August 12, 2025 • 44 mins
Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Thelma Schoonmaker, the legendary editor behind every Martin Scorsese film since Raging Bull. Known for her warm, unassuming presence, Schoonmaker has shaped some of cinema’s most intense and iconic moments—earning three Academy Awards and seven nominations along the way. She talks to Here’s the Thing host Alec Baldwin about Scorsese’s pet peeves, what it’s like to “create” violence, and the woman she credits with giving her the “greatest life in the world.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means
it's time for our tradition that Here's the Thing where
the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
our Summer staff Picks series.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Next up is producer Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Thanks, Alec. One of my most formative experiences as a
filmmaker was editing my sixteen millimeters short film by hand
on a vintage Steinbeck. When I think of the legacy
of flatbed film editing, I immediately think of Thelma scoon Maker.
She is the woman behind the curtain for Martin Scorsese's films,
responsible for editing all of his films since Raging Bull.
(00:43):
Something I love about this conversation with Thelma is how
much insight she gives into her editing process and her
working relationship with Scorsese. The specificity to which Thelma can
recall the exact camera work of certain shots and which
dailies Marty liked and didn't like is incredible. Their working
relationship is a perfect marriage, and Thelma has become indispensable
to Scorsese since their first introduction, back when she volunteered
(01:06):
to help out a young film student whose film negative
had been cut wrong. This was a young Martin Scorsese
with her calm, thoughtful and precise demeanor. It's clear to me,
just from listening to this wonderful conversation, why Thelma Schoonmaker
is a legendary film editor.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Behind every good filmmaker is a brilliant editor, and Martin
Scorsese is no exception. His counterpart, Thelma Schoonmaker has edited
every film the cinematic giant has done since Raging Bull,
earning her three Academy Awards and seven nominations. For a
face and demeanor like your favorite grade school teacher, one
(01:44):
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 in Scorsese's forty plus years of collaborating
is widely considered to be one of the most successful
working carriages in movie history. But talented as Schoonmaker is,
(02:04):
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 score SSE's newest film, Silence, she looks back
on the moments that shaped her both as a filmmaker
and a person.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Something like Age of Innocence. We certainly had to slow
down and figure out how to reach a pace that
reflected nineteenth century New York with Kundun, which was one
of my favorites. I had to really learn a great
deal about Tibet itself, and also Marty wanted to know
how to shoot the sand mandala, which the monks make
(02:47):
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 on the river. It's
unbelievable and it's really hard work work. So he wanted
to open Kundoom, which we did with very tight shots
of images of the mandola, and he wanted to know
(03:07):
what were the important ones for him to shoot. So
I had to learn about the san 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 sam mandala that was a lot
of fun learning about Tibet and becoming acquainted with these
(03:28):
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. That was a very extraordinary experience for me,
and I've remained a supporter of the cause and friends
with Tibetans ever since. So that was really world changing
for me. As this movie now, Silence has been for
(03:49):
me in what way 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 the Order,
the fervor of that order 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
(04:14):
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
(04:41):
speaking a language that was not native to them was
very interesting too. But this film Silence has had the
same impact on me that kuldn't do and did.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
When you talk about the sand Mandala and you coming
in early to discuss with him, then you know what
shots you might need or not need for the sequence,
but you say that you're not in involved in that
kind of composition. Typically you don't sit down with him
during the period of storyboards. Does he storyboard?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Oh, yes, he's storyboards. Now he tends to write on
the right side of the script the little image that
he wants. No, he designs all the camera work, always has,
and I'm not needed usually in the writing or any
designing of the film. So I come on when it
starts shooting, with the exception of Kundun.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
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 editor is sending messages to
them saying we could use this, we could use this angle.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
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
(06:03):
where Garupe played by Adam Driver drowns in silence. 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 were not sort of as tough
(06:26):
as maybe more experienced stunt women would be, and to
be shoved down under the water constantly was difficult for them.
So that was one of the few times in Taiwan.
On this incredible sequence where Rodriguez played by Adam Garfield
is made to watch Japanese Christians pushed off boats wrapped
(06:48):
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. And
he was very interesting and had an idea that he
wanted to show the horror of these people being pushed
off in the water from a wide shot, to show
the banality of it, like the banality of the way
(07:10):
the Nazis killed people. So it was very complicated shoot.
He was trying to get those wide 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.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I think that should never a thought of going into
a tank or doing anything of a set.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
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'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. Marti Oni does
them now is rehearsal really so not that he doesn't
(07:59):
love wide shots. 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.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Woody, Yeah, a lot of white shots, like five minutes.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You could watch this incredible shot and never be bored.
And now what's happened to it? He says, It's just vanished.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
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?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, first of all, the most important time for me
is when he looks at daily's now when he's looking
at dailies. I look at the footage first, as soon
as it comes in, to make sure there isn't something
missing or something wrong. Sometimes the camera in one of
the great shots in The Raging Bull, where it begins
on de Niro down in the basement of this enormous
(08:51):
stadium and he the steadycam camera is backing up in
front of him. It's an amazing tour to four shot.
Marty's referred 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 Ruin but fortunately we
had just as good ones. But what he does in
(09:13):
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. Don't ever
show me that to me again, burn that.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
And so.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
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 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
(09:56):
those incredibly rich reactions of him, I then begin to
create selects, and then I do the first 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
(10:17):
the movie that's what we prefer to do if we can.
