Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's Favorite Editor

DATE July 4, 2006 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Film editor Thelma Schoonmaker discusses her work,
particularly in regard to Martin Scorsese's films
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Today we have some stories behind classic Martin Scorsese movies. Thelma
Schoonmaker has won two Oscars for her film editing, one for "Raging Bull,"
the other for "The Aviator." She also edited each of the films Scorsese made
between those two. I spoke with her in 2005, shortly after the release of
"The Aviator" and the 25th anniversary DVD edition of "Raging Bull."
Schoonmaker's late husband was the British film director Michael Powell. He
made "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus," "The Life and Death of Colonel
Blimp," "Peeping Tom," and many other films.

Thelma Schoonmaker, welcome to FRESH AIR. Now, you worked with Martin
Scorsese on his very first film--I think he was still a student when he made
"Who's That Knocking On My Door?"--but then you didn't team up with him again
until "Raging Bull." "Raging Bull"'s out on DVD. It's one of the--like, the
landmark films in American filmmaking. How did you end up working with him on
"Raging Bull," reuniting with him after a period of, what, 10 years in
between?

Ms. THELMA SCHOONMAKER: Right. I wasn't in the union in New York or LA,
and--the editors union--so I couldn't work for Marty when he went to bust into
Hollywood. He kept calling me and asking me to come and work with him, but
I--the union wouldn't let me, so--they had very restrictive policies then.
You had to serve long apprenticeships, and then you had to serve another long
stretch of time as an assistant before you were allowed to be an editor. And
by that time, we had made "Woodstock." I was the supervising editor of
"Woodstock." I had been nominated for an Oscar. And I just didn't feel I had
to go back and become an apprentice in order to be able to work for Marty and
spend seven years before I could work for him, anyway. So I couldn't do it,
and he started working with Marcia Lucas, who was also the wife of George
Lucas. And he kept calling me, but every time I couldn't do it. So I worked
on documentaries about the American Revolution for WQED in Pittsburgh. I did
a little short film for Paul McCartney on his world tour. And, finally, on
"Raging Bull," Marty called me, and I said, `You know I can't work for you.'
And he said, `Well, we got you in the union.' And I never asked how, but
shortly after that the union did open up their--the doors to a more liberal
policy.

GROSS: So to this day you don't know how he got you in the union?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: No. I don't ask.

GROSS: So did you have any idea what you were in for with "Raging Bull," how
interesting and complex the editing was going to be?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: I had no idea. I had always worked in a rather small,
independent film environment or on documentaries, which were very critical, by
the way, for the editing of "Raging Bull," because documentaries teach you how
to take unshaped footage and create a story out of it, which I had to do with
some of the wonderful improvisations between De Niro and Joe Pesci. So I had
no idea what a big, major studio film was like. And when I went out to
Hollywood, there were assistants and things that I had never experienced
before. I had always put my own trims away, and suddenly there was this big
sort of studio system, and I--post-production system, and I said to Marty,
`You know, I've never done this kind of thing before.' And he said, `Don't
worry, I'll be there with you. I've been through it.' So he--that was good to
know.

But I had no idea the raw power of the footage that was going to land into my
hands. In my Oscar speech, I said it was like having pure gold to work on,
and it really was. That film is burned into the screen. The crew, on the
other hand, was a bit baffled by the film. They couldn't understand why so
much time was being spent on a man who seemed to be so unpleasant. And so
when I would meet the crew on their way back from shooting, they would say,
`Oh, wait till you see what we shot today. We don't get this at all.' But I
was seeing in the editing room, already, how amazing it was. And often
Scorsese does not put into his scripts what he has in his head, so when they
saw the film put together, they were--they saw it then. They were stunned.
But I was seeing it, already, just so alive in my hands. It was astounding.

GROSS: Now, you mention that you had to do a lot of shaping in the editing
room of the improvisatory scenes between De Niro and Joe Pesci. Can you talk
a little bit about what the raw footage was like and how you shaped those
scenes?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Well, the--Joe Pesci had not done much work before in
films. He had been in one film, I think, which De Niro saw and brought to
show Marty, and that's why they decided to cast him. And--but De Niro, of
course, had done quite a few films by then, and he was wonderfully helpful to
Joe Pesci in the improvisations because he would look over at Marty, and Marty
would give him a little look, saying, `Do it again.' And Bob would start the
improvisation over again and again and again until Marty got exactly what he
felt he needed out of Joe Pesci's performance. And Pesci is such a fertile
improviser, and he and De Niro would just kick each other off.

What you want to do in a situation like that, when you have two actors who are
going you don't know where--it's not scripted--is to have two cameras shooting
at all times because--so you can capture the actors' responses to this new
sort of tangent they're going off on. But sometimes in the locations Marty
was shooting in--in the Bronx, in real houses, like the ones that Jake LaMotta
would have lived in--he couldn't get two cameras in the room, so that was the
time when--for me, it was--I had to try and figure out a way to take two
different sessions of great improvisations, one on camera and one off, and try
and make it work together, dramatically.

