Thelma Schoonmaker Quotes

It’s wonderful to work on footage by someone who understands how to get it to cut right, which a lot of directors don’t.

There’s a great deal of mystery in film editing, and that’s because you’re not supposed to see a lot of it. You’re supposed to feel that a film has pace and rhythm and drama, but you’re not necessarily supposed to be worried about how that was accomplished.

Editing is a lot about patience and discipline and just banging away at something, turning off the machine and going home at night because you’re frustrated and depressed, and then coming back in the morning to try again.

Having been raised overseas, I wanted to become a diplomat. But the State Department thought I was too ‘liberal‘ to be happy with that job.

With digital editing, I now can make many, many versions of a scene.

My family goes way back in New York. So I am a New Yorker; I feel like a New Yorker. It’s in my bones.

You have to have a great director to make a great movie.

Even though my parents are American, I spent my whole childhood and adolescence abroad.

I’m not a big believer in fate, but, boy, I’ve had a lot of lucky breaks.

‘Raging Bull‘ was just a dream to work on, but it took a lot of work to get all those fights to work right and incorporate them properly into the story.

I do think there’s not enough film history being taught and appreciated. Maybe it’s being taught, but I’ve heard from professors that young kids don’t want to look at black-and-white movies. And that’s 85 years of film history, with masterpiece after masterpiece.

Cutting improvisation is really hard, because things don’t match, and you end up with some bad cuts sometimes. But we’d rather have the bad cuts and the great improv.

I don’t think you can be a great director without knowing a lot about editing.

I think everyone loves ‘The Departed.’ That was a movie that had a lot of problems structurally. And we had to battle with it. Fight. Experiment. Try different things. And I think finally we hit it.

I particularly remember with ‘Casino,’ everyone was like, ‘It’s not ‘Goodfellas!” No, it’s not ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right: it’s a different movie. Now, everyone thinks ‘Casino’ is a masterpiece.

‘Raging Bull’ was badly received at first. It took 10 years for it to be recognised.

I can access footage much quicker, yes. But in terms of living with a film and knowing what’s right, digital doesn’t do that for you.

‘Silence,’ I think, was the hardest, because it’s so different from everything we’ve done before and required very delicate handling and trying to find the right meditative pace.

In certain fight scenes in ‘Raging Bull’ – for example, the shorter ones – I literally just took the head and tail of the shot and put it together, and it all worked beautifully.

Some young filmmakers, unfortunately, don’t have the ability to resist attempts to maybe cut their films down unfairly.

Everybody would like us to make ‘Goodfellas’ over and over and over again.

Boxing is insane and, in my opinion, should be banned.

Throwing things out is one of the most difficult and important things you ever have to do.

If I hadn’t met Scorsese, I would never have become a filmmaker. He has taught me everything I know about editing and has given me the best job in the world.

If forced to choose my favourite film, I would have to say ‘Raging Bull’ because it was the first feature film I worked on, and it was like having pure gold in my hands. But my husband‘s film ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ is equally a favourite because of its enormous emotional power.

I was just stunned when I came to America. I didn’t know anything about rock music or football, and I felt very out of it… America was like a foreign country to me at first.

I remember, at the Oscars in 1991, ‘Dances with Wolves‘ won that year, and we were nominated for ‘Goodfellas.’ One of my peers said to me, ‘Why’d you make that bad jump cut?’ I said, ‘Which one? We had about 20 in the film!’ He was really upset about it.

There are more women editors than people realise. I think we’re more able to keep our eye on what the film needs. Between men, sometimes it’s a real ego battle, and that’s very bad for the film.

I started in documentaries, and that was a great help to me with improvisation, because with documentaries, you’re handed a big lump of footage, and you have to shape it and make it into a story – which I love doing.

In ‘Silence,’ there was no improvisation at all; really, you’re dealing with a script and a 17th century way of speaking.

Even in ‘The Red Shoes,’ a film that nobody ever has complaints about, there are enormous continuity bumps, and it doesn’t matter. You know why? Because you’re being carried along by the power of the film.

As you can imagine, between Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese, I’ve had quite a rich life!

The studios are nervous on every movie. It never ends, because Marty’s movies are so unusual. He doesn’t repeat himself, so they don’t know what to expect. We have to fight hard to keep them from being ruined. Film students can’t believe that when I tell them, because they think, ‘Well, it’s Martin Scorsese.’