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" 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. "

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

Ability

Young

Some

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

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

" 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

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

" One day, I read an extremely vague ad looking for someone interested in working in film. Seeing as I loved watching films, I replied, and I found myself working for this guy who did his own personal editing of scenes from Antonioni and Fellini films. "

" When you're in a movie with an audience, you can feel where a film is dragging. People start to move. They fidget. You need that perspective. To give it a cold eye. "

" 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. "

" 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

" I love being around great artists, and I've been around a few of them. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We don't worry about continuity because when we're doing so many improvs, it's better to get the laugh. It's better to get the great lines even if they're in the wrong part of the room. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have the best job in the world. "

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

" 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

Watching

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" That's the great thing about filmmaking: Things happen you don't know are going to happen at the end. "