*****End of Cheryl B.'s proofing

The most obvious example of that is the kitchen scene, where De Niro is
hassling this wife about bringing him a cup of coffee. The babies are crying,
and Joe Pesci's trying to get him to agree to fight a fighter that he doesn't
want to fight. And Marty based that whole scene on the way his agent used to
explain his deals to him in Hollywood, because he could never understand the
percentage this, the that, the--he could never--and he always used to say,
`Tell me again. Tell me again.' And so that was what he said to De Niro, and
De Niro then kept, you know, not understanding what his brother is telling him
and making him repeat it over and over again.

It was a wonderful improvisation, but it was very hard to make hang together
dramatically. I had a hell of a lot of fun working on it because, again, my
documentary background, having been handed large amounts of footage that
needed to be shaped into a story, helped me immensely.

GROSS: Why don't we hear that scene? And this is from the new DVD release,
the 25th anniversary release, of "Raging Bull."

(Soundbite of "Raging Bull")

Mr. ROBERT DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Don't ever do that Janiro
bull...(censored) again. No more deals like that. You hear what I'm saying?

Mr. JOE PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) What are you talking about?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) What am I talking about? Look at that, 168
pounds.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Stop eating.

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) What's this little smart-ass? I told you I
didn't want to do it in the first place. Didn't I tell you that?

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) No, you didn't say that. You're the one that
told me you could get down to 155 pounds. Where'd I get it? What? Did I
pull it out of the (censored) air?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) I don't know if I'm going to make it down to
155. I'm lucky I make it to 160. And on top of that, you sign me for a fight
at 155, and if I don't make the 155, I lose $15,000.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) That's right.

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Oh! You're supposed to be a manager. You're
supposed to know what you're doing.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) I did just what I wanted to do.

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) That's what I'm worried about. You did it...

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) You want a title shot?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) What are you talking about?

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Do you want a title shot?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) What is--what am I? What am I? In the
circus over here? I ask him, he's got more sense about this. What are you

doing?

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) You've been killing yourself for three years
now, right? There's nobody left for you to fight. Everybody's afraid to
fight you. OK, along comes this kid, Janiro. He don't know any better. He's
a young kid, up and coming. He'll fight anybody. Good. You fight him. Bust
his hole. Tear him apart, right? What are you worried about? What's the
biggest thing you got to worry about? The weight?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) I'm worried about the weight.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) You're worried about the weight?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) What are we arguing about it for? I just
said the weight.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) OK, let's say you lose because of your weight.
Are they going to think you're not as tough as you are, you're not the same
fighter? Good. They'll match you with all those guys they were afraid to
match you with before. What happens? You'll kill them. And they got to give
you a title shot.

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Bring me coffee, please.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Why? There's nobody else. Nobody's left. Who
they going to give it to?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Coffee.

Ms. CATHY MORIARTY: (As Vickie LaMotta): In a minute.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Are you listening to me?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Please, honey, bring me a coffee, huh?

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) All right?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Hey, how long I got to wait?

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Are you listening?

Ms. MORIARTY: (As Vickie LaMotta) I don't know.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Now let's say you win, you beat Janiro...

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Yeah.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) ...which is definitely--you should beat
him--Right?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Yeah.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Right?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Yeah.

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) They still got to give you a shot at the title.
You know why?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Why?

Mr. PESCI: (As Joey LaMotta) Because of the same things before; there's
nobody left. There ain't nobody around. They gotta give you the shot. You
understand? If you win, you win. If you lose, you still win. There's no way
you can lose. And you do it on your own, just the way you wanted to do,
without any help from anybody. Understand? Just get down to 155 pounds, you
fat bastard. You stop eating.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: A scene from "Raging Bull" with Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro. My
guest, Thelma Schoonmaker, was the editor of "Raging Bull." She won an Oscar
for her editing on that. And she's worked with Martin Scorsese on every
subsequent film that he's made. And, by the way, "Casino" and "The Aviator"
have just come out on DVD.

Thelma Schoonmaker, in an improvisatory scene like that, would you ever
consult the actors--you know, De Niro and Pesci, in this case--and ask them
what was going through their minds when they did certain things? Would that
be a helpful thing to know?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: I didn't--no, I didn't need that. It was quite clear in
the footage what I should try and get to work. There's one wonderful moment,
I'll just tell you about in the improvisations, where the wife, played by
Theresa Saldana, of Joe Pesci says--tries to defend her sister-in-law and
says, `She didn't mean nothing.' And Joe Pesci just turns to her and says,
`Who asked you?' It's just one of the great laugh scenes in the film because
it's so outrageous, and that was completely an improv. She spoke up,
unscripted, and Joe's reaction--the timing of the head turn is so wonderful,
the pause before the line is so perfect.

