Thelma Schoonmaker: Martin Scorsese's Secret Weapon

her three Academy Awards and seven nominations. With a face and demeanor like your favorite grade school teacher, one has to wonder how Schoonmaker has made it through editing the epic violence of Scorsese's films. But however she does it, it's working. She and Scorsese's forty plus years of collaborating is widely considered to be one of the most successful working marriages in movie history. But talented as Schoolmaker is,

editing films wasn't always the plan. Born to American parents in Algiers in nineteen forty, Schoonmaker dreamed of becoming a diplomat and working overseas, but fate intervened, and today fresh off editing scores, says He's newest film Silence. She looks back on the moments that shaped her both as a filmmaker and a person, something like Age of Innocence. We certainly had to slow down and and figure out how to reach a pace that reflected nineteenth century New York

with Kundoon, which was one of my favorites. Uh I had to really learn a great deal about Tibet itself, and also Marty wanted to know how to shoot the san mandala, which the monks make for two weeks, This beautiful, beautiful thing they make with just funnels of different colored sand and then after two weeks they wash it all away in the river. It's unbelievable and it's really hard work.

Um So he wanted to open Kundooon. We did with very tight shots of images of the mandala, and he wanted to know what were the important ones for him to shoot. So I had to learn about the sand mandala. This was before we started shooting. I'm usually not needed before shooting, and so I got to go down and

watch the monks make this incredible sound mandala. That was a lot of fun learning about Tibet and becoming acquainted with these wonderful Tibetans who were in the film because there weren't there weren't actors, they were actually acting out what was happening to them. Um. That was a very extraordinary experience for me, and I've remained a supporter of the cause and and friends with Tibetans ever since. So that was really world changing for me. As this movie

now Silence has been for me. It's made me think deeply about my own faith and also to learn so much about the people who are still Jesuits, for example, the Order, the fervor of that order, Um is extraordinary to meet them. And the advisors who came to help us on the film were so amazing people. So I loved delving into a seventeenth century Japan. The Japanese actors themselves were so incredible. I couldn't believe how wonderful they were.

Even the extras. You never had to worry about cutting away from a shot because an extra wasn't paying attention or not doing what they were supposed to do. Every single person who came from Japan to work in that movie were so dedicated and learning to edit people speaking Japanese or Japanese speaking a language that was not native to them was was very interesting too. But that this this film silence has had the same impact on me.

That couldn't doned it When you talk about the sand Mandala and you coming in early to discuss with him that you know what shots you might need or not need for the sequence, but you say that you're not involved in that kind of composition. Typically you don't sit down with him during the period of storyboards. Does he storyboard? Oh? Yes, he still Now he tends to write on the right side of the script a little, the little image that

he wants. No, he designs all the camera work, always has, and I'm not needed usually in the writing um or any designing of the film. So I come on when it starts shooting, with the exception of Kundun. Really, so when you come on when it starts shooting, does he come to do you come to him? Because I've seen this experience on films that I've made, where with any director where the the editor is sending messages to them saying, well,

we could use this, we could use this angle. I rarely have to do that with him because he thinks things. He's a great editor. So he thinks like an editor. When he conceives of the movie. He usually has an editing style on mine. Also when he writes or co writes the movie, and when he shoots it, he's thinking like an editor. There are occasions where I do ask for things. For example, in the drowning sequence where Garupe

played by Adam Driver drowns in silence. Um, it was very difficult shoot, very cold, and Adam was getting you know, hypothermia, and so I didn't feel I had quite enough footage for the drowning sequence, particularly because the stunt women in Taiwan we're not sort of as tough as maybe more experienced stunt woman would be. UM, and to be shoved down under the water constantly was was difficult for them. So that was one of the few times in Taiwan.

