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" As you can imagine, between Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese, I've had quite a rich life! "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Quite
Life
Imagine
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" You have to have a great director to make a great movie. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
You
Make
Director
" One of our big tools is screening. We screen usually 12 times, which is much more than most filmmakers do, and we recut in between each one, because we really need to feel how the audience is reacting to the movie. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Tools
Audience
Big
" I'm not a big believer in fate, but, boy, I've had a lot of lucky breaks. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Boy
Lucky
Lot
" Even though my parents are American, I spent my whole childhood and adolescence abroad. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
American
Abroad
Parents
" It's hard for people to understand editing, I think. It's absolutely like sculpture. You get a big lump of clay, and you have to form it - this raw, unedited, very long footage. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
You
Understand
Long
" With Technicolor restorations, it's about getting the color right. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
About
Getting
Color
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Head
Bull
Example
" My job is so wonderful. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Job
Wonderful
" I just happened to see an ad saying 'Willing to train an assistant editor,' and I learned enough from that to go to NYU for just one summer course. That's all that I could afford. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Summer
Enough
Go
" I love improvisation. I mean, it's hard to edit, because things don't necessarily fall together - you have to find ways to give it a dramatic scope, shape. But it's so much fun. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Fall
Fun
Love
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Digital
You
Living
" Doing 3D on 'Hugo' was a big learning curve for me, but fun! "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Curve
Big
Learning
" I love being around great artists, and I've been around a few of them. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Love
Great
Few
" Film, if properly cared for, will last almost 100 years, but digital will not. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Digital
Almost
Film
" I'm not a person who believes in the great difference between women and men as editors. But I do think that quality is key. We're very good at organizing and discipline and patience, and patience is 50 per cent of editing. You have to keep banging away at something until you get it to work. I think women are maybe better at that. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Patience
Work
Women
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Ego
Eye
Men
" It's part of your job always as an editor: you always have to drop stuff. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Job
You
Your
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Bad
You
Sometimes
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Right
Remember
Everyone
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Music
Football
America
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Liberal
Be Happy
Thought
" I'm very lucky. Most of my friends wait long times for jobs and also don't get the chance to work on 20 films, like I have, with someone like Scorsese. I love working for him. I just would never - I can't imagine working for anybody else. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Work
Chance
Friends
" The studio was very nervous about 'Raging Bull.' "
Thelma Schoonmaker
About
Nervous
Raging
" '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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Find
Trying
Done
" 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. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Someone
Who
Right
" Ballet dancers really know how to enter a room. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
How
Room
Know
" Whenever I can, I like to go to Cotswolds, in England, where my husband had a cottage. I spend my time reading his diaries, which I would like to publish. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Reading
Go
Husband
" When we were cutting 'Raging Bull,' Martin Scorsese was watching 'The Films of Hoffmann' on a 16-mm print over and over and over again. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Over
Print
Watching
" We do documentaries on the history of cinema in between our feature films. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Documentaries
History
Our
" The difference between a film that ends up three hours and a film that is envisioned as three hours is that it's written that way. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Film
Hours
Three