Of course, comic lines are built out of beats. You know, waiting just a
moment or two can make the line funnier. My husband always used to say that
about silent films. They had almost mathematical counts that the comedians
used to do with each other. Gracie Allen, I understand, also used to do that.
You wait two beats before you answer, and that makes it funnier.

GROSS: Of course, you could ruin that in the editing. You could take out
those two beats if you wanted to.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yeah. Well, you can make an actor sometimes look not as
good or make them look even better, depending on how you edit their footage.
That's why it's such a wonderful job. You get to shape things and build
drama, build rhythm, build pacing.

GROSS: My guest is Academy Award-winning film editor, Thelma Schoonmaker.
She's edited each of Martin Scorsese's movies from "Raging Bull" on, with the
exception of Scorsese's documentary on Dylan. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Thelma Schoonmaker. She's edited each of Martin
Scorsese's movies from "Raging Bull" on, with the exception of his documentary
about Dylan. Let's talk about the climactic fight scene in "Raging Bull."
Martin Scorsese had that pretty thoroughly storyboarded before he shot it?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: He did, and we did start out with exactly the way he had
storyboarded all these amazing shots. But then we began fooling around with
it and, during the process of editing, discovering that, for example, when
Vickie puts her head down into her hands--his wife's sitting in the audience
watching this massacre. When she puts her head down in her hands and then
when she picks her head up were key moments to hang the whole construction of
the montage around. So things like that, that you don't expect, occur when
you get footage that's been shot, and so you sometimes have to change things a
little bit. We did violate the initial structure of the storyboard. We
worked on it for a very long time. And some--we even put one shot in upside
down. But...

GROSS: What shot was that, and why did you do that?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: It's a shot of the legs--De Niro's legs buckling. It just
worked better that way. I don't know. And so it was a wonderful montage to
work on. And Scorsese...

GROSS: And is--wait--is that almost subliminal, that shot? I mean, does it
go by so quickly that you don't notice it?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yeah. Yes, it does. It goes by very quickly, yeah. He
had actually his trainer on his shoulder when he was doing those shots of the
knees, so that he would actually have that great weight on his shoulders. And
it helped him when he was, you know, buckling from the pounding he's taking
from Sugar Ray. But Marty had wonderful ideas in that film. For example,
when we--the fighter who is beating De Niro to a pulp, Sugar Ray--playing the
character Sugar Ray Robinson--can't understand why he won't go down. Of
course, LaMotta--Jake LaMotta--was famous for never going down. He could take
any amount of punishment and never go down.

The--Sugar Ray backs away and tries to figure out what the hell is going on,
and Marty had this wonderful shot where the lights dim and a complete silence
occurs on the track. Our sound editor suggested that to us. He said, `Taking
sound away, often, is much more powerful than bringing it in.' So we took the
sound away, the lights darkened down, and Sugar Ray just stands there
breathing like an animal. You hear animal sounds of breathing, which our
wonderful sound editor, Frank Warner, put in.

And then he decides to come back in for another attack, and as he does that,
the camera ramps back up to normal speed again. And we cut to a smashing shot
of the glove hitting De Niro's head. Beautiful directing, beautiful
conception.

GROSS: What's an example of something that you had never tried before, never
really thought of before, until editing "Raging Bull"?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Well, I think the...

GROSS: Probably everything you've just told us, but...

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yeah, it's...

GROSS: Come to think of it.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Well, it's such a rich film. You know, I--when I talk to
students, I just put the film on and I start talking about it. There's so
much I can--I could talk for seven years about it, I think. Anyway, I would
say that the--Scorsese had designed the fight so beautifully. Each fight is
different. The size of the ring is different in each fight, depending on the
emotional state of Jake's mind. For example, the first time he knocks down
Sugar Ray, which was a great triumph, the ring is large and sweeping and
brightly lit. And when he loses a fight on a technical decision, which he
can't understand, the ring is filled with smoke and dark and murky. And
Scorsese shot it with flames below the lens, so that there's a mirage-like
feeling, a kind of queasy, nauseous feeling throughout. When De Niro goes and
sits down in a corner, there's a rope in front of his eyes, so you can't see
his face. All these things contribute to this incredible evocation of his
befuddlement about why he lost this fight.

So Scorsese had such a strong conception for all of these fights, and the
footage was so brilliantly shot. You have no idea how hard it is to do
extremely difficult camera moves in a ring when you have two fighters and a
referee moving around constantly in the ring, and try and be in the ring with
them shooting--extremely difficult.

That was Scorsese's commitment from day one. He had looked at every boxing
film ever made, and the thing he noticed about most of them is that the camera
was outside of the ring, of course, because it's so hard to shoot in. But he
wanted to be in the ring, and he almost always is. I don't know how they did
these shots. It took six weeks to shoot the fights in a studio in California.