On this incredible sequence where Uh Rodriguez played by Adam Garfield is made to watch Uh Japanese Christians pushed off boats wrapped in straw mats so that they will drown. It's a terrifying sequence, and Marty shot it with three cameras, so there wasn't a lot of control in that situation. UM, and he was very interesting. He had an idea that he wanted to show the horror of these will being pushed off in the water from a wide shot, to show the banality of it, like the banality of the

way the Nazis killed people. So it was very complicated shoot. He was trying to get those white shots close ups on Adam Garfield and cover Garupe and the other and the Japanese Christians, and it was all happening simultaneous. It was chaos, but so I was eventually able. We never did get any additional footage, but I was able to sort of make it work. I think that's never a thought of going into a tank or doing anything with

us or the set. There was some thought of that, but then we decided not to so, but that's one of the few times there are occasions when I asked for something. But he he's such a great editor, you know, he knows what he needs. And my husband Michael Powell once said to him, you don't need to do master shots cut into the center of the scene. Don't do master shots. Marty only does them now as rehearsal. Really,

so not that he doesn't love wide shots. He keeps saying today with all the fast cutting that's going on. Whatever happened to the shot, the shot that Stanley Kubrick would come up with five minutes. You could watch this incredible shot and never be bored. And now what's happened to it? He says, It's just vanished. But I want to get back to when you're in the editing room. Are you cutting a film together and you start hearing music yourself? What's the inner life for you when you're

cutting a film? Well, first of all, the most important time for me is when he looks at Daily's. Now, when he's looking at Daily's I look at the footage first, um as soon as it comes in to make sure there isn't something missing or something wrong. Or sometimes the camera when one of the great shots in Raging Bull, where it begins on DeNiro down in the basement of this enormous stadium and he the steadicam cameras backing up

in front of him. It's an amazing tour to fourth shot, Marty's preferred take on that was ruined in the lab. There was a claw that went off in the camera, and so I had to go on the set and tell him his favorite take with Ruth. Unfortunately, we had just as good ones. But what he does in dailies is really fascinating. I wish that in a way filmmakers could listen to him, because he's very, very tough on himself, and he constantly talks to me during the dailies. I

like that. I don't like that. That's I think I'm going to get better on take seven. UM, don't ever show me that to me again. Burn that, UM and so. And I'm also telling him what I think. First of all, he wants me to be a cold eye. He wants me not to have been on the set and see how they did something, UM or hear from him what he's going to do. He wants me to look at it cold and tell him if it works. So that is my part of my job. So I tell him

what I think. He tells me what he thinks, and from those incredibly rich reactions of him, I then begin to create select and then I do the cut before he comes in when he's through shooting, and then from that point on we do all the rest of the twelve if we can get away with it, twelve different edits of the movie together, very twelve different edits of the movie. That's what we prefer to do if we can, or one of the is there a bible that dictates what those twelves are? Can you just use you're a

phrase to have a manual? Is there the Thelma Marty manual of that mentions each twelve of those? You know what happens is that, you know, we don't screen the first two or three cuts because we're still trying to get the film in shape. But once we start to screen with very few people, maybe twelve people who our friends, who we know, we'll be honest, so we does confer with other people. Oh, yes, well we debrief I I

mainly do most of the debriefing afterwards. So we will screen with twelve people, say, then I debrief them very heavily for two or three days. Uh. Then we do the second cut, and we screen for more people, and pretty soon we get up to two hundreds, at which point I can't debrief everybody. We do cards. Then we like too if we have time to do twelve, because that's how long it takes. You have to live with

the movie. People don't understand that I have to marinate it. Yeah, you have to live with it and learn what it wants and what it needs. And um so uh, all the editing is just absolutely fascinating. You would love to be in the room. This is a work that you didn't necessarily I wouldn't say you fell into it, but you were certainly on a different course for while you. You grew up where my mother and father met in France. Um,

they were both Americans. They married there. My older brother was born there in Paris, and then we were transferred to Algeria and my mother crossed the Mediterranean Ocean. She was carrying me at the time. I was born in Algeria. But unfortunately the North African Invasion occurred where all the Allies invaded to try and get rid of the Nazis in other parts of Northern Africa, and so we were evacuated. But my mother loved Algeria. She would have loved to

stay there. She was always out here. Dad I was there because was with shell oil standards, so y. And then my father went to Aruba in the Caribbean, and

