'Cherry' Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel on ‘The Usual Suspects’, 'X-Men', and More
“FILM IS DRAMA, AND DRAMA IS CREATED BY THE RELATIONSHIP OF OPPOSITES: DARK AND BRIGHT, NIGHT AND DAY. I’M ALWAYS LOOKING FOR WAYS TO EXPRESS THE DEGREE OF DRAMA IN ANY GIVEN SCENE.”
Alfonso Cuarón put it best: “no one single film has ever existed without cinematography.” Film is a visual medium. It can be musical, it can be audible, and it can be performance based, but without visuals, it ceases to be film. Cinematographers are the principal figures responsible for creating the visual atmosphere of every film you have ever watched. Every single emotional reaction any of us have had to a film, every single image that has burned itself into our minds and shaped our love of cinema, is at least partially the responsibility of a cinematographer.
Newton Thomas Sigel - Tom, as he prefers to go by - has as deep an understanding of this fact as any filmmaker working today. Born in Detroit and discovering painting early on in his life, Sigel moved to New York City to study the craft, before becoming a fellow at the Whitney Museum. It was here, as he developed a deep understanding of composition, that he realized he wanted to do even more with it.
“I kept wanting to move through the image, around the image, to see the image move around me," said Sigel. This obsession led him to pursue cinematography, "clearly filmmaking was where I was meant to be.” Sigel worked on several documentaries, including "El Salvador: Another Vietnam", before pairing up with the icon Haskell Wexler as director of photography for 1985’s "Latino", a semi-fictional feature that set a romantic drama against a backdrop of the Contras invading Nicaragua.
From there, Sigel went on to alternate between work as a director of photography on films like "Salmonberries" and "Money for Nothing", as well as second unit work on "Platoon", "Wall Street", and "Casino". It was in 1995 that Sigel crafted the iconic imagery for "The Usual Suspects", not only one of the best-shot films of the 1990s but also one that began a woefully unfortunate trend. Sigel is arguably the greatest cinematographer to never receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography. Between "Suspects", "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", and "Drive", Sigel has been snubbed no less than three times. Hopefully, with his amazing work - in three different aspect ratios - on Spike Lee's "Da 5 Bloods", which has so far garnered Sigel nominations in various critic groups and awards ceremonies, the streak can be broken.
Sigel’s latest work is on the Russo brothers’ “Cherry”, starring Tom Holland as a young Iraq War veteran whose PTSD turns to drug addiction, and whose addiction leads to crime. It’s a film that I enjoyed overall, but particularly loved how it was shot. I was lucky enough to sit down with Sigel for over an hour to talk about “Cherry”, as well as the rest of his career. On getting the gig for “Cherry”, Sigel was hooked as soon as he read the script. “I had done ‘Extraction’ [produced by the Russo brothers], and they were looking to do something a little out of the box. They sent me the screenplay, and I just loved the irreverent and ironic perspective [of it]. There was no saying no to that.”
A distinctive visual element of “Cherry” is the way Sigel plays with light and darkness, including encasing characters entirely in silhouette without losing any of the surrounding light. “Film is drama, and drama is created by the relationship of opposites: dark and bright, night and day,” said Sigel. “I’m always looking for ways to express the degree of drama in any given scene. If you look at ‘Cherry’, what you see is a naive man who falls in love. When his heart is broken, he goes off to war, gets PTSD, and when he comes back is unable to fit into society. So you have a story where it begins with potential, with love, and it goes from that quality to what eventually is a very colorless, dark color palette. The darkness starts to take over. That relationship between dark and light is a direct outgrowth of what’s happening to your principal character emotionally.”
Touching on some of Sigel’s earlier work, “Latino” stands out primarily because Sigel got to work with someone as legendary as Haskell Wexler so early in his career, but also because, despite being a really compelling feature, it remains largely unseen and even difficult to track down in order to watch. “‘Latino’ was like my film school,” said Sigel. “Haskell showed me a script about the war against Somoza. At the time, Somoza was gone and the Sandinistas were in power, but there were rumors that there was this counter-revolutionary army trying to overthrow the Sandinistas. I said to Haskell, ‘[do] you want to do a movie about what was, or do you want to do it about what is?’ Because it’s so rare that Hollywood does a political movie about what’s happening at the moment.”
Sigel went down to Honduras in order to do some guerilla filmmaking of a military maneuver that was already happening, so that they would have some cheap but effective second unit footage. This was amidst rumors that the U.S. were funding the operation. “No one had ever filmed the Contras, and the Reagan administration was denying that they existed,” said Sigel. We said, ‘we’re in Honduras, why don’t we go find these Contras?’ We did, and after a very long courtship, we were able to get permission to film them. So we filmed this war between the Contras and the Sandinistas, and that became the first footage that was ever shot of them, proof that they existed and that the U.S. was backing them. So Haskell’s feature turned into a breaking news story.”