GROSS: Were you on the set during the shooting of "Raging Bull"? As a rule,
do you like to be on the set when Scorsese's shooting?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: I tend not to like--I love to go to the set to watch Marty
and the actors and the crew, many of whom are old friends. We've worked
together on so many films together. But I do find it prejudices my eye. My
job, I think, is to sit in dailies with Scorsese every night, and he wants to
know my reaction. Do I believe something? Is there something wrong? Is
there something I don't understand? And if I go on the set and people say to
me, `Oh, gosh, wait till you see this shot. We just laid 20 feet of track,
and we're going to crane up here and'--then I don't get the same feeling about
it if I see it being made as I do when I see it on the screen.

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about "The Aviator." Can you talk about the
scene that you found most challenging or most interesting to work on in "The
Aviator"?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: I loved all the ensemble acting scenes in the nightclubs
and the rapid-fire patter that Scorsese wanted to have, which was very much
like the way scenes were shot those days in Hollywood, a lot of very clever
dialogue.

The overlapping dialogue was--normally it would be considered a problem, but
he shot it that way. He wanted everybody to be talking on top of each other
as part of the style of the film, and that can be alarming for an editor.
Usually actors are not allowed to overlap each other because the editor cannot
get in with--and make cuts in between the dialogue then. But this was
all--this worked out amazingly. We only had to loop a couple of lines.

So the biggest challenge was the scenes of Howard going mad in his screening
room, and that took a long time of living with it, living with different edits
and, finally, towards the end, going with a very kinetic, emotional approach
to it and just slashing into the footage and picking out of it just what made
me feel something for Howard and putting it together not in a linear way, but
just an emotional way. So when that suddenly happened, it was great.
Something just clicked, and we knew we were finished with it. But it took a
while to arrive at that approach because there was a lot of footage in there
of him going mad. And we found we had to condense it to make it work within
the body of the film.

GROSS: Yeah. Hughes was obsessive-compulsive, and in this mad scene at the
end, I mean, you know, he has to figure out what angle to hold the milk bottle
so he doesn't contaminate it. And there's just, like, a spotlight on these
milk bottles because he's--you're just kind of seeing it from his point of
view, I guess. And it's--I mean, he's become so compulsive about germs and
everything that he--there's no longer anything that he can touch or eat. And
so did you have, like, a whole array of different examples of this
obsessive-compulsive disorder and have to choose between those examples?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yes. Marty had originally thought he would do a lot of his
memos--Hughes' insane memos to his employees. For example, when he was
receiving reports from detectives who were following his girlfriends, the
detective had to stand at the bottom of the office building, and his reports
were winched up on a rope, so that his physical presence would not be anywhere
near anyone in the building. I mean, he--it was insane, the kind of things
that he would write to his employees. And we had a lot more of those in
originally, but we found that within the entire length of the film, we had to
cut them down to something very short. But they are amazing. I mean, you
could read them forever, they're...

At the same time he was able to make quite sane business decisions. He was
running huge companies, and he was able to do both at the same time. You see
in the film that he pulls himself out of his madness in order to defend
himself in front of the Senate. That's all very true. There's actual video
footage of him there triumphing and turning the tables on the corrupt senator
who's opposing him.

GROSS: Film editor Thelma Schoonmaker. We'll continue the interview in the
second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, the give and take between director and editor. We continue
our conversation with film editor Thelma Schoonmaker about editing the films
of Martin Scorsese. And she'll tell us about her late husband, the British
film director Michael Powell, whom she met through Scorsese.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with film editor Thelma
Schoonmaker. She won an Oscar for editing Martin Scorsese's film "Raging
Bull," and has edited each of his films since then, with the exception of his
documentary about Dylan. She won her second Oscar for "The Aviator."

What's the give and take like between you and Scorsese when you're in the
editing room?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Well, you know, we're almost of one mind at this point.
Scorsese taught me everything I ever knew about editing when I worked on his
first film and in the years after that. I never thought I would become an
editor. He was born a director; I'm sure he came out of the womb a director.

I've never met anyone more completely a director than him. And so he's taught
me everything I know; our taste is the same, therefore, I know what he likes
and what he doesn't like. And if we have a severe disagreement, we screen it

one way and ask our friends how they feel about it and then screen it the
other way. But that rarely happens.

It happened at the end of "Raging Bull," because when De Niro is confronting
himself in the mirror, Scorsese felt very strongly that it had to be a cold
performance. And he and De Niro had laid down 15 takes, each one of them
completely valid, each one of them different in warmth or coldness. And
Scorsese kept sort of striving to get it colder and colder. And he thought
that take 15 was the best take and De Niro and I felt maybe a slightly warmer
one. And so we screened it both ways, and, of course, Marty was absolutely
right. We ended up with the one he wanted. But, frankly, that hardly ever
happens.