Or is there a bible that dictates what those twelve are?
Is there a phrase? Do you have a manual?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Is there the film a Marty manual of that mentions
each twelve of those?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
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 are friends who we know will be honest, so
we does confer with other people. Oh yeah, well we debrief.
I mainly do most of the debriefing afterwards. So we
will screen with twelve people, say, then I debrief them
(10:51):
very heavily for two or three days. Then we do
the second cut, and we screen for more people, and
pretty soon we get up to two hundred, which I
can't debrief everybody. We do cards. Then we'd like to
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,
(11:12):
you have to live with it and learn what it
wants and what it needs, and so all the editing
is just absolutely fascinating. You would love to be in
the room.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
This is at work that you didn't necessarily, I wouldn't
say you fell into it, but you were certainly on
a different course for a while.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Definitely. You grew up where my mother and father met
in France. 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
(11:52):
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 there.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Her dad was there because he was with shell oil,
a standard so yesh.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And then my father went to Aruba in the Caribbean,
and that's where I grew up with Well, yes, was that.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Like Aruba in the wartime in post war time?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, in the wartime were till fifty five, 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 lob torpedoes and also mortars in trying to hit
the oil tanks which were above where we were living.
(12:39):
So we were taken out every night, wrapped in blankets
and taken to the one building that was made of
stone and stay there. And I remember seeing the burning
tankers along the horizon. But eventually the Germans did not
take the island. And what happened was they'd brought all
kinds of Europeans, people from Australia, from all over the world.
(13:00):
So I grew up in a European atmosphere, which I loved.
So when I came back to the States, when my
father was transferred back to New York, it was a shock.
You got the bends. It was shocking, it was really
it was.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
The most shocking thing for you. Nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
You're in New York. Yeah, it was no New Jersey, Jersey.
So in a my father was commuting into New York.
So I was in Ridgewood, 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
(13:36):
or football player, you were nobody. And I was very
unused to that kind of thing. A tribal school 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
(13:57):
being at Cornell. And you're a different plan. You were
going to study, well, I wanted to become a diplomat,
so I studied the Russian language. Is one of the
first Russian language courses in America because Sputnyk 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
(14:20):
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
(14:43):
going to be very unhappy here. You should go to
the USIA. But I didn't want to do that. I
don't know now the travel bug. What's the difference something?
You're right, I don't know. It's 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
(15:05):
in the New York Times, which never occurs, which said
willing to train assistant film editor.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
No, no, wait, no, what the hell are you thinking?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Well, what was interesting was that there was this wonderful
program called Million Dollar Movie, which ran the same film
nine times, and Scorsese learned about so many films, but
particularly the films with Pool and Presburger. He would watch
them nine times until his mother said she was going
to kill him. And I was watching that same program.
(15:34):
I didn't even know that I was watching the Life
and Death of Colonel Bloom. So you were a movie watcher, Well,
I guess I was. I didn't know that that it
meant anything better. What were movies in your family? Well, yes,
I did see. My mother took me to see The
Rich Shoes in Aruba and at one point, but they
were a big movie that was your parents, not big ones, no,
but theater music. Well, yes, when my mother would have,
(15:58):
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
(16:18):
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
(16:41):
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 Fellini Antonioni Truffaux for late night television and
on Roco and his brother Visconti's Great film. He took
(17:04):
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 so it
was pretty appalling. But I did learn to cut negative
and I learned to put subtitles, so that was a
job you had to do that, Yeah, you do it.
And I learned to use a movie all which was
very helpful. Then I couldn't stand this guy anymore. And
(17:28):
I saw an ad and it said a six week
course at what was called Washington College, which became part
of NYU, and a six week course in filmmaking. So
I thought, well, if I quit, I just have enough
money to take that course. So I went to something
change while you had that tib you got the bug,
I guess, so I guess. So. So I get there
(17:48):
at this course and run by an incredible Armenian American
named Hagen Nugien. 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 Waygnugen always talked.
And he was a wonderful support to Marty, and Marty
wasn't there. Then was well, Marty, no, this is how
I met him. So we go to this six weeks
(18:09):
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 six weeks, the professor said, does anybody here know
how to cut negative or help Martin Scorcese because he's
made a student film and somebody has cut his negative wrong,
(18:30):
and so if there's anybody who can help him, And
I said, well, I'll try, you know, And I went
over and he had been up for two days editing
the movie, and he was completely zongkeed, 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 tail or. So
I helped him patch it back together.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
But explain to people who don't know what do you
mean by negative cutting.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
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 editing
your movie, then you have to cut the negative to
fit the way you've edited the work print. So you
pull the negative first from flash frame to flash frame,
and then very carefully you spice it together. You match
(19:16):
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. She said, I'm the person who did it,
and I'm so sorry, And I said, no, don't be sorry.
(19:39):
You gave me the greatest life in the world. Because
you hadn't just cut that negative, I would never have
met him. Oh my god. So it's a miracle. So
you salvage. Marty's a student film, student film, right, and
what did you make of him? Then?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Well, it's a young so it's Marty. It was in college, right.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Well, all of us knew from one particular student film,
collag 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 films, Prittian ideas,
startling ideas. For example, it's not just you Murray starts
with somebody's shoes and a hand comes into frame and
(20:18):
he encourages the camera to lift up to his face.