that's where I grew up with. Yes, in the war time and post war time, well, in the war time, that's right, and they were actually torpedoing, they were trying to knock the Germans were trying to knock out the refinery because it was fueling the North African invasion, and so they would lobb torpedoes and also um mortars in trying to hit the oil tanks which were above where we were living. So we were taken out every night, wrapped in blankets and taken to the one building that

was made of stone, um and stay there. And I remember seeing the burning tankers along the horizon. Um. But eventually the Germans did not take the island. And what happened was they brought all kinds of Europeans, people from Australia, from all over the world. So I grew up in a European atmosphere, which I love. So when I came back to the States, when my father was transferred back to New York, it was a shock at the bends. It was shocking. It was really the most shocking thing

for you. You're in New York, Yeah, it was no New Jersey. So in a my father was commuting into New York. UM. So I was in Ridgwood, New Jersey, which was you know, could parts of it were well off. We were not. We were in the sort of poorer part of it. But The thing that shocked me was the rigidity of this sort of social code. If you weren't a cheerleader or football player, you were nobody. And I was very unused to that kind of thing, and

and also seemed very limited. Although the education there was excellent, but it wasn't until I went to Cornell University, where I met a whole bunch of New York Jewish girls. I was saved because they read books, they listened to music like I did. I was and I just loved being at Cornell. And and you're a different plan. You were going to study Cornell. Well, I wanted to become a diplomat, so I studied the Russian language. Is one of the first Russian language courses in America because Sputnik

had just gone up, so everyone was panicking. And so I studied Russian and political science with some great, great teachers. And then I went and took the Foreign Service Exam. That's the exam, but they do a stress test with you afterwards, where they have people from the CIA and other things try and upset you, as if you're at a reception in South Africa and they say, what would you say if somebody said, what do you think about apartheid, I said, I would say it's terrible, and they said, well,

you can't say that until the government tells you. You can say that. You were going to that's right, you're going to be very unhappy here. You should go to the U S. I A. But I didn't want to do that. I don't know the travel bug. What's the difference something? You're right, I don't know. It was probably stupid of me, on the other hand, so I went to work for the first Peace Corps program at Columbia University.

They were going to see early on and then I saw something in the New York Times which never occurs, which said willing to train assistant film editor. No wait, now, what the hell are you thinking? Well, what was interesting was that there was this wonderful program called Million Dollar Movie Remember, which ran the US the same film nine times, and Scorsese learned about so many films, but particularly the films of Paula and Pressburger. He would watch them nine

times until his mother said she was going to kill him. Um, and I was watching that same program. I didn't even know that I was watching the Life and Death of Colonel Bloom. So you're a movie watcher. Well, I guess I was. I didn't know that that it meant anything. But were movies in your family, Well, yes, I did see. My mother took me to see the Rich Shoes in the Ruba, and at one point they were a big movie with your parents. Um, not big ones, no, but

theater music. Well yes, when my mother would have, having lived in Paris, she loved all arts and she taught me enormously about that, which was great, very interesting. My brothers completely didn't go with it at all. They hated it, and my mother and I whenever we would see one of those signs on the side of the road, you know that says revolutionary farmhouse or something, we would immediately and they would go, oh no. And even to this day, my brother won't go into a museum, whereas the first

thing I do, I go into a museum. So my mother gave me all of that. I'm so grateful. Even though she didn't want me watching television in the afternoon, I did, and I remember that. The Life and Death of Colonel Bloom, which is still one of I think my all time favorite of my husband's films, was seared into my mind. I remember that and I remember, Hamlet was pretty Olivier's Hamlet was pretty startling. But I just guess.