We work very compatibly. We're very different. I'm very optimistic and calm
and patient, and Marty is emotional and dramatic. We balance each other. And
so we have a lot of fun in the editing room. We joke and talk and share all
kinds of things, our love of Michael Powell's films, for example. And he
always has on, in the corner of the room, Turner Classic Movies with the
latest classic movie running silent and--so it doesn't interfere. And every
once in a while we'll look over, and he'll say, `Oh, look at this great shot.
Oh, look what this director did here,' or--we never have the sound up, by the
way. It's all visual. And so this constant infusion of inspiration from
other films is always going on in his mind. And I think I have the best job
in the world. And I'm sure there are a lot of editors who would like to shoot
me, so they could have him instead of me.

GROSS: You mentioned that film--the scene in "Raging Bull" where De Niro's in
front of the movie and he's practicing a scene from "On the Waterfront." He's
doing the "I could've been a contender" scene. This is what you're talking
about, right?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah. And you know what? You said that Scorsese wanted to use, like,
the cold version. What I really like about that in a movie is that you could
tell that, OK, LaMotta is not exactly a good performer or a good actor.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: And--nor is like...

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: You didn't like his Shakespeare?

GROSS: And...

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a..."

GROSS: And nor his empathy going to be his big thing. Like, he may have
lived it, but it doesn't mean that he can act it.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: That's right.

GROSS: And I think that's such an interesting thing for a great actor to play
a scene, you know, playing a character who's lived it but can't act it.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: That's right. It's a--there are so many layers of De Niro
doing Marlon Brando doing--I mean, it's just...

GROSS: Exactly. Right.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: And, of course, now that was a direct suggestion by Michael
Powell, by the way. When he...

GROSS: Really?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: When Marty had rediscovered Michael Powell and brought him
to America, Michael thought that "Mean Streets" was one of the greatest movies
he'd ever seen, and he demanded of De Niro and Scorsese that they show him all
the locations where it had been made. In fact, a good deal of "Mean Streets"
was shot in LA. But the scenes in the cemetery outside the church, for
example, and obviously the festival scenes, the San Gennaro Festival, those
were shot in New York. And he demanded to be shown where they--those
locations were.

So De Niro and Scorsese were driving him around downtown, and they stopped off
at the gym where De Niro was training. De Niro could have fought as a
middleweight. I mean, he trained for two years to be a boxer. He was
unbelievable.

And so Scorsese and De Niro were looking at the latest videotapes of some
choreography that Marty was working out about the fights, and Michael Powell
was standing there watching with them. And he said, `You know, there's
something wrong about the red gloves.' And Marty said, `My God, you're right.
The movie should be in black and white.' And it was that wonderful moment when
one director kicks off an idea in another director's head. He didn't say,
`The movie should be black and white.' He said, `There's something wrong with
the red gloves,' and that just clicked with Marty. And he remembered that
he'd always seen all the fight films his father took him to, or on television,
they were always in black and white. And so if--something just coalesced in
his mind.

And then at the end of the film--Michael had read the script, and he said,
`Why are you doing Shakespeare again at the end? You should do something
American. You should do something that comes from your own experience.' And
so they decided to do the "On the Waterfront" scenes. They were going to do
Shakespeare.

GROSS: Wow. That's so great.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yeah.

GROSS: Here's the scene from "Raging Bull" that we were just talking about.
Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro, is in his dressing room rehearsing in
front of a mirror before going on stage.

(Soundbite of "Raging Bull")

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Some people aren't that lucky, like the one
that Marlon Brando played in "On the Waterfront," an up-and-comer who's now a
down-and-outer. Do you remember that scene in the back of the car with his
brother Charlie, a small-time racket guy? And it went something like this.

It wasn't him, Charlie. It was you. You remember that night at the garden?
You came down to my dressing and you said, `Kid, this ain't your night; we're
going for the price on Wilson'? Remember that? `This ain't your night'? My
night. I could have taken Wilson apart that night. So what happens? He gets
a title shot outdoors in a ballpark, and what do I get? A one-way ticket to
Palookaville. I was never no good after that night, Charlie. It was like a
peak you reach, and then it's downhill. It was you, Charlie. You was my
brother. You should have looked out for me a little bit. You should've
looked out for me just a little bit. You should've taken care of me just a
little bit instead of making me take them dives for the short-end money. You
don't understand. I could've had class. I could've been a contender. I
could've been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it,
it was you, Charlie. It was you, Charlie.

Mr. MARTIN SCORSESE: (As Barbizon) How you doing, Jake?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Everything all right?

Mr. SCORSESE: (As Barbizon) Yeah.

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Ready?

Mr. SCORSESE: (As Barbizon) Give me about five minutes.

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) OK.

Mr. SCORSESE: (As Barbizon) You need anything?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) Nah.

Mr. SCORSESE: (As Barbizon) You sure?

Mr. DE NIRO: (As Jake LaMotta) I'm sure.

GROSS: A scene from "Raging Bull." By the way, the guy who comes into the
dressing room at the end of that scene is played by Martin Scorsese.

