Thelma Schoonmaker

Thelma Schoonmaker
Schoonmaker in Karlovy Vary, July 2010
Born Thelma Colbert Schoonmaker
(1940-01-03) January 3, 1940
Algiers, Algeria
Alma mater

Cornell University

New York University (six-week program)
Occupation Film editor
Years active 1966–present
Spouse(s) Michael Powell (1984–1990; his death)

Thelma Colbert Schoonmaker (born January 3, 1940) is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over fifty years. She started working with Scorsese on his debut feature film Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), and edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull (1980). Schoonmaker has received seven Academy Award nominations for Best Film Editing, and has won three times—for Raging Bull (1980), The Aviator (2004), and The Departed (2006).

Early life

Schoonmaker was born in Algiers, Algeria, the daughter of American parents, Thelma and Bertram Schoonmaker.[1] Bertram, descended from the New York Schoonmaker family, was employed as an agent of the Standard Oil Company and worked extensively abroad.[2] She was raised in various countries, including on the Dutch-Caribbean island of Aruba.[2][3]

Schoonmaker did not live in the United States until she was an adolescent, in 1955, and was initially alienated and dumbfounded by American culture.[2] Schoonmaker was interested in a career in international diplomacy and began attending Cornell University in 1957, where she studied political science and the Russian language. When she graduated from Cornell in 1961, she began taking State Department tests in order to apply for positions in the U.S. government.[2][4]

Politically inclined and opinionated, she expressed distaste for the South African policy of apartheid, a stance which did not sit well with those administering the State Department tests.[2] In reaction to this experience, she began taking a course in primitive art.[5]

Career

"While doing graduate work at Columbia University, Thelma Schoonmaker answered an advertisement that offered on-the-job training as an assistant film editor."[6][7] She responded to the employment advertisement in The New York Times and got the job. The job entailed assisting an "editor" who was randomly cutting frames from classic European films, (such as those by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Federico Fellini), so that their length would conform to the running times of U.S. television broadcasts.[2]

She signed up for a brief six-week course in film-making at New York University, where she came into contact with young film-maker Martin Scorsese, who was struggling to complete his film What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? A negative cutter had butchered his film, not leaving enough negative frames to allow for hot splicing, so a film professor asked her to help Scorsese.[2] Schoonmaker edited Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).

At NYU., Schoonmaker also met film-maker Michael Wadleigh and later edited his influential music festival documentary, Woodstock on which Scorsese also worked. Her first major film editing work on Woodstock gained Schoonmaker an Academy Award nomination for Best Editing.[8] Her use of superimpositions and freeze frames brought the performances in the film to life, and added to the movie's wide appeal, thus helping to raise the artistry and visibility of documentary film-making to a new level.[7]

The early period of Schoonmaker's career was difficult; joining the Motion Picture Editors Guild has always been challenging, with entry requirements included spending five years as an apprentice, three as an assistant,[8] and the film industry generally has been a restrictive boys' club.[3][9] Consequently, there was a twelve-year gap between her work on Scorsese's student films and her Oscar-winning work on Raging Bull. "I would have loved to work with Marty, but I wasn't in the union….And then, finally, Marty called me about Raging Bull and the lawyers got me in the union."[10]

While Schoonmaker didn't officially work with Scorsese until Raging Bull, she did make an uncredited contribution to Taxi Driver. Scorsese had decided not to edit the picture Taxi Driver during proaction shooting, but to save all the editing until shooting had wrapped. Unfortunately, this left him very little time to cut the picture, as Columbia's contract stipulated that a finished cut had to be supplied by the middle of February…among others, Scorsese brought in Schoonmaker to help. At one point, Steven Spielberg visited Scorsese and chipped in with some contributions towards the final edit.[11][12]

Personal life

Thelma Schoonmaker and Columba Powell at the Cannes Film Festival (2009). Columba Powell is the son of Michael Powell, a prominent film director to whom Schoonmaker was married.

She was introduced to Michael Powell by Scorsese and London-based film producer Frixos Constantine.[8] The couple were married from May 19, 1984 until his death in 1990. The couple had no children.[5]

Since Powell's death, Schoonmaker has dedicated herself to preserving the films and honoring the legacy of her husband, who directed many classic films, including The Red Shoes.[4][9]

Quotes

  • "You get to contribute so significantly in the editing room because you shape the movie and the performances," she says. "You help the director bring all the hard work of those who made the film to fruition. You give their work rhythm and pace and sometimes adjust the structure to make the film work – to make it start to flow up there on the screen. And then it's very rewarding after a year's work to see people react to what you've done in the theater."[9]
  • "Editing is a lot about patience and discipline and just banging away at something, turning off the machine and going home at night because you're frustrated and depressed, and then coming back in the morning to try again."[13]
  • When asked how it was that such a nice lady could edit Scorsese's violent gangster pictures, Thelma replied with a smile, "Ah, but they aren't violent until I've edited them."[14]
  • "I think Marty's use of violence is very valid. He never uses it gratuitously, he always makes a very strong point….if you're going to show violence and it's done with conviction the way Marty does it then it is correct."[11]

Selected filmography

Other credits

Accolades

With seven Academy Award nominations, Schoonmaker is the second most-nominated editor in Academy Awards history, after Michael Kahn who has eight nominations. Tied with Kahn, Daniel Mandell, and Ralph Dawson, she also holds the record for the most wins in the category of Best Editing, with three.

In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild published a list of the 75 best-edited films of all time based on a survey of its membership. Three films edited by Schoonmaker with Scorsese are on this list: Raging Bull (1980), listed first, Goodfellas (1990), listed fifteenth, and Hugo (2011), listed sixty-ninth. Only George Tomasini, the editor of Alfred Hitchcock's films in the 1950s, has more appearances on this list.[15]

Academy Awards and nominations

Best Film Editing

Other awards and nominations

  • 1981 – Raging Bull (1980) (won) American Cinema Editors ACE Eddie – Best Edited Feature Film
  • 1982 – Raging Bull (1980) (won) BAFTA Film Award – Best Editing
  • 1984 – The King of Comedy (1982) (nominated) BAFTA Film Award – Best Editing
  • 1991 – Goodfellas (1990) (nominated) American Cinema Editors ACE Eddie – Best Edited Feature Film
  • 1991 – Goodfellas (1990) (won) BAFTA Film Award – Best Editing
  • 1993 – Cape Fear (nominated) BAFTA Film Award – Best Editing
  • 1992 – Gotham Below the Line Award (won)
  • 1996 – Casino (1995) (nominated) American Cinema Editors ACE Eddie – Best Edited Feature Film
  • 2000 – Hollywood Film Festival – Hollywood Film Award (won)
  • 2003 – Gangs of New York (2002) (won) American Cinema Editors ACE Eddie – Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic
  • 2003 – Gangs of New York (2002) (nominated) BAFTA Film Award – Best Editing
  • 2003 – Gangs of New York (2002) (won) Satellite Awards Golden Satellite Award Best Film Editing
  • 2004 – AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Robert De Niro (2003) (TV) (2004) (nominated) Emmy Award – Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special
  • 2005 – The Aviator (won) American Cinema Editors ACE Eddie – Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic
  • 2005 – The Aviator (nominated) BAFTA Film Award – Best Editing
  • 2005 – The Aviator (nominated) Satellite Awards Golden Satellite Award Best Film Editing
  • 2005 – The Aviator (nominated) OFCS Award – Online Film Critics Society Awards Best Editing
  • 2007 – The Departed (nominated) American Cinema Editors ACE Eddie – Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic
  • 2007 – The Departed (nominated) BAFTA Film Award – Best Editing
  • 2007 – The Departed (nominated) OFCS Award – Online Film Critics Society Awards Best Editing
  • 2007 – Made an honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University
  • 2014 – 71st Venice International Film Festival – Golden Lion For Lifetime Achievement
  • 2017 - American Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Thelma & Bertram Schoonmaker Story" (PDF). Lago-colony.com. p. 563.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Marlow, Jonathan (October 6, 2006). "Thelma Schoonmaker: A Personal Journey with Scorsese and Powell". GreenCine.com. Archived from the original on December 13, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Biography for Thelma Schoonmaker on IMDb
  4. 1 2 Daniel Aloi, "Thelma Schoonmaker '61 to talk movies Nov. 19 at Cornell", cornell.edu; accessed February 26, 2018.
  5. 1 2 Chris Tilly, "Thelma Schoonmaker Q&A" Archived January 7, 2006, at the Wayback Machine., TimeOut.com, September 26, 2005.
  6. ↑ Thelma Schoonmaker Profile, Turner Classic Movies Film Article; retrieved February 5, 2013.
  7. 1 2 "Hollywood Outstanding Achievement in Editing Award Honoree – THELMA SCHOONMAKER". Hollywood Film Festival. August 2000. Archived from the original on October 31, 2006.
  8. 1 2 3 Robson, Leo (May 9, 2014). "Thelma Schoonmaker: the queen of the cutting room". FT Magazine. Retrieved May 10, 2014.
  9. 1 2 3 Nguyen, Lan N. (March 15, 2005). "The Last Temptation of Thelma". iVillage Entertainment. Archived from the original on October 22, 2006.
  10. ↑ Talty, Stephan (September–October 1991). "Invisible Woman". American Film.
  11. 1 2 Sangster, Jim (2002). Scorsese. Virgin Film.
  12. ↑ Kowalski, Eileen (November 14, 2001). "Tina Hirsch". Variety.
  13. ↑ Debruge, Peter (July 30, 2007). "Oscar-winning editor arrives with 'Departed'". Variety.
  14. ↑ During lecture to students at Canterbury Christ Church University, November 25, 2009
  15. ↑ "The 75 Best Edited Films". Editors Guild Magazine. 1 (3). May 2012.

Further reading

  • Aloi, Daniel. "Scorsese's film editor, Thelma Schoonmaker '61, talks of 'Raging Bull' and Michael Powell". Cornell University.
  • Schoonmaker, Thelma (December 26, 2005). "Oscar-Winning Scorsese Editor Thelma Schoonmaker". Fresh Air (Interview). Interviewed by Terry Gross. National Public Radio. No transcript available.
  • Hynes, Daniel (January 17, 2014). "Cut Here, Cut There, but It's Still 3 Hours: Thelma Schoonmaker on the Art of Editing Long Movies". The New York Times.
  • Kallay, William (March 3, 2005). "American Cinema Editors – 2004 Oscar Nominees Discuss their Craft".
  • Morgan, David (1991). "Interview with Thelma Schoonmaker". Wide Angle/Closeup.
  • Schoonmaker, Thelma (September 26, 2005). "Thelma Schoonmaker Q&A: The Oscar-winning editor discusses Martin Scorsese, Michael Powell and her new film, 'The Departed'". Time Out (Interview). Interviewed by Chris Tilly. Archived from the original on 2006-01-07.
  • 2007 Coolidge Award Thelma Schoonmaker – The Coolidge Corner Theatre
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