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" 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.' "

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" 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.' "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Know

You

Better

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

Again

Make

" I have the best job in the world. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If forced to choose my favourite film, I would have to say 'Raging Bull' because it was the first feature film I worked on, and it was like having pure gold in my hands. But my husband's film 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' is equally a favourite because of its enormous emotional power. "

" Whenever I can, I like to go to Cotswolds, in England, where my husband had a cottage. I spend my time reading his diaries, which I would like to publish. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

Reading

Husband

" 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. "