We'll talk more with Academy Award-winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Thelma Schoonmaker. She's edited each of Martin
Scorsese's movies, from "Raging Bull" on, and has won Oscars for "Raging Bull"
and "The Aviator."

When you started working with Scorsese, are there certain touchstone films for
him that he wanted you to watch, films that kind of represented the delirium
that a film is capable of achieving or whatever?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Oh, yes. And, fortunately, I'm able sometimes to screen
with him when he and his wife and friends are looking at films he loves
dearly. For example, "8 1/2" is one of the benchmark films for him; "The Red
Shoes" is another. Recently he showed "Ashes and Diamonds," the great film by
Andrzej Wajda, Polish filmmaker, to DiCaprio as just sort of reference for the
role DiCaprio is playing in our new movie called "The Departed."

So this--these screenings with Marty are--they're almost religious events
because we're all--a small group of people are in a room sharing this
magnificent film and then spending an hour afterwards talking about it and
reveling in it. And it's a really precious experience.

For example, when we were cutting "Raging Bull," Scorsese was educating me
about the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, because he had just
discovered Michael Powell living in complete oblivion, and brought him to the
Telluride Film Festival. He had entered "Peeping Tom" into the New York Film
Festival, and it had been a big hit there. And he had paid some money towards
the rerelease of "Peeping Tom" in America, so he--there was also a
retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and he suggested that I go see
certain films there.

And one night when I came to work--because we used to work late at night in
those days on "Raging Bull"; we now work during the day--he said to me, `I
have just seen another great Powell-Pressburger film, and I want you to go
into the living room instead of working right now and watch this on video.'
Unfortunately, I had to watch it on video the first time. And that was "I
Know Where I'm Going!"

And so that's very typical of the way Marty is with his friends. He's often
educating people. You'll notice that his video archivist is suddenly churning
out copies of Powell and Pressburger when an actor is cast in one our films,
and they're given the Powell-Pressburger education.

GROSS: This year marks the centennial of the birth of your late husband, the
British film director Michael Powell. And some of his films include "The Red
Shoes," "Black Narcissus," "I Know Where I'm Going," "The Life and Death of
Colonel Blimp," "A Canterbury Tale," "Peeping Tom." There was a tribute to him
at the Cannes Film Festival this year. And you've been screening some of his
movies in other cities.

Did you meet Michael Powell through Scorsese? Scorsese was a huge Michael
Powell fan. Michael Powell was--became a big fan of Scorsese's movies. Is
that how you met him?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yes. Marty not only gave me the best job in the world but
the best husband as well, so I've had all the luck anyone can ever want in
their life.

When Marty was educating me about the films of Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger, he--Michael Powell was at Dartmouth College. He had been brought
there by David Thompson to be an artist in residence. And he would call the
editing room, particularly since he knew we worked late at night. If he was
lonely at 10:00 or something at night, he would call Marty, and often I spoke
to him then. And at one point Marty said, `Well, he's coming to dinner. You
should meet him.' And I fell in love with him immediately, even though there
was 30 years' difference in our age.

He was the most amazing man I have ever met in my life. His love of life was

stamped all over his face. He was so unusual in the way he dressed and the
way he spoke. He didn't speak much, but when he spoke, it was quite
remarkable what he said. And I--he came back into the editing room because we
were editing in a spare bedroom that Marty had at that point. "Raging Bull"
was being edited in a spare bedroom, and I had racks in the bathtub in the
adjoining bathroom. And, of course, Michael thought that was hilarious. He'd
never seen anything so insane in his life, and he loved it.

So he would come back and talk with me a little bit, and then we would talk
more on the phone. And when we were nominated for "Raging Bull," went out to
LA for the Oscars, I went to see him at Zoetrope Studios, the
ill-fated--unfortunately--experiment Francis Coppola was trying independent
filmmaking in Hollywood, and Michael was there as an artist in residence. And
we started having lunch and then dinner, and then things developed. And then
we had to tell Marty.

GROSS: What was Scorsese's reaction?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Well, he was shocked and--but then he said, `That's
wonderful.' And he loved having Michael around. So for the rest of the time,
the 10 precious years I had with Michael, he was with us and advising and
reacting to the films, which meant so much to Marty and me. For example, he
gave us the ending for "After Hours." Many people had--we didn't really have
an ending. At the end of "After Hours," Griffin Dunne is encased in a plaster
of Paris sculpture, and he's stolen by Cheech and Chong and thrown into a van,
and they drive off towards Harlem. And we thought that was a fine ending, but
everybody else complained. So some people said, `Well, he should go off in a
balloon, and he should do this, and he should do that.' And Michael Powell
said, `Oh, no, no, no. He has to go back to hell, he has to go back to the
office, which he hates so much.' So that's what Marty then shot.

He also was very instrumental in getting "GoodFellas" made, by the way.
Scorsese was having a lot of trouble because the studio was concerned about
the drugs, which was the major theme of the movie, and they wanted to know if
it could be removed. And Scorsese said, `No, I can't remove it. That's the
whole point of the movie.' And so I told Michael about this, and he was very
concerned always about Scorsese's artistic integrity and his artistic freedom,
having had his own career savaged by the failure of "Peeping Tom" with the
critics. He was very, very anxious that Marty be allowed to do what he
wanted.

So he said to me, `Read me the script.' And I did because his--he had macular
degeneration, and he couldn't--he could see, but he couldn't read very well.
And I read the script to him, and he said, `Get Marty on the phone.' And he
said, `Marty, this is the best script I've read in 20 years. You have to make
this movie.' So Marty went back in one more time, and he got it made. And,
unfortunately, Michael never saw it because he fell ill then and--which is too
bad, because he really had a great deal to do with it getting made.

GROSS: Thelma Schoonmaker, has being a woman in the movie world ever had an
impact one way or another? Because when you started, I mean, you started
editing movies--what, in the early '70s or late '60s. And so, you know, there
weren't as many women either editing or directing or producing as there are
today. So did that make it any more difficult for you to get started?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: I was fortunate that I fell into a group of
filmmakers--Scorsese, of course, being the most important one--at New York
University who were very accepting of my role in the films we were making. I
was very lucky, I think. It was a quite unique situation.

And it just so happened that I think certain feminine characteristics of
patience and discipline and organization were needed at that point,
particularly in the editing field, which is why I eventually fell into
editing. In the early days when we were making, for example, Marty's movie
"Who's That Knocking," we all were doing everything. We drove the cars with
the cameraman on the hood. We pushed the wheelchairs. We ran sound. We--I
even learned how to tie into power sources in basements, and the people who
taught me said, `Always bend your knees 'cause if you get a jolt, you'll fall
down and it'll break the contact.'

We got the food. We did everything. We didn't shoot, and we didn't direct.
Michael Wadleigh was the cameraman, and Scorsese was very much the director.
But it was just a wonderful collaborative time, and I wish filmmaking were
more like that these days, big feature filmmaking.

But--so I--the editing fell to me, I think, mainly because the men were always
breaking the film and losing things, and things were completely disorganized.
So that's why it began to be my job. But then my collaboration with Scorsese
developed, and that--so it worked out so well that I was lucky to get the
break to work on all these magnificent films.

There are many, many women film editors today, of course, and there were women
editors way back in the early days. Cecil B. DeMille's editor was a woman,
for example. But I just never felt particularly slotted into a category that
way. I just thought of us all as filmmakers, I guess.

GROSS: So, now, you didn't grow up in the United States. Where did you grow
up?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: I grew up on the island of Aruba before it was a big
tourist spot. My father worked for the Standard Oil Company in the personnel
department, and he and my mother met--both Americans, both living in
Paris--they met there and married, and my brother was born there. And then we
were moved to Algeria just when World War II broke out, and I was born in
Algeria but evacuated from there immediately when the North African invasion
took place.

So we landed on the island of Aruba, where there was an oil refinery. And I
grew up there in a blissful childhood of coming home from school, throwing off
my shoes, and running down to the beach every day--very blissful for us as
children but not for the parents because it was a company town. So it was a
little--it was a part of the island that was owned or rented by the Standard
Oil Company, so it was a little hard for them. But it was wonderful.

And I grew up in a very cosmopolitan atmosphere. There were people from every
nationality working in that refinery: Danes, Australians, Dutch, French,
English. And so I grew up as a European, really. And when I came to America
when I was 15, it was quite a shock. I felt like I was on Mars. I didn't
know anything about rock 'n' roll or football, and I sort of just spent the
last two years of high school pretty privately.

And when I went to Cornell University, then I met a whole bunch of New York
City girls, and I was fine 'cause they did the same things I did. But it was
quite a shock coming back to the States.

GROSS: What were your formative film experiences? Did you get to see movies
in Aruba? Were there a lot of movies you realized you'd missed out on when
you moved to the States?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Certain films did come there. Interestingly enough, I saw
"The Red Shoes" there and was deeply affected by it long before I ever knew
anything about Michael Powell. I remember seeing--I was probably about 12,
and it was quite, quite an experience. And then, later, when I came to the
States, I saw another Powell-Pressburger film called "The Life and Death of
Colonel Blimp" on a wonderful show called "Million Dollar Movie."

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Which Scorsese was watching at the same time, where they
showed the same movie seven times a week. And so Scorsese would study the
same movie over and over again, until his mother would scream, `Turn that
thing off! I can't'--and I saw "Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" there and
was terribly moved by it. I remember weeping afterwards.

And I wasn't allowed to watch television in the afternoon, which was when the
show was on. And my mother, when she would come home from work, would always
put her hand on top of the TV set to see if it had been on. And--but I
remember being deeply influenced by that film. But I didn't intend to become
a filmmaker. I had no idea I was going to become a filmmaker.

