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" 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. "

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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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Film

Hours

Three

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I have the best job in the world. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "