Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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

Related Quotes:

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" '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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" I'm not a big believer in fate, but, boy, I've had a lot of lucky breaks. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker

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

Thelma Schoonmaker

" 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. "

Thelma Schoonmaker