I saw this ad in the New York Times said willing to train assistant filmmaker, and I thought, well, why don't I just go see what this is like? So and it was this horrible man who was butchering the films of Felini, Antonioni Truffaux for late night television stalts and on Rocco and his brother Visconti's Great film. He took out one entire reel. I said, you can't do that, and he said, nobody's looking at these things at one o'clock in the morning, but Marty was. And um, so

it was pretty appalling. But I did learn to cut negative and I learned to put subtitles. That was a job. You had to do that, and he trained you had to do it. And I learned to use a movie all which was very helpful. Then I couldn't stand this guy anymore. And I saw an ad and it said a six week course at what was called Washington College, which became part of NU and a six week course in in filmmaking. So I thought, well, if I quit,

I just have enough money to take that course. So I went to something changed while you had that job. You got the bug, I guess, so I guess. So. So I get there at this course and uh run by an incredible Armenian American named Hagan NuGen And when I first went down, I was a little late and I heard somebody screaming inside the lecture hall. Turned out that's just the way Hagen Nugian always talked, and he

was a wonderful support to Marty. Marty wasn't there then, wasn't well, Marty, No, this is how I met him. So we go to this six weeks course and they carve us up into ten, ten people for each little film. And the film I was on was a documentary about

harness racing, so boring. But at the end of the six weeks, close to the end of the six weeks, the professor said, does anybody here know how to cut negative or help Martin Scorsese because he's made a student film and somebody has cut his negative wrong, and so if there's anybody who can help him, And I said, well, I'll try, you know um, And I went over and he had been up for two days editing the movie, and he was completely zonked, but his eyes were open,

and so I started running the film on the synchronizer and I said, well, you've lost six frames here, maybe we can add them at the tailor. So I helped him patch it back together. But explain to people who don't know what you mean by negative cutting. What happens is when you get a take, the camera slows down and you get what's called a flash frame, so a white four or five frames. You finish it in your movie. Then you have to cut the negative to fit the

way you've edited the workprint. So you pull the negative first from flash frame to flash frame, and then very carefully you spice it together. You you match it to the workprint, and you cut off what you don't need. You never cut right close to what the number was on the workprint. And this young woman had accidentally done that. By the way, about fifty years later she contacted me. I'm the person who did it, and I'm so sorry, And I said, no, don't be sorry. You gave me

the greatest life in the world. If you hadn't just cut that negative, I would never have met him. Oh my god. So it's a miracle. So you so you salvage Marty's a student student film, and what did you make of him? Then? Well, it's a young so it's Marty. It was in college, right, Well, all of us knew from one particular student film call It's Not Just You Murray, which is filled with incredible ideas that he had it. It was very clear he had it. What was it

that he had? Storytelling on film? Pretty an idea of startling ideas. For example, It's not just Hu Murray starts with, uh, somebody's shoes and a hand comes into frame and he encourages the camera to lift up to his face. It was just, I mean, just unbelievable, great, great ideas. Uh So, then what happened was a group of us got together and we were making films for PBS Short Films UM, covering Aretha Franklin concerts UM and helping fellow filmmakers finish

their films. And one of them was Marty's Who's That Knocking? His first feature film, which he had shot part of and had run out of money, and so we volunteered our efforts to help him finish it. And then he taught me how to edit on that movie. I knew nothing about editing, nothing, so I was on the crew as we were trying to help him finish it, and we all did everything. We pushed the wheelchair that had the cameraman in it because we didn't have dollars. Um

we ran sound. I would get lunch. I learned to tie into power sources in the basement. People said to me, bend your legs because if you get the jolt, you'll fall down and it'll break the contact. So and I drove the car with the cameraman on the front effort on again for a tracking shot. It was great. It was I think it was the Cone Brothers. I could be wrong. I was reading an article about raising Arizona and they they were saying how their improvisations with the

camera led to like certain names. They have thing called the blankie can, and if you wanted the camera to have the point of view of the dog that was attacking you, they would lay the cinema targity operator on a blanket and pull him across the lawn and he'd be right on the heels of the victim. Came everybody was doing them. I mean, now you know Napoleon, the

Great film by Abel Goaz, a silent film. He had small cameras that he threw over the He had people throw them over the wall of this fortress to give the idea of what a cannonball would be like going into a fortress. So it was the point of view of of the cannonball. So people, you know, people were inventing all of these things all along in film coming up the one piece of work that Schoonmaker considers the perfect film to hear another voice behind some of Hollywood's

biggest films. Check out my interview with former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Today, he still prefers movie theaters to a private screening room. I almost only go to the theater. I go at least twice a week. And what do you do? I often go at ten o'clock or midnight. Uh can't drag my wife's out. Usually I'll go in

the afternoon. I can remember even being at ABC when I was twenty seven years old and having a fight with somebody and saying, you know what, I'm getting out of here and go to Broadway and go to a movie. Take a listen, and here's the thing, Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing,

