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" 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. "

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" All great directors or anyone who has a strong vision like Scorsese needs to have a lot of support around them. I think from the very beginning - when we met each other - he realised he could trust me to do what was right for his movies. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Trust

Strong

Great

" The studio was very nervous about 'Raging Bull.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" An actor's performance can be improved or shaped - or ruined - by what takes you use, how long you are on the actor's face, what line you put on the other actor's face, and when do you use close-ups or wide shots or two shots. "

" I have a great relationship and the highest respect for Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio. But working with De Niro has been simply incredible. While I was editing 'Raging Bull,' I was literally unable to take my eyes off him. "

" In the very beginning, women were editors because they were the people in the lab rolling the film before there was editing. Then when people like D. W. Griffith began editing, they needed the women from the lab to come and splice the film together. Cecil B. DeMille's editor was a woman. Then, when it became a more lucrative job, men moved into it. "

" 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. "

" '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 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. "

" With Technicolor restorations, it's about getting the color right. "

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

" I knew nothing about editing when I met Mr. Scorsese... Through a series of weird events, I ended up at New York University, and there was Martin Scorsese, and he had some troubles with a film I was able to fix. That's the only reason I became a filmmaker. "

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

" I know a lot of editors who are very bitter about the directors they work with. They feel they could have done a better job, and I say to them, 'Oh really? Why don't you go try - it's not easy.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I hope films will be somehow preserved and seen by as many people as possible in the future. There are endless treasures for audiences to discover, if only we can keep them from disappearing. "

" 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. "

" 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 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

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Know

Best

" '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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Editing is really like plumbing a good deal of the time. You put two things together, and a current runs through it. "

" Ballet dancers really know how to enter a room. "

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