It was, I mean, just unbelievable, great, great ideas. So
then what happened was a group of us got together
and we were making films for PBS, short films covering
Aretha Franklin concerts and helping fellow filmmakers finish their films.
(20:39):
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
(21:00):
all did everything. We pushed the wheelchair that had the
cameraman in it because we didn't have dollies. 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. And I drove the car
(21:20):
with the cameraman on the front effort and again for
a tracking shot. It was great.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
It was I think it was the Cone Brothers. I
could be wrong. I was reading an article about raising
Arizona and they were saying how their improvisations with the
camera led to like certain names. They have things 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 cinematagaphy operator on a
(21:45):
blanket and pull him across the lawn and he'd be
right on the heels of the victim.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, everybody was doing them. I mean, now you know Napoleon,
the great film by a Belgass, a silent film. He
had small cameras that he threw. He had people throw
them over the wall of this fortress to give the
idea of what a cannon ball would be like going
into a fortress. So it was the point of view
of the cannonbridge. So people, you know, people were inventing
(22:14):
all of these things all along in film.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I almost only go to the theater. I go at least.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Twice a week. And what do you do?
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I often go at ten o'clock or midnight. Can't drag
my wife 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.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot org. This
is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Initially studying to become an international diplomat. Algerian born Thelma
(23:26):
Schoonmaker'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 in nineteen eighty four. But before love
came work with Marty, as she called Scorsese, driving the train.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
He taught me how to build a scene, how to
when to use close ups, when not to use close ups,
how to learn what's good acting, how to build rhythm
between two actors.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
He's never in a position where the actress he's working
with don't deliver what he wants. He gets the actress
he wants, or he doesn't make the film.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
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 weaned down.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Is your technique to that as well? Avoid close up
some people you think are less truthful or oh.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
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 that.
Just other people dazzle you. Well, some yeah, I mean
some actors it's take one.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Other actors work towards something. For example, Marty and de
Niro did fifteen takes on the last scene in Raging Bull,
where DeNiro is confronting himself as Jake Lamata in the
mirror and he's doing the on the waterfront speech. They
wanted to do fifteen takes because they were trying different
ways of him confronting himself actually giving himself. And I
(25:02):
thought one take was more emotional. I like that, but
Marty liked another one that was colder, and 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 Kate
Blanchett are often like take one, that's it. They're come
in so prepared, so they're living that part. Other actors
(25:25):
like to work towards it. Leo and Bob like to
work towards something with Marty. So 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
very difficult to describe editing. You've made that clear, Yeah,
I mean so one of the first things he would
(25:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Letting it breathe. Oh yeah, watching the people feel and
go through it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah. And Marty wants people to, particularly with a film
like Silence, which is so different from what's being done today.
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
(26:25):
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
(26:45):
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 it provokes that kind of thought,
which is what he wanted. That's all he wanted. The
movie opens Silence.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yes, it's very quiet, if you will. Nonetheless, it's a
sequence of torture. It's a sequence of Liam Neesen, you know,
watching the side. 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, now I've seen
films that are more graphic. I'm not saying that they're
(27:23):
graphic by many means. I've seen movies that are far
more graphic and far more or less effective as a
result of it. Yes, that's never been an issue for you,
where every time you sat there and said, my god,
this is tough to watch.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Well, the thing is you see that we create that
violence in the editing room. There's no way that de
Niro could take an actual punch. All the times you
see it in the film. When he was being hit
in the head, there was no hand in the glove
and so was his head was being nudged in blood
(27:54):
and saliva would spray off it. But there's no way
he could have taken all that punished. 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. Let
me just say first that I think Marty's use of
(28:14):
violence is very important because there is, as we know,
living in this particular time, tremendous violence around the world.
And if you think there isn't, you're 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
(28:35):
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 so, 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
(28:59):
that few see. For example, in Casino, Joe Pesh put
somebody's head in the vice 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 like Ovitz and two other people, somebody from the
studio and maybe Marty's agent, another agent, and Marty and
(29:23):
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, they all went, oh
my god, and 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, I look, so we cut that down.
(29:43):
But it's never violent. When I get.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
It, 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.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I think sometimes films need to be restructured, and for example,
Departed needed to be restructured. Even Kundun we had to
pull up the Chinese invasion it was taking too long.
So the restructuring is sometimes very important in a movie.
But also Silence was very hard for me because to
(30:17):
get the right meditative pace without being boring was very important.
And it was very interesting to try and incorporate the
Japanese actors style of acting with the westerners. So they're
all hard in different ways, but I can't think of
one that was really no, particularly not the violence, because
(30:40):
Marty storyboards it very carefully, so putting it together is
not that hard. Making it believable is hard. You know,
when somebody throws a punch, they're actually missing the other
actor's 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
(31:00):
he's too far away or whatever makes it believable. Is
something that's part of my job more after the break.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
One of the things about it is I wonder during
the arc of his career is how much producers in
the studios.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Try to interfere with the movie. He's making always right,
so it remains that way we always 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.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Is there anyone he ever takes their counselors or a
producer he's ever relied on for any information.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Well, the great thing about Marty is he will listen,
but he will not do anything that he has more
conflicts with what he thinks is right. He will burn
the film first, and I'm not kidding. Of course, it's
a little hard to burn digital now, so it can
be done. It can be done, 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 tightrope
(31:58):
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 understand it. I know how to work it.
He's been in situations, I think with taxi driverwhere he
said he was going to kill the head of the studio.
This is already documented by the Phillips, who were the producers.
(32:18):
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 it was a
(32:40):
subject matter that I'd 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
insert it 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
(33:00):
good idea, George, but I couldn't make that movie, which
was very kind. You know, he didn't, he wasn't in planmable. However,
I've 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 myne off.
I've seen that happen several times. I've also seen him
do something wonderful, which is to just wear them down
(33:22):
by telling them long stories about gang chiefs that he
knew in his neighborhood. There was one particular time where
we were in a room where the air conditioning was
very cold. No one had brought water in, and everyone
was getting hungry. It 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
(33:44):
his two agents were texting each other and one of
them said, where is he going with this? He knew
what he was doing.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
No, you have been married to filmmaking and editing and
your famous counterpart for years.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
And years, and then you got married. Tell us about that.
Where did you meet him? Well? Interestingly, because I had
seen Life and Death of Colonel Blim, made by my
husband Michael Powell 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
(34:18):
of palam Pressburger because he had just gone and found
Michael Powell living in poverty and really forgotten. Unbelievable or
was he He was in England in this little cottage
I still own. The British Film Institute was trying people
like Ian Christy Kevin goff Yates and even Bertram Tavernier
and France were trying to revive the films, but Marty,
(34:41):
with his high profile, was able to bring Michael to
tell your ride re enter Peeping Tom into the New
York Film Festival. It had never been properly distributed here
and just revive the whole cannon. So that was going
on then. It was a great miracle. But I saw
Michael in front of audiences and see his films come
(35:02):
back to life. It was heaven. I can't tell you.
Marty was so dedicated to that, so he was educating
me as 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 MoMA and look
(35:22):
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 Carr, who's 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,
(35:43):
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
(36:03):
was living with Isabella Rossellini. He had an extra bedroom
and we had film wrecks 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
(36:26):
in New York on King of Comedy and Isabella, Marty's
wife at the time, Isabella Rossellini, came and said to me, Thelma,
Michael should come live with us. There's no need 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
(36:48):
a bit stunned. Everybody was. I mean, there were thirty
years different than 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
for Marty because he knew then that I would maybe
at certain times want to go home and cook dinner
for Michael.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
It was.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
But another director. He loved having Michael with us, and
it was such a wonderful friendship to watch. I can't
tell you, and Michael had a great influence on our movie.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Did your relationship wind up costing you any editing assignments
with Marty?
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Did you ever miss any job?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
You've edited every one of Marty's movies, No, really exceptions.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
So we made Woodstock, and Marty left Woodstock early and
went to bust In in Hollywood, and 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.
(37:48):
And then Marty wanted me to work with him, but
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 I'd 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
(38:08):
until Raging Bull, when Irwin Winkler, the producer, got me
in the universe. So those films prior to Raging Bull
were that they were Boxcar, Bertha, Mean Streets, Alice, New York,
New York, and Taxi Driver. I didn't cut any of
those movies. Who cut Taxi Driver? Marshall Lucas the three
editors are actually working with him. Then Marcia Lucas, who's
(38:29):
George Lucas's wife was at the time, 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.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
So that's was the impetus of your marriage, if you
will with it, the two of.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You, Yes, because he wanted you. 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 direct
and editors, and that's very bad for a movie when
that when they're fighting, and you've.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Made very few movies with other A directors, You've only
made a couple of correct Alison Anders, you did a
movie with.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
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 standby 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
(39:30):
be dead when we came out. That went on all
the time. We had to get a bodyguard from Marty actually,
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.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
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 or their protagonists and the women
like in a 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
(40:10):
to direct women or to develop roles for women in
his films.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I didn't sense that. I kind of like the women
in those films. I mean, I think Kathy Moriarty is
wonderful and Raging Bull when on a writer is absolutely
stunning in Age of Interests. And I don't have a
problem with the women Mary's films. I have a problem
with them.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, he hasn't made a lot of films with female leads,
is what they mean.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
And that's maybe that's not his daily Well I guess not.
That's okay. Now.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
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 lighting and the cutting, and 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 making come together in
(41:01):
your mind and just the sets and everything, and it's
that painting.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
It's art. I always say, it's very hard because I
hate to have to pick one, and I love them
all for different reasons. But because working on Raging Bull
was my first major feature film on a big Hollywood set,
I didn't even know how to I'm location, I didn't
know how to behave Fortunately I had an assistant it.
I used to put my own trims away. Now I
have three assistants, and it was weird. Marty said, don't worry,
(41:27):
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 de Niro. 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
(41:49):
the challenge that de Niro and Patti gave me was amazing.
It was the music, the use of music, the power,
the strength of the movie all over 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 Museum a lot to do show Michael Powell films,
(42:10):
and that we screened a really good print from the Academy,
a 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 over all
the one that I think everything just clicked together in
an amazing way. Do you know that?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
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. It's
so you know 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
(42:57):
tries to brush Lorraine down into that building.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
He's down there. It's down there. We go go on
in there.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Nothing's on the money, nothing said.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
That gesture, that hand gesture is just well, he's He's
just amazing, you know. I mean, I could just look
at that film over and over again and never get
tired of it. 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. You know, nobody improvises like
(43:36):
Bob and Joe Peshi 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.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
In a recent interview with The La Times, this course
says he equated his Anthelma Schoonmaker's editing to a process
so singular that it's quote.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Almost like making home movies. Ut Lucky for us, they
decided to share.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means
it's time for our tradition that Here's the Thing where
the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
our Summer staff Picks series.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Next up is producer Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Thanks, Alec. One of my most formative experiences as a
filmmaker was editing my sixteen millimeters short film by hand
on a vintage Steinbeck. When I think of the legacy
of flatbed film editing, I immediately think of Thelma scoon Maker.