Initially studying to become an international diplomat. Algerian born film of schoolmaker's life took an interesting turn in the late nineteen sixties when she met Martin Scorsese, then a sleep deprived film student. The partnership changed her life, eventually leading her to Michael Powell, a cinematic mastermind in his own right, whom she'd marry. But before love came work with Marty,

as she called Scorsese, driving the train. He taught me how to build a scene, how to when to use close ups, when not to use close ups, um, how to learn what's good acting, um, how to build rhythm between two actors. Uh. He's never in a position where the actress he's working with don't deliver what he wants. He gets the actors he wants. He doesn't make the film. Yes, he casts impeccably, but there are good and weaker performances,

you know. So one of my jobs is to make sure we're using the very best, and you wean down and wean down your technique to that as well. Avoid close up some people you think are less truthful or oh no, no, I mean usually you can always with him. He knows he shoots until he gets what he needs. He knows what he needs, particularly as an editor, he knows what he needs less. The people are weak than just other people dazzle you well, some yeah, I mean

some actors that take one. You know, other actors work towards something. For example, Marty and DeNiro did fifteen takes on the last scene in Raging Bull where DeNiro is confronting himself as Jake la Matta in the mirror and he's doing it on the waterfront speech. They wanted to do fifteen takes because they were trying different ways of him confronting himself actually forgiving himself. And I thought one

was more emotional. I like that, but Marty liked another one that was colder and he so we screened it two ways with friends of ours and he was right. So that's the kind of thing. So it doesn't mean Some actors like Daniel de Lewis or Cake Blanchet are often like take one, that's it. They're come in so prepared so they're living that part. Other actors like to work towards it. Leo and and Bob like to work

towards something. With Marty, so um, it's a matter of just trying to get the best and then seeing is that working with what's the best and the other actor. Maybe it's not so you have to change something. It's a it's very difficult to describe editing you. You've made that clear. Yeah, I mean, so one of the first things you would have taught me is how not to go to close ups too quickly, that two shots are sometimes just as good. But that's a very simple thing.

I mean, there's so much that's about rhythm and pace and um, letting it breathe. Oh yeah, let watching the people fe you and go through it. Yeah. And Marty wants people to, particularly with a film like Silence, which is so different from what's being done today. Um. He wants people to engage with the movie and make up their own mind about what they're seeing, not be told what to think. He hates that one filmmakers tell you what to think. A lot of that goes on today.

So one of the things he wanted in Silence was to not have any score at all, because he felt the score might be telling people what to think. Eventually, we do have a very subliminal score which comes out of cicadas and things, and there are a few times where you hear a piece of music up front, but normally you don't because he did not want to tell them what to think. He wants them to feel it

and make up their own mind. And after people see Silence, they say they talk about it for two weeks because there's so many big questions that are raised there about doubt and faith that um, it provokes that kind of thought, which is what he wanted. That's all he wanted. The movie opens Silence. It's very quiet, if you will. Nonetheless, it's a sequence of torture. It's a sequence of Liam Neeson, you know, watching the said I want to ruin the

film for people. But something horrific is happening. And you've edited some films that are these spectacularly violent films. Now I've seen films that that are more graphic. I'm not saying that they're graphic by any means. I've seen movies that are far more graphic and f mo or less effective as a result of it. Yeah, that's never been an issue for you. It was it was every time you sat there and said, my god, this is tough to watch. Well, the thing is you see that we

create that violence in the editing room. There's no way that DeNiro could take an actual punch all the times you see it in in the film. When he was being hit in the head, there was no hand in the glove um and so his he was his head was being nudged in blood and saliva would spray off it, but he There's no way he could have taken all that punishment. So our job is to make sure that we make it look as if he took that hit. It's not actually violent. When I get it, I make

