A biography for Thelma Schoonmakerhasn’t been written yet.
“Even though my parents are American, I spent my whole childhood and adolescence abroad.”
“'Raging Bull' was staggering to work on. I was well aware of how lucky I was to be in this extraordinary situation. That film is very unique. It stands on its own. It's just burned into the screen.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“'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.”
“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.'”
“With digital editing, I now can make many, many versions of a scene.”
“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.”
“To receive footage that has been shot with editing in mind, it is a blessing.”
“Doing 3D on 'Hugo' was a big learning curve for me, but fun!”
“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'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 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 have the best job in the world.”
“My job is so wonderful.”