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" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Great

You

Story

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

" 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.' "

" 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

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

" 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. "

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

" Doing 3D on 'Hugo' was a big learning curve for me, but fun! "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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 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. "

" '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. "

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

" I won the Oscar for 'Raging Bull' for those fight sequences. If you look at those fight sequences, those were so incredibly storyboarded and shot in an incredible way - that is the conception a good director has to bring. "

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

" I don't think enough directors know enough about editing. "

" 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. "

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

Again

Make

" Scorsese has very defined ideas about how to shoot a scene, and he's an editor himself - we cut together. It means he's constantly thinking about my problems while he's filming. "

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

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

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

" In 'Casino,' there was this scene where Bob De Niro tape-records Sharon Stone's phone call. Then he asks her about where she's going, and he catches her in a lie. It was a great scene, especially for Bob's work, but we found that, in light of the whole film, it wasn't needed. "

" 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. "