it violent with Marty. I let me just say first that I think Marty's use of violence is very uh important because there is, as we know, living in this particular time, tremendous violence around the world. And if you think there isn't your your kidding yourself. If you can show it properly without being gratuitous, and I don't think he ever is, it's important that it be part of the films he particularly makes. He grew up in a

very violent neighborhood. He grew up in a neighborhood where the mafia would tell people take your children off the street at three o'clock and and someone would be gunned down on the street and the kids would go back and play again. So he saw a lot of that. It is something he grew up with and he understands

very deeply. But I must tell you that if you see, for example, in Casino, Joe Pesci put somebody his head and the vice with with the eye bulging right, that's all takes an enormous amount of editing to make that believable. Of course, that never really happens. But I do remember we had one screening where it was I think Mike Ovid's and two other people, somebody from the studio and maybe Marty's agent, another agent, and Marty and I were

sitting behind them. They were all wearing blue suits, and when that came up, the first shot of that eye and the vice came up, Um, they all went, oh my god, and their their arms went back in sync over their heads. And Marty said to me, how many more shots of this do we have? I said five, and he went, oh it was so we cut that down. But um, it's never violent when I get it. But was there one sequence violence or no? Just in terms

of action, the pacing the intention. Give us an example of a scene that was a particularly difficult one for you to cut a real challenge. I think sometimes films need to be restructured, and uh, for example, Departed needed to be restructured. Even Kundoon we had to pull up the Chinese invasion. It was taking too long. Um, So they're the restructuring is sometimes very important in a movie. But also Silence was very hard for me because to get the right meditative pace without being born was was

very important. And it was very interesting to try and incorporate the Japanese actor's style of acting with the westerners. So, uh, they're they're all hard in different ways, but I can't think of one that was really expensively. So you no, particularly not the violence because Marty storyboards it very carefully, so putting it together is not that hard. Making it

believable is hard. You know, when when somebody throws a punch, they're actually missing the other actors chin by half an inch so and the actor then snaps his head back to make it look So you have to get the right one of those. Sometimes he's not he's too far away or whatever may is. It believable is something that's part of my job. One of the things that that is I wonder during the arch of his career is how much producers and studios trying to interfere with the

movie he's making. So it remains that way, but he's gained a great deal of control as the films go on. But we do get notes from the producers or the studio, more from the studio, actually not from the without naming names. Is there anyone he ever takes their counselors or a producer he's ever relied on for any information. Well, the great thing about Marty is he will listen, but he will not do anything that conflicts with what he thinks is right. He will burn the film first, and I'm

not kidding of Ques. It's a little hard to burn digital now, so it could be done. But but he will. I mean, I've seen him take that stand. But what happened is that he learned very early on to walk the type role between art and commerce very cleverly, because I think to a certain extent, you know, he said, I grew up in a neighborhood where power was around all the time, and I under stand it. I know how to work it. Um, He's been in situations, I think the taxi driver where he said he was going

to kill ahead of the studio. This is already documented by the Philips who were the producers. But now what he does is he knows how to talk them out of it, or you know, I get the notes first, and I only tell him anything I think that he should hear, and he will listen. But he also is able to defend his position extremely well, and I've seen

him do it over and over again. One time I was with him and uh, it was a subject matter that I've done some research on by myself, and he thought I might be involved in this meeting, and somebody said, you know what we should do. We should take the plot of Gone with the Wind and inserted into this script. And I was just about to walk out of the room when I heard that, and Marty was brilliant. He said, well, that's a very good idea, George, but I couldn't make

that movie, which was very kind. You know, he didn't. He wasn't. However, I have seen him also when he'll storm out, you know, just say it's your movie or mine. You take it, you put your name on it, I'm taking mine off. I've I've seen that happen several times. I've also seen him do something wonderful, which is to just wear them down by telling them long stories about

gang chiefs that he knew in his neighborhood. Um, there was one particular time where we were in a room whether your conditioning was very cold, no one had brought water in, and everyone was getting hungry, was getting towards twelve, and he was going on in these long stories about crazy mafia guys, and finally he just wore They just gave up. And his two agents were texting each other and one of them said, where is he going with this?

