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" 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. "

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" 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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have the best job in the world. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" '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. "

" 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

" '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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" We do documentaries on the history of cinema in between our feature films. "

" When you're a film-maker, sometimes you have to be a slave to continuity. "

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

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