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

Thelma Schoonmaker

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" I never thought I would get married: I'm such a workaholic. "

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

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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" 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. "

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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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" It's part of your job always as an editor: you always have to drop stuff. "

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" To receive footage that has been shot with editing in mind, it is a blessing. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" I always thought that's the wonderful thing about filmmaking: people see things differently. "

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" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

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" 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

" 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

" '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. "

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" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" Film, if properly cared for, will last almost 100 years, but digital will not. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" Everybody would like us to make 'Goodfellas' over and over and over again. "

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" From the moment I met Martin Scorsese in 1962, he educated me about the films that had taught him so much about filmmaking. He had been deeply affected, even as a child, by great films that stretched his mind and struck into his heart, and he was eager to share them with friends and people who worked with him or with actors who were in his films. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

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" My job is so wonderful. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" People expect artists to be too normal, I think. I've been around enough of them now to see that they're very extraordinary human beings who behave differently than ordinary human beings. If they weren't as sensitive as they are, they wouldn't be great artists. They are not the same as us. People should just learn to accept that. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

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" 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.' "

Thelma Schoonmaker