But he knew what he was doing. No. You you have been married to filmmaking and editing and your famous counterpart for years and years and then you got married. Tell us about where did you meet him? Well? Um, interestingly, because I had seen Life and Death of Colonel Bloom made by my husband Mike Paul when I was, you know, sixteen, and it stayed in my head. When Marty started educating me on Raging Bull, he started educating me about the films of palem Pressburger because he had just gone and

found Michael Powell living in poverty and really forgotten. Unbelievable he was in England. Um. In this little cottage I still own. UM. The British Film Institute was trying people like Ian Christie, Kevin goff Yates and even bertrompt Vernier and France were trying to revive the films. But Marty, with his high profile, was able to bring Um Michael to tell your ride re enter Peeping Tom into the New York Film Festival and had never been properly distributed

here and just revived the whole cannon. So that was going on then. It was it was a great miracle, UM. But I saw Michael stand in front of audiences and see his films come back to life. It was heaven. I can't tell you. Marty was so dedicated to that, so he was educating me. We were cutting Raging Bull and Michael Powell came over to the Museum of Modern Art did the first big retrospective on him in America. Marty said to me, I want you to go to

the MoMA, not work, which was amazing. I go to the moment and look at the life and death of Colonel Blimp and Michael Powell was there and I went up to him and I said, I'm Marty's editor. But he was very distracted because I think he was thinking about the great love of his life, Debra car who was in that movie. That's when they fell in love and then broke up after it. But then Marty said,

he's coming to dinner. Would you like to meet him because you're so much in love with their movies now, And I said yes, And well, when I met him, I just fell in love with him immediately. He was so astounding. I wish you'd met him. He was an amazing human being, and he didn't talk much, but when he said something, it was very interesting. And then he came back after the dinner. I was cutting Raging Bull in a bedroom in Marty's apartment where he was living

with Isabella Russellini. He had an extra bedroom and we had film works in the bathtub in the adjoining bathroom. My husband thought that was one of the funniest things. He just roared when he saw that. So he came back to talk to me and we started having lunch, and then things developed and then we had to tell everybody. So he came to live with me in New York on King of Comedy Um and Isabella, Marty's wife at the time, Isabella Rossellini, came and said to me, Selmam,

Michael should come live with us. There's no neason for you to have to put him up in your hotel room here. And I said, well, I don't think you quite understand. I have to tell you we're actually living together. Oh, Marty will be so thrilled. Well, Marty of course was a bit stunned. Everybody was. I mean, there was thirty years difference in us, but it didn't matter because Michael had the heart of a sixteen year old. So we

had ten blissful years. But Marty, it was a shock from Marty because he knew then that I would maybe at certain times want to go home and cook dinner from Michael, the man in your life. But the director, he loved having Michael with us, and it was such a wonderful friendship to watch. I can't tell you, uh, and Michael had a great influence on on our movie. Did your relationship wind up costing you any editing assignments with Marty? Did you ever miss any job you've You've

edited every one of Marty's movies. No, so. Um we made Woodstock and Marty left Woodstock early and went to bust In in Hollywood, and Um, we finished woodstock the mix of woodstock out there, but we were not appreciated by the unions and they didn't like the fact that New Yorkers because we were two separate editing unions at

that point and they didn't like us being there. And then Marty wanted me to work with him, but I the union said no because she's not in our union, and she's going to have to start as an apprentice for five years and then five years as an assistant and then she'll be allowed to just been nominated for woodstock for an oscar. So I said, I'm not going to do it. So he couldn't work with me until Raging Bull, when Erwin Winkler, the producer, got me in

the union. So those films prior to Raging Bull were that's where they were. Boxcar, Bertha, Main Streets Alice, New York, New York and Taxi Driver. I didn't cut any of those movies. Who cut Taxi Driver? Marsha Lucas. The three editors were actually working with him. Them. Marsha Lucas, who is George Lucas's wife was at the time um so he had he was working with multiple editors and sometimes editors who did not want the director in the editing room.