GROSS: My guest is Academy Award-winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Thelma Schoonmaker. She's edited each of Martin
Scorsese's movies from "Raging Bull" on, with the exception of his documentary
about Dylan. How did you start making movies?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: I was--because of my European sort of background, I thought
I would become a diplomat. I loved being abroad. And so I studied Russian
language and political science at Cornell University and then took all the
Foreign Service exams and passed them all and got to what they call the stress
test, where they try and unsettle you as if you're at a cocktail reception in
South Africa and they ask you difficult questions to see how you would behave
as a member of the embassy. And I gave all the wrong answers.

I said I thought apartheid was horrible, and they were very upset by this.
And they said, `You are going to be really unhappy in the Foreign Service.

You can't do that. You have to say what Washington tells you you can say,
until such time as they're ready to make a statement like that.' They said,
`Why don't you go to the USIA, the United States Information Agency? You'll
be happier there.' But I didn't want to do that, and I went back to Columbia.
I didn't go to Columbia, but I took a night course at Columbia in primitive
art, which is one of my interests.

And I read in The New York Times an ad saying `Willing to train assistant film
editor,' which you never see. Today you would never see an ad like that.
People are hired by word of mouth. Editors recommend people to each other.
And so I thought, `Hmm, I don't know what this involves, but I'll check into
it.' And it was a horrible guy butchering the films of Antonioni and Truffaut
and Godard for late-night television slots. He would sometimes just take a
reel out of one of--"Rocco & His Brothers," for example, a film by Visconti,
and if it was too long to fit into the slot between 2 AM and 4 AM or whatever.
And I would say to him, `You can't do that.' And he said, `Oh, nobody looks at
these things.' But you know who was looking at them? Marty.

And so that was so awful. He was a big lush, also. I used to have to bring
him a quart of whiskey every day, which he drank. And--but I learned enough
about negative cutting and subtitling and a few things that I thought, `Well,
maybe I should look into this.' And I saw that NYU was doing just a six-week
summer course, and I thought, `Well, I can just barely afford that. I'll take
that.' And they split us up into little teams of 10 each filmmakers. I was
working on a horribly boring thing about harness racing, and Scorsese was on
another team, of course, doing one of his student films called "What's A Nice
Girl Like You."

And it turned out that someone had cut his negative wrong. They were all
students; they didn't know how to do it right. And I knew how to correct it
because I had worked for this horrible man.

So the professor, Haig Manoogian, a wonderful professor, said, `Would you help
out Scorsese with this film?' And I went over, and he'd been up for three days
editing it. And he--I said, `I'll just run down and tell you you have to lose
six frames here and four frames there.' And we recut the film in the negative,
and that was the beginning of my whole new life. If I hadn't gone that
summer, he wouldn't have been there the next summer. I'm so lucky.

GROSS: Wow. You started editing in the early '60s, and editing has changed a
lot since then. I imagine most of your work is digital editing, so I know,
technically, your editing has changed. But does the digital approach to
editing, has that fundamentally changed anything about how you go about
shaping a film?

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Yes, it does, because I feel I can experiment wildly now
with digital editing. I can make a copy of my edit in one second by just
pushing a button that says `copy.' And I then slash into that edit not
worrying about the sync of the dialogue or the sync of the music. I turn the
scene upside down, put the beginning at the end and just try anything that
kinetically seems worth trying.

On film, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I would have waited till he
came in, shown him the edit. Then he would have had to walk around for a
while, while I re-edited, undid all the splices and tried--and made a record
of how I did the original edit. And so it would have, I think, dampened my
enthusiasm for wild experimentation. So that's a very good aspect of it.

There--the main thing to remember, always, is that it's just a tool; that the
main thing about editing is living with the film--hopefully being given enough
time to live with it, to figure out what it needs.

It's so important to live with a film for two or three months, and then
suddenly you begin to see something, and you realize what needs to be done to
it. And digital editing is just a tool in that. The actual aesthetic,
emotional and rhythmical solutions for things are the same as they were when
people were working on upright Moviolas.

GROSS: Thelma Schoonmaker, thank you for your great movies, and thank you so
much for talking with us and for explaining a little bit of how you do what
you do. We really appreciate it a lot.

Ms. SCHOONMAKER: Well, it's been wonderful. Thank you.

GROSS: Thelma Schoonmaker edits Martin Scorsese's movies. Our interview was
recorded in 2005.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. We'll close with a Dean Martin song from the
soundtrack of "Casino."

(Soundbite of "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You")

Mr. DEAN MARTIN: (Singing) You're nobody till somebody loves you. You're
nobody till somebody cares. You may be king, you may possess the world and
its gold, but gold won't bring you happiness when you're growing old. The
world still is the same; you'll never change it. As sure as the stars shine
above, you're nobody till somebody loves you. So find yourself somebody to
love.

(End of soundbite)
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