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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. "

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" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Together

Problems

Ideas

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My job is so wonderful. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Job

Wonderful

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

Again

Make

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I have the best job in the world. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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

Heart

Moment

" The studios are nervous on every movie. It never ends, because Marty's movies are so unusual. He doesn't repeat himself, so they don't know what to expect. We have to fight hard to keep them from being ruined. Film students can't believe that when I tell them, because they think, 'Well, it's Martin Scorsese.' "

" 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. "

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