That's why he wanted to work with me again, because he felt that. So that's was the impetus of your marriage, if you will, with the two of you, yes, because he wanted you around. What happened is that he felt that from the very beginning that I would be a

collaborator and I wouldn't be ego. Battles over who's got the right idea about this cut or not, which who knows more about editing often happens between directors and editors, and that's very bad for a movie when that when they're fighting or and you made very few movies with other attractors, You've only made a couple of correct Allison Andrews, you in a movie. Yes, at Marty's request, he was

executive producing it. So I helped with that. But then on Raging Bull, I was allowed to come back as long as there was a stand by editor on both coasts. But still they terrorized us out there. If we were mixing, say until twelve o'clock at night, they would turn on the lights of our cars and the radio so that our batteries would be dead when we came up that went on all the time. We had to get a bodyguard from Marty actually um and things like Raging bullshit

on the squirrel down the walls. But finally that ended and now we're all one local, one happy local, and there's no problems like that anymore. Well, two things. One is roles for women in Marty's films. I mean, women have their place in Marty's films because they're you know, men are their protagonists and the women like in Raging Bull or Casino. And then you see a movie like Age of Innocence where he's got a female lead in the film and one of the biggest stars of her day.

Was it different for him to direct women or to develop roles for women in his films. I didn't sense that. I kind of like the women in those films. I mean, I think Cathy Moriarity is wonderful and Raging Bull went on a writer, is absolutely stunning in Age of Instance, And I don't have a problem with the women. I am a problem with him. Yeah, he hasn't made a lot of films with female leads when I mean, and that's maybe that's not his his daily I guess not.

That's okay now, The last thing I want to ask you is there's so many facets to filmmaking. There's so many elements to filmmaking. Not just the things that are camera centric, you know, like the like the lighting and the cutting and everything, but there's wardrobes and sets and actors and editing and pacing and stuff where there's so

much that goes into it. What's a film that comes to mind of his when you think about that, all those aspects of filmmaking come together in your mind and just the sets and then everything, and it's that painting. It's art. I always say it's very hard because as I hate to have to pick one and I love them all for different reasons. But because working on Reagon Bull was my first major feature film on a on a big Hollywood set, I didn't even know how to

I'm location, I didn't know how to behave UM. Fortunately, I had an assistant and I used to put my own trims away. Now I have three assistants, and it was weird. Marty said, don't worry, I'll help you through it. Don't worry. But for me, that movie was so astounding. When I saw the dailies, I just couldn't take my eyes off to narrow. It was such brilliant direction, such brilliant cinematography, the black and white cinematography, such brilliant acting,

and improvisation. I love improvisation. It's very hard to cut, but I love it. And the challenge that that de Niro and Paschi gave me was amazing. It was the music, the use of music, the power, the strength of the movie all over it made it the one that I think is actually the perfect film. And I screened it recently.

I go to Seattle onto the Seattle Art Muse him a lot to do, show Michael Powell Films and um that we screened a really good print from the Academy of Film print of Raging Bill, and I could not get over it was burned into the screen. It was just one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. So I have to say that that is overall the one that I think. Everything just clicked together in an

amazing way. Do you know that for me, the memories of Marty are all the things you say, that opening title sequence, the horror of him going into the jail cell and punching the wall. That's so it's so you know that that that that man. He was. He was like a sick animal. And I've known people like that. But my other favorite moment, because it's so opaque and it's so brilliantly weird, is that moment when de Niro tries to brush Lorraine down into that building. He's down there,

it's down there. We go go on in there. Nothing's on the money, nothing said. That gesture, that hand gesture is just well, he's He's just amazing, you know. I. I mean, I could just look at that film over and over again and never get tired of it. It's it's because to watch him when he's questioning his brother, you know, about his wife. Oh my god, I mean the way Bob, what he did with his face there is just astounding. Uh. You know, nobody improvises like Bob

and Joe Peschi together. They kick each other off in the most amazing ways that I love it. It's hard, but it's like putting a puzzle together, you know, And I love that. In a recent interview with The l A. Times, Scorsese he equated his and Thelma schoolmakers editing to a process so singular that it's quote almost like making home movies unquote Lucky for us, they decided to share. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.