're running through the rooms, and there's all the violence and gunfire and mayhem going on around you. And I really enjoyed that scene, but I was kind of wishing that extraction was on the big screen for more people to see, especially fans of the action genre. But that was a terrific film and I wanted to bring it up. Thank you. Well, of the terrific amount of films that you've done over the years, is there a favorite that you kind of look back on and you really just think, wow, that was... I don't think there's a favorite. You know, it's kind of like saying, you know, who's your favorite child? Right.

I do think there's some films that deserved a bigger audience than they got. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is one that comes into mind. A movie that was directed, the first movie that was directed by George Clooney, which I'm very proud of and I thought was a really

good, imaginative, visionary story told in a really engaging and poignant and yet funny way. But he had his battles with Harvey Weinstein, who was Miramax at the time, and they never really released the film properly. So that's a film that I wish more people had gotten to see and appreciate. Tremendous performance by Sam Rockwell.

Three Kings is a film that I guess got a pretty good audience, but I think is unusually poignant even today and is, I think, one of the best films that David O. Russell's done, and I've always been very proud of that film. But, you know, you love different, just like you love different kids in different ways, you love different films in different ways. Unlike kids, there's a few that you just don't like and talk about. That's great. Well, those were great movies too. I remember watching Three Kings and Confessions in the theaters and, you know, coming out of Confessions, thinking that Rockwell's performance was just amazing

and those films are tremendous. So it's fun to hear you talk a little bit about that as well. Well, Tom, it was a real pleasure having you on the podcast. I'm a big fan. Likewise. I appreciate you coming on today. Thank you. Well, thank you and good luck.

And I hope everybody gets to enjoy Usual Suspects one more time. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode taking you behind the scenes with one of the most respected cinematographers working in Hollywood today. I found it fascinating to hear Thomas talk about the color correction and 4K restoration work that he was involved in for this release. I don't think that's a perspective we've highlighted on the show before. If you're interested in purchasing the 4K plus Blu-ray of The Usual Suspects, it releases October 25th and includes all of the legacy extras plus one new extra called The Devil in the Details Shooting The Usual Suspects, which highlights the work of Thomas Sigel. I'll have links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv. So be sure and check those out.

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