She is the woman behind the curtain for Martin Scorsese's films,
responsible for editing all of his films since Raging Bull.
(00:43):
Something I love about this conversation with Thelma is how
much insight she gives into her editing process and her
working relationship with Scorsese. The specificity to which Thelma can
recall the exact camera work of certain shots and which
dailies Marty liked and didn't like is incredible. Their working
relationship is a perfect marriage, and Thelma has become indispensable
to Scorsese since their first introduction, back when she volunteered
(01:06):
to help out a young film student whose film negative
had been cut wrong. This was a young Martin Scorsese
with her calm, thoughtful and precise demeanor. It's clear to me,
just from listening to this wonderful conversation, why Thelma Schoonmaker
is a legendary film editor.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Behind every good filmmaker is a brilliant editor, and Martin
Scorsese is no exception. His counterpart, Thelma Schoonmaker has edited
every film the cinematic giant has done since Raging Bull,
earning her three Academy Awards and seven nominations. For a
face and demeanor like your favorite grade school teacher, one
(01:44):
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 in Scorsese's forty plus years of collaborating
is widely considered to be one of the most successful
working carriages in movie history. But talented as Schoonmaker is,
(02:04):
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 score SSE's newest film, Silence, she looks back
on the moments that shaped her both as a filmmaker
and a person.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Something like Age of Innocence. We certainly had to slow
down and figure out how to reach a pace that
reflected nineteenth century New York with Kundun, which was one
of my favorites. I had to really learn a great
deal about Tibet itself, and also Marty wanted to know
how to shoot the sand mandala, which the monks make
(02:47):
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 on the river. It's
unbelievable and it's really hard work work. So he wanted
to open Kundoom, which we did with very tight shots
of images of the mandola, and he wanted to know
(03:07):
what were the important ones for him to shoot. So
I had to learn about the san 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 sam mandala that was a lot
of fun learning about Tibet and becoming acquainted with these
(03:28):
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. That was a very extraordinary experience for me,
and I've remained a supporter of the cause and friends
with Tibetans ever since. So that was really world changing
for me. As this movie now, Silence has been for
(03:49):
me in what way 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 the Order,
the fervor of that order 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
(04:14):
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
(04:41):
speaking a language that was not native to them was
very interesting too. But this film Silence has had the
same impact on me that kuldn't do and did.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
When you talk about the sand Mandala and you coming
in early to discuss with him, then you know what
shots you might need or not need for the sequence,
but you say that you're not in involved in that
kind of composition. Typically you don't sit down with him
during the period of storyboards. Does he storyboard?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Oh, yes, he's storyboards. Now he tends to write on
the right side of the script the little image that
he wants. No, he designs all the camera work, always has,
and I'm not needed usually in the writing or any
designing of the film. So I come on when it
starts shooting, with the exception of Kundun.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
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 editor is sending messages to
them saying we could use this, we could use this angle.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
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
(06:03):
where Garupe played by Adam Driver drowns in silence. 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 were not sort of as tough
(06:26):
as maybe more experienced stunt women would be, and to
be shoved down under the water constantly was difficult for them.
So that was one of the few times in Taiwan.
On this incredible sequence where Rodriguez played by Adam Garfield
is made to watch Japanese Christians pushed off boats wrapped
(06:48):
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. And
he was very interesting and had an idea that he
wanted to show the horror of these people being pushed
off in the water from a wide shot, to show
the banality of it, like the banality of the way
(07:10):
the Nazis killed people. So it was very complicated shoot.
He was trying to get those wide 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.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I think that should never a thought of going into
a tank or doing anything of a set.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
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'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. Marti Oni does
them now is rehearsal really so not that he doesn't
(07:59):
love wide shots. 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.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Woody, Yeah, a lot of white shots, like five minutes.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You could watch this incredible shot and never be bored.
And now what's happened to it? He says, It's just vanished.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
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?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well, first of all, the most important time for me
is when he looks at daily's now when he's looking
at dailies. I look at the footage first, as soon
as it comes in, to make sure there isn't something
missing or something wrong. Sometimes the camera in one of
the great shots in The Raging Bull, where it begins
on de Niro down in the basement of this enormous
(08:51):
stadium and he the steadycam camera is backing up in
front of him. It's an amazing tour to four shot.
Marty's referred 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 Ruin but fortunately we
had just as good ones. But what he does in
(09:13):
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. Don't ever
show me that to me again, burn that.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
And so.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
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 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
(09:56):
those incredibly rich reactions of him, I then begin to
create selects, and then I do the first 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
(10:17):
the movie that's what we prefer to do if we can.
Or is there a bible that dictates what those twelve are?
Is there a phrase? Do you have a manual?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Is there the film a Marty manual of that mentions
each twelve of those?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
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 are friends who we know will be honest, so
we does confer with other people. Oh yeah, well we debrief.
I mainly do most of the debriefing afterwards. So we
will screen with twelve people, say, then I debrief them
(10:51):
very heavily for two or three days. Then we do
the second cut, and we screen for more people, and
pretty soon we get up to two hundred, which I
can't debrief everybody. We do cards. Then we'd like to
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,
(11:12):
you have to live with it and learn what it
wants and what it needs, and so all the editing
is just absolutely fascinating. You would love to be in
the room.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
This is at work that you didn't necessarily, I wouldn't
say you fell into it, but you were certainly on
a different course for a while.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Definitely. You grew up where my mother and father met
in France. 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
(11:52):
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 there.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Her dad was there because he was with shell oil,
a standard so yesh.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And then my father went to Aruba in the Caribbean,
and that's where I grew up with Well, yes, was that.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Like Aruba in the wartime in post war time?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, in the wartime were till fifty five, 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 lob torpedoes and also mortars in trying to hit
the oil tanks which were above where we were living.
(12:39):
So we were taken out every night, wrapped in blankets
and taken to the one building that was made of
stone and stay there. And I remember seeing the burning
tankers along the horizon. But eventually the Germans did not
take the island. And what happened was they'd brought all
kinds of Europeans, people from Australia, from all over the world.
(13:00):
So I grew up in a European atmosphere, which I loved.
So when I came back to the States, when my
father was transferred back to New York, it was a shock.
You got the bends. It was shocking, it was really
it was.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
The most shocking thing for you. Nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
You're in New York. Yeah, it was no New Jersey, Jersey.
So in a my father was commuting into New York.
So I was in Ridgewood, 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
(13:36):
or football player, you were nobody. And I was very
unused to that kind of thing. A tribal school 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
(13:57):
being at Cornell. And you're a different plan. You were
going to study, well, I wanted to become a diplomat,
so I studied the Russian language. Is one of the
first Russian language courses in America because Sputnyk 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
(14:20):
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
(14:43):
going to be very unhappy here. You should go to
the USIA. But I didn't want to do that. I
don't know now the travel bug. What's the difference something?
You're right, I don't know. It's 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
(15:05):
in the New York Times, which never occurs, which said
willing to train assistant film editor.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
No, no, wait, no, what the hell are you thinking?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Well, what was interesting was that there was this wonderful
program called Million Dollar Movie, which ran the same film
nine times, and Scorsese learned about so many films, but
particularly the films with Pool and Presburger. He would watch
them nine times until his mother said she was going
to kill him. And I was watching that same program.
(15:34):
I didn't even know that I was watching the Life
and Death of Colonel Bloom. So you were a movie watcher, Well,
I guess I was. I didn't know that that it
meant anything better. What were movies in your family? Well, yes,
I did see. My mother took me to see The
Rich Shoes in Aruba and at one point, but they
were a big movie that was your parents, not big ones, no,
but theater music. Well, yes, when my mother would have,
(15:58):
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
(16:18):
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
(16:41):
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 Fellini Antonioni Truffaux for late night television and
on Roco and his brother Visconti's Great film. He took
(17:04):
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 so it
was pretty appalling. But I did learn to cut negative
and I learned to put subtitles, so that was a
job you had to do that, Yeah, you do it.
And I learned to use a movie all which was
very helpful. Then I couldn't stand this guy anymore. And
(17:28):
I saw an ad and it said a six week
course at what was called Washington College, which became part
of NYU, and a six week course in filmmaking. So
I thought, well, if I quit, I just have enough
money to take that course. So I went to something
change while you had that tib you got the bug,
I guess, so I guess. So. So I get there
(17:48):
at this course and run by an incredible Armenian American
named Hagen Nugien. 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 Waygnugen always talked.
And he was a wonderful support to Marty, and Marty
wasn't there. Then was well, Marty, no, this is how
I met him. So we go to this six weeks
(18:09):
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 six weeks, the professor said, does anybody here know
how to cut negative or help Martin Scorcese because he's
made a student film and somebody has cut his negative wrong,
(18:30):
and so if there's anybody who can help him, And
I said, well, I'll try, you know, And I went
over and he had been up for two days editing
the movie, and he was completely zongkeed, 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 tail or. So
I helped him patch it back together.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
But explain to people who don't know what do you
mean by negative cutting.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
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 editing
your movie, then you have to cut the negative to
fit the way you've edited the work print. So you
pull the negative first from flash frame to flash frame,
and then very carefully you spice it together. You match
(19:16):
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. She said, I'm the person who did it,
and I'm so sorry, And I said, no, don't be sorry.
(19:39):
You gave me the greatest life in the world. Because
you hadn't just cut that negative, I would never have
met him. Oh my god. So it's a miracle. So
you salvage. Marty's a student film, student film, right, and
what did you make of him? Then?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Well, it's a young so it's Marty. It was in college, right.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Well, all of us knew from one particular student film,
collag 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 films, Prittian ideas,
startling ideas. For example, it's not just you Murray starts
with somebody's shoes and a hand comes into frame and
(20:18):
he encourages the camera to lift up to his face.
It was, I mean, just unbelievable, great, great ideas. So
then what happened was a group of us got together
and we were making films for PBS, short films covering
Aretha Franklin concerts and helping fellow filmmakers finish their films.
(20:39):
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
(21:00):
all did everything. We pushed the wheelchair that had the
cameraman in it because we didn't have dollies. 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. And I drove the car
(21:20):
with the cameraman on the front effort and again for
a tracking shot. It was great.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
It was I think it was the Cone Brothers. I
could be wrong. I was reading an article about raising
Arizona and they were saying how their improvisations with the
camera led to like certain names. They have things 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 cinematagaphy operator on a
(21:45):
blanket and pull him across the lawn and he'd be
right on the heels of the victim.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, everybody was doing them. I mean, now you know Napoleon,
the great film by a Belgass, a silent film. He
had small cameras that he threw. He had people throw
them over the wall of this fortress to give the
idea of what a cannon ball would be like going
into a fortress. So it was the point of view
of the cannonbridge. So people, you know, people were inventing
(22:14):
all of these things all along in film.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I almost only go to the theater. I go at least.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Twice a week. And what do you do?
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I often go at ten o'clock or midnight. Can't drag
my wife 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.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot org. This
is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Initially studying to become an international diplomat. Algerian born Thelma
(23:26):
Schoonmaker'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 in nineteen eighty four. But before love
came work with Marty, as she called Scorsese, driving the train.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
He taught me how to build a scene, how to
when to use close ups, when not to use close ups,
how to learn what's good acting, how to build rhythm
between two actors.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
He's never in a position where the actress he's working
with don't deliver what he wants. He gets the actress
he wants, or he doesn't make the film.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
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 weaned down.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Is your technique to that as well? Avoid close up
some people you think are less truthful or oh.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
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 that.
Just other people dazzle you. Well, some yeah, I mean
some actors it's take one.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Other actors work towards something. For example, Marty and de
Niro did fifteen takes on the last scene in Raging Bull,
where DeNiro is confronting himself as Jake Lamata in the
mirror and he's doing the on the waterfront speech. They
wanted to do fifteen takes because they were trying different
ways of him confronting himself actually giving himself. And I
(25:02):
thought one take was more emotional. I like that, but
Marty liked another one that was colder, and 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 Kate
Blanchett are often like take one, that's it. They're come
in so prepared, so they're living that part. Other actors
(25:25):
like to work towards it. Leo and Bob like to
work towards something with Marty. So 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
very difficult to describe editing. You've made that clear, Yeah,
I mean so one of the first things he would
(25:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Letting it breathe. Oh yeah, watching the people feel and
go through it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah. And Marty wants people to, particularly with a film
like Silence, which is so different from what's being done today.
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
(26:25):
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
(26:45):
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 it provokes that kind of thought,
which is what he wanted. That's all he wanted. The
movie opens Silence.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yes, it's very quiet, if you will. Nonetheless, it's a
sequence of torture. It's a sequence of Liam Neesen, you know,
watching the side. 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, now I've seen
films that are more graphic. I'm not saying that they're
(27:23):
graphic by many means. I've seen movies that are far
more graphic and far more or less effective as a
result of it. Yes, that's never been an issue for you,
where every time you sat there and said, my god,
this is tough to watch.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Well, the thing is you see that we create that
violence in the editing room. There's no way that de
Niro could take an actual punch. All the times you
see it in the film. When he was being hit
in the head, there was no hand in the glove
and so was his head was being nudged in blood
(27:54):
and saliva would spray off it. But there's no way
he could have taken all that punished. 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. Let
me just say first that I think Marty's use of
(28:14):
violence is very important because there is, as we know,
living in this particular time, tremendous violence around the world.
And if you think there isn't, you're 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
(28:35):
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 so, 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
(28:59):
that few see. For example, in Casino, Joe Pesh put
somebody's head in the vice 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 like Ovitz and two other people, somebody from the
studio and maybe Marty's agent, another agent, and Marty and
(29:23):
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, they all went, oh
my god, and 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, I look, so we cut that down.
(29:43):
But it's never violent. When I get.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
It, 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.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I think sometimes films need to be restructured, and for example,
Departed needed to be restructured. Even Kundun we had to
pull up the Chinese invasion it was taking too long.
So the restructuring is sometimes very important in a movie.
But also Silence was very hard for me because to
(30:17):
get the right meditative pace without being boring was very important.
And it was very interesting to try and incorporate the
Japanese actors style of acting with the westerners. So they're
all hard in different ways, but I can't think of
one that was really no, particularly not the violence, because
(30:40):
Marty storyboards it very carefully, so putting it together is
not that hard. Making it believable is hard. You know,
when somebody throws a punch, they're actually missing the other
actor's 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
(31:00):
he's too far away or whatever makes it believable. Is
something that's part of my job more after the break.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
One of the things about it is I wonder during
the arc of his career is how much producers in
the studios.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Try to interfere with the movie. He's making always right,
so it remains that way we always 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.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Is there anyone he ever takes their counselors or a
producer he's ever relied on for any information.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Well, the great thing about Marty is he will listen,
but he will not do anything that he has more
conflicts with what he thinks is right. He will burn
the film first, and I'm not kidding. Of course, it's
a little hard to burn digital now, so it can
be done. It can be done, 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 tightrope
(31:58):
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 understand it. I know how to work it.
He's been in situations, I think with taxi driverwhere he
said he was going to kill the head of the studio.
This is already documented by the Phillips, who were the producers.
(32:18):
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 it was a
(32:40):
subject matter that I'd 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
insert it 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
(33:00):
good idea, George, but I couldn't make that movie, which
was very kind. You know, he didn't, he wasn't in planmable. However,
I've 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 myne off.
I've seen that happen several times. I've also seen him
do something wonderful, which is to just wear them down
(33:22):
by telling them long stories about gang chiefs that he
knew in his neighborhood. There was one particular time where
we were in a room where the air conditioning was
very cold. No one had brought water in, and everyone
was getting hungry. It 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
(33:44):
his two agents were texting each other and one of
them said, where is he going with this? He knew
what he was doing.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
No, you have been married to filmmaking and editing and
your famous counterpart for years.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
And years, and then you got married. Tell us about that.
Where did you meet him? Well? Interestingly, because I had
seen Life and Death of Colonel Blim, made by my
husband Michael Powell 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
(34:18):
of palam Pressburger because he had just gone and found
Michael Powell living in poverty and really forgotten. Unbelievable or
was he He was in England in this little cottage
I still own. The British Film Institute was trying people
like Ian Christy Kevin goff Yates and even Bertram Tavernier
and France were trying to revive the films, but Marty,
(34:41):
with his high profile, was able to bring Michael to
tell your ride re enter Peeping Tom into the New
York Film Festival. It had never been properly distributed here
and just revive the whole cannon. So that was going
on then. It was a great miracle. But I saw
Michael in front of audiences and see his films come
(35:02):
back to life. It was heaven. I can't tell you.
Marty was so dedicated to that, so he was educating
me as 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 MoMA and look
(35:22):
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 Carr, who's 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,
(35:43):
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
(36:03):
was living with Isabella Rossellini. He had an extra bedroom
and we had film wrecks 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
(36:26):
in New York on King of Comedy and Isabella, Marty's
wife at the time, Isabella Rossellini, came and said to me, Thelma,
Michael should come live with us. There's no need 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
(36:48):
a bit stunned. Everybody was. I mean, there were thirty
years different than 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
for Marty because he knew then that I would maybe
at certain times want to go home and cook dinner
for Michael.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
It was.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
But another director. He loved having Michael with us, and
it was such a wonderful friendship to watch. I can't
tell you, and Michael had a great influence on our movie.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Did your relationship wind up costing you any editing assignments
with Marty?
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Did you ever miss any job?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
You've edited every one of Marty's movies, No, really exceptions.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
So we made Woodstock, and Marty left Woodstock early and
went to bust In in Hollywood, and 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.
(37:48):
And then Marty wanted me to work with him, but
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 I'd 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
(38:08):
until Raging Bull, when Irwin Winkler, the producer, got me
in the universe. So those films prior to Raging Bull
were that they were Boxcar, Bertha, Mean Streets, Alice, New York,
New York, and Taxi Driver. I didn't cut any of
those movies. Who cut Taxi Driver? Marshall Lucas the three
editors are actually working with him. Then Marcia Lucas, who's
(38:29):
George Lucas's wife was at the time, 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.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
So that's was the impetus of your marriage, if you
will with it, the two of.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You, Yes, because he wanted you. 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 direct
and editors, and that's very bad for a movie when
that when they're fighting, and you've.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Made very few movies with other A directors, You've only
made a couple of correct Alison Anders, you did a
movie with.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
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 standby 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
(39:30):
be dead when we came out. That went on all
the time. We had to get a bodyguard from Marty actually,
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.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
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 or their protagonists and the women
like in a 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
(40:10):
to direct women or to develop roles for women in
his films.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I didn't sense that. I kind of like the women
in those films. I mean, I think Kathy Moriarty is
wonderful and Raging Bull when on a writer is absolutely
stunning in Age of Interests. And I don't have a
problem with the women Mary's films. I have a problem
with them.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, he hasn't made a lot of films with female leads,
is what they mean.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
And that's maybe that's not his daily Well I guess not.
That's okay. Now.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
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 lighting and the cutting, and 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 making come together in
(41:01):
your mind and just the sets and everything, and it's
that painting.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
It's art. I always say, it's very hard because I
hate to have to pick one, and I love them
all for different reasons. But because working on Raging Bull
was my first major feature film on a big Hollywood set,
I didn't even know how to I'm location, I didn't
know how to behave Fortunately I had an assistant it.
I used to put my own trims away. Now I
have three assistants, and it was weird. Marty said, don't worry,
(41:27):
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 de Niro. 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
(41:49):
the challenge that de Niro and Patti gave me was amazing.
It was the music, the use of music, the power,
the strength of the movie all over 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 Museum a lot to do show Michael Powell films,
(42:10):
and that we screened a really good print from the Academy,
a 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 over all
the one that I think everything just clicked together in
an amazing way. Do you know that?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
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. It's
so you know 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
(42:57):
tries to brush Lorraine down into that building.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
He's down there. It's down there. We go go on
in there.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Nothing's on the money, nothing said.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
That gesture, that hand gesture is just well, he's He's
just amazing, you know. I mean, I could just look
at that film over and over again and never get
tired of it. 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. You know, nobody improvises like
(43:36):
Bob and Joe Peshi 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.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
In a recent interview with The La Times, this course
says he equated his Anthelma Schoonmaker's editing to a process
so singular that it's quote.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Almost like making home movies. Ut Lucky for us, they
decided to share.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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