There have been periodic accusations that “Latino” failed to find an audience - or even a proper release - because the Reagan administration tried to bury it, but Sigel doesn’t believe that to be the case. “There was [pushback] on the news footage, because that’s what broke the story, but by the time [‘Latino’] came out, there wasn’t so much. The disappointment for me was that I think Haskell felt the need to make it a more commercial movie, [with] a love story, a female lead, a lot of stuff that ‘Platoon’ proved you didn’t actually need to have a successful movie [about war].”
On “The Usual Suspects”, Sigel collaborated with Bryan Singer for the first time, and crafted one of the most widely-celebrated neo-noir films of all time. However, while the film rightly is praised for its screenplay, tension, plot twists, and performances, an integral element in delivering the atmosphere of all of the above elements - Sigel’s cinematography, which remains possibly his career-best - is often sidelined in discussions of the film. “I think it’s such a complex and verbal screenplay, that I think the writing and structural complexity is what has drawn people to it over the years,” said Sigel, who nonetheless expressed admiration of the film and his contribution to it. We nerded out a bit about some specific shots in the film, but also the use of darkness in the film to accentuate the lowest points for each of the characters. “[‘The Usual Suspects’] was always meant to be a modern film noir,” said Sigel, “[and] it was intended to have that quality. I think [darkness] is just part of the lexicon of that genre.”
Sigel went on to collaborate with Singer again on several of the X-Men franchise’s films, including 2000’s “X-Men” and its sequel, “X2”. These first two films were nothing short of a revelation for the comic book genre. Sigel can largely be credited with establishing the “look” of 00s superhero films, however, the cinematographer himself opines that the distinctive look actually came about naturally, as a result of its deep thematic content. “X-Men was like a drama,” said Sigel. “It had this whole underlying theme of this struggle between pacifism and the conciliatory nature of Martin Luther King, versus the more militant and separationist belief of Malcolm X.” On the overall approach to the film as a feasible drama rather than a fantastical superhero film, Sigel elaborated. “The whole concept of otherness was very close to the heart. One of the reasons it looked different from [comic book movies] that had been done before was we treated it as a drama. Not as a fantastical story, but as if it was real. I think that’s been done a fair amount since, but I think we started that.”
Something that has defined Sigel’s career, and exemplifies why his work is always so engaging, is the way he moves his camera or, rather, doesn’t move it. It’s almost a fool’s errand to watch one of his films trying to find the camera ever doing something that isn’t motivated by the story, the scene, the environment, or the characters within it. This is something that “Cherry” particularly showcases, with the camera alternating between serving Tom Holland’s every move at his highest points, to towering over him at his lowest. “I love expressionism, but I’m not a big fan of moving the camera just to move it,” said Sigel. “If you have a good story and good actors and you want to move the camera, then move your actors and get them to move the camera. To me, the camera’s another actor in the scene at any given time. There’s times to stay still and there’s times to move, and what’s happening in the story has to be the determining factor.”
Finally, Sigel elaborated on the American Society of Cinematographers, the work that they have done to promote and foster cinematography, and why their continued existence matters. “The ASC has promoted cinematography as an art form, and I think they’ve been instrumental in elevating what has been seen as a technical job into [being recognized as] an artistic job. It’s created a forum for cinematographers to get together, to share ideas. The funny thing is, you only have one cinematographer on a movie, so it’s not like you’re hanging out [together]. The ASC has been instrumental in being a place for doing that, and for bringing a worldwide recognition to what we do. I think viewers are [more interested in cinematography] today than they ever were. I’m sure that will continue as the techniques [behind] the stuff we do become more visible.”
In addition to “Cherry”, Sigel is also the director of photography on “Dog”, the upcoming directorial debut of Channing Tatum, as well as the Russo brothers’ “Citadel” which is currently in production in London. Beyond that, Sigel continues to be a championing voice for the art of cinematography and continues to learn from it as much as he inspires others to learn. “All the work you do, you’re learning. I’m learning as much today as I was on my very first movie. A lot of the things you do start to become part of your consciousness. I think every film I’ve worked on has had some influence in making me the filmmaker that I am today.”
Due to a recording issue, there are roughly 30 seconds missing from the beginning of this interview, including my first question and the start of Sigel’s answer. The question was regarding Sigel’s discovery of painting, and how that developed over time from his childhood, which led to Sigel discussing his fellowship at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where the audio below begins.
“Cherry” is scheduled to be released in theaters on February 26th, 2021, followed by Apple TV+ on March 12th. Listen to our interview with Newton Thomas Sigel about “Cherry”, “The Usual Suspects”, “X-Men” and more down below!