Welcome to Split Decision! Each week, Ryan will pose a question to our staff of knowledgable and passionate film lovers and share the responses. Chime in on Twitter, Facebook, our Instagram, or in the comments below.

This week’s question:

In honor of Temple’s University and Scribe’s event with production designer Wynn Thomas, please share something you like from his body of work.

There’s a lot of great words below on his collaborations with Spike Lee and also Mars Attacks! but I wanted to highlight Breach. This underrated spy thriller, based on actual events, is a great study in production design as contrasts. The high ceilings of the church featured in the film contrasts the claustrophobic spaces of the CIA offices. Those cold and drab offices are also contrasted by the warmness in the homes of the two main characters (played by Ryan Phillippe and Chris Cooper). But those homes also feel different, and capture the difference in career and economic status of the two men.
–Ryan Silberstein, The Red Herring

Production design is often appreciated in films without truly being appreciated. If we believe the characters live in the worlds they inhabit, the work production designers like Wynn Thomas do goes unnoticed. But as his collaborations with Spike Lee show, Thomas is able to convey so much about the characters in Lee’s films, and the cool tones and claustrophobia in Inside Man do this just as the dislocation the young character in Crooklyn has when she leaves New York for Atlanta.–Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

While Thomas’ work on Spike Lee’s films is undoubtedly more prominent, I’d like to highlight the production design on one of my personal (albeit outdated) queer films, Too Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar. I know it’s a mouthful, but stick with me here. We don’t have to get into the whole thing but basically the movie is the other 90s roadtrip drag queen movie that forever lives in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’s shadow. What Wynn Thomas does with the production design of this film is really beautiful though. For an even more in depth analysis of his design, check out this article from Sela Lewis. 

Once the girls get stranded in a small town in the central plains, Thomas puts them on sets awash in desert yellows, dirty browns, and dusty greys. This allows each of the queen’s unique style and personality to really pop. While the majority of the townspeople just mistake them for flashy big city girls, the impact they begin to have on them slowly shows up in their lightened moods, bold wardrobe changes, and, yes, the sets. As the country folk strengthen their bonds with these strange out-of-towners, Thomas gradually brightens up their environments until the whole town is awash in vibrant reds and pinks for the annual Strawberry Social event. Wynn Thomas’ influence on the overall feel and subtle changes in mood are undeniable. He also taught me how to redecorate a drab motel room with a couple (few dozen) scarves, a skill for which I am eternally grateful. –Matt Crump, Staff Writer

Crooklyn! Specifically the Carmichael family brownstone in Bed-Stuy. The home is gorgeous - historic and warm with so much character and life. A lot of movies can make family homes look pristine or aspirational - what I love about Crooklyn is how Thomas makes the home feel real, lived in. It reminded me of my own family’s home at that time and whenever I catch Crooklyn now, I’m immediately flooded with feelings of nostalgia. Family dynamics drive the story, but the center of all that, for me, was the beautiful, real home environment that Wynn created. –Jaime Davis, The Fixer

I love the look of She’s Gotta Have It. Nola’s Brooklyn apartment is a dream. The tallest ceilings, art everywhere, an artist’s workspace, and that bed - not pushed up snuggly against the wall like every single bed I have ever had, no. It is a prominent piece with free space all around it, with that… headboard. I’m calling it a headboard, but it’s more like open shelving to the sides and a big rounded shelf behind. Totally covered with candles! Like, 3544 candles! Ughhhhh. How romantical. I love it so much, it’s unforgettable. On top of how beautiful her place is, the fact that it is shot in black and white only ups the romance for me. And best of all? It’s where Nola has the freedom to be herself and love herself, on her terms. –Ashley Jane Davis, Staff Writer

With a career as vast and interesting as Wynn Thomas’s, especially when you really dig into his credits, it’s hard to pick a favorite. One that I really adore is his work on Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! It’s a buck wild film that at once fits Burton’s aesthetics, while being the kind of colorful romp you might expect from a Barry Sonnenfeld flick (even considering the CGI). Given Thomas’s work on other flicks, it’s easy to see where some of it might have come from compared to the darker production design that lives in most of Burton’s filmography. Production design is fascinating because it’s one of those jobs that’s so vitally important to a film, especially a stylized film. Where would auteur directors like Burton, Sonnenfeld, or even production design dream director Wes Anderson actually be, without someone with such a strong but malleable vision like Thomas? –Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

Yeah, I have to agree with Emily here. Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X and any number of his other films probably look better, but Mars Attacks! is a feat. And the reason I have to go with it, ultimately, is that movies like Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X are very good. They would still work with a mediocre production designer. Mars Attacks! Has a lot of charm, but it lives and dies by its visual language. Every room in this movie looks exactly how it should look. I don’t want to undersell Tim Burton’s work here, but you look at Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it’s clear he’s easily steered into greenscreens and grotesque, muddy production design. Wynn Thomas somehow took the Topps aesthetic and kept it terrifying enough that I had Mars Attacks! nightmares as a kid but clean enough that it’s all still a joy to look at. I’d never throw down for Mars Attacks! as a masterpiece, but it’s one of the best looking movies of its era. –Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

In their early collaborations, Wynn Thomas’s production design served as an essential component of Spike Lee’s now-unmistakable style - a loving and specific reflection of Lee’s characters paired with idiosyncratic allusions to classic film, pop culture and current events. I’m always impressed with Thomas’s ability to conjure not just New York, but specific neighborhoods–She’s Gotta Have It’s Fort Greene, Jungle Fever’s Harlem, Crooklyn’s Bed-Stuy. These neighborhoods are not incidental settings, but almost characters themselves, informing every aspect of their films. In Do the Right Thing, their best film together, Thomas takes a couple blocks of Bed-Stuy and illustrates the demarcations between the neighborhood’s Black, Hispanic, Italian and Korean population through careful and deliberate production design. Until a recent rewatch, I hadn’t realized exactly how small the area covered by Do the Right Thing actually is; thanks, in part, to Thomas’s work, it feels like it contains the entire world–Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer