Thelma Schoonmaker Q&A

The Oscar-winning editor discusses Martin Scorsese, Michael Powell and her new film, 'The Departed'.

Sep 26 2005

Thelma Schoonmaker's celluloid collaborations with Martin Scorsese have produced some of the greatest films of the last 30 years. As editor of 'The King of Comedy', 'Goodfellas', 'Casino' and 'Gangs of New York', her efforts have delighted critics and audiences alike. As well as being nominated for countless awards, she has also won two Oscars, for her dazzling work on 'Raging Bull' and 'The Aviator'.

Currently holed up in a studio editing Scorsese's new film 'The Departed', she recently took time out of her busy schedule to speak to Time Out about her remarkable career, her relationship with Martin Scorsese and the life and times of her late husband, Michael Powell (with exclusive pictures in the gallery below).

How are things going on 'The Departed'?

Oh great – we've got an incredible cast.

What should we expect from the film?

It's pretty strong – I think it will shake a lot of people up.

Will it be similar to 'Infernal Affairs', the Hong Kong film on which it is based?

I don't know, because we haven't looked at it. Neither Scorsese nor I will look at it until we've finished the movie – we don't want to be influenced by it. He didn't make the film because of that – he made it because of a very beautiful script written by Bill Monahan. He read it and said, 'My god, I have to make this movie,' with no idea it was based on another film. The script was just so strong, with themes that he loved, and it was so tough and had such great dialogue that he felt he had to do it.

Was there any specific research you had to do for this one?

A little – there were some very ugly race riots and they take place at the beginning of our film, so I'm studying documentary footage of that. It was people protesting the bussing of black students to white schools and so I am studying the footage of the time to use a little bit of it at the beginning of the film.

You were working on 'The Aviator' and then 'The Departed' when Scorsese made 'No Direction Home', his Bob Dylan documentary. It screens on the BBC this week, so I was wondering if you've had a chance to see it and if so, what you thought?

I thought it was so daring of Scorsese not to use a voice-over narrator for the documentary. This presented a great challenge for him and the editor, David Tedeschi. They have managed brilliantly to let Dylan and all the people who influenced him or were part of his circle speak for themselves. You become intimate with them all, and drenched in their music.

You've also been heavily involved in the centenary celebrations for your late husband, Michael Powell – how have they been going?

So far they have been more successful than I could have imagined. From New York to Sydney to the Cannes Film Festival, there have been major retrospectives, and I have been told that in London, the National Film Theatre screenings were packed with young people, which would have meant so much to Michael Powell. The Edinburgh Film Festival celebrated Michael, the Bath Film Festival will do so in October, and there have been two major conferences about his work – one in Paris and one in Wales. In October, devotees of the film 'I Know Where I'm Going!' will gather on the island of Mull to celebrate the 60th anniversary of that film – anyone who wants to join in should check the website: www.powell-pressburger.org. The 'A Canterbury Tale' fans have already had their centenary walk around the sites where the film was made. Here in New York Martin Scorsese will introduce 'The Red Shoes' at the Museum of Modern Art, on the actual night of Michael's birthday, September 30th, and we will screen Scorsese's own personal print of the film. The church steeple in Avening, Gloucestershire, where Michael is buried, will be illuminated on the same night. I am so pleased that Scorsese, who did so much to resurrect the entire work of Powell and Pressburger, will be hosting an event near the end of all the tributes in this incredible year.

Do you think his films are still relevant today?

Oh yes, absolutely, because they are really just about humanity. I think Michael, along with many of the filmmakers of his own age, like Renoir in France or Rossellini in Italy, had this profound belief in human beings, that's a little hard to have these days. Plus they appreciated all the quirks of humans. Michael Powell never really had a villain in his movies – he always wanted people to understand what made that person tick, which is very similar to Scorsese's approach to filmmaking. It meant that they were showing people in very unique and interesting ways, so it's completely relevant.

Do you think there are similarities between Powell and Scorsese's work?

Very much. Marty was deeply influenced by the films when he was quite young. He started watching them when he was about five on television in America. Sometimes they would be black and white version of films like 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp', which was made in glorious Technicolour, but whenever he saw the Powell and Pressburger logo of the target and the arrow land in the bullseye, he knew, even at the age of eight, that this was going to be a really interesting film. He was deeply, deeply influenced by them. But the influence was an inspiration, it doesn't mean that he mimics it or necessarily re-produces it. As he's said to me many times, 'I lived them, they are part of me.' He and I never get tired of looking at them – I could watch them a hundred times and never get tired of looking at them. There's always something new to discover, there are so many different layers and the humour is just so wonderful.

Being married to Mr Powell I guess you had a better insight into his life then most…

Well I do, and I think he actually had a bad reputation among actors, because he was quite intolerant if someone was not up to his standards on his set.

So he didn't suffer fools gladly?

He did not, but for me he was endlessly loving and generous. And he loved strange people pestering him – when I would get annoyed by them he would be very kind, so it's very interesting to read these accounts of some actors who said how difficult he could be. Not with an actor like Roger Livesey or any of the those wonderful actors, but anyone who came onto the set unprepared, or not convinced that making films was like a religion, the way Michael felt, then he could be quite brutal. Dirk Bogarde said to me once 'You knew his cruelty,' and I said 'No, I never did.' I never ever saw a moment of it, but I think some actors did. He adored his crews though, and he remained loyal to them – whenever we were anywhere in the world and there was a member of one of his crews or his cast nearby, we would always look them up. Because they shared his passion; they were all in it together.

Is there anything that you've learned creatively from him that you've been able to use in your work?

I would say Scorsese had this born into him anyway, but both he and I are constantly stunned by the open-minded approach to how human beings are presented in the films. The willingness to relish eccentricity or surprising behaviour is something that shows up in Scorsese's movies all the time. I would say that's embedded in the both of us, but I would say more so with Marty because he actually taught me about the films of Pressburger and introduced me to Michael Powell. For him it was profound. He recognised – having lived in the era he did in a mafia run neighbourhood – he knew that some of the people he liked on the streets, who would be nice to the kids and give them candy and drive them out to the lake, and who the kids liked – he would find out later, when he was older, that they were some mob hitman. He saw from that that life is a lot more complicated than just saying that people are black and white. They're grey. That, I would say, is a major influence. And the humour. The fantastic style, the bold and daring experiments, and the control; the massive amount of control that Michael Powell was able to put on these films because he was so skilled in all aspects of filmmaking – camerawork, editing – he had been trained really well by an American film crew in the South of France and he immediately understood it all. And Scorsese is the same – when you have a filmmaker who knows that much about how films work, they make better films, with more control and more style and more shape. Michael himself wrote that when you're watching a Scorsese film, you sit back and relax because you know someone's steering the ship. And that's the way we feel about his films!

Does any one of Powell's films stand out as a particular favourite?

Well, 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' was the first one I saw, because that was the one Scorsese first introduced me to, and it's the one I feel the closest to. I love 'I Know Where I’m Going', but 'Blimp' is the one that still gets to me. I can watch it over and over again and I relish every second of it. Maybe because it was the first one and because Scorsese feels so strongly about it. Of course he also feels that 'The Red Shoes' is a masterpiece and he always puts it as one of his top five films – he learnt so much from it. But it's the emotion in 'Blimp' that gets to me, and that wonderful understanding of human beings.

So what made you want to become an editor in the first place?

It was just by accident – I was born from American expatriates who just happened to be living in Paris – my father worked for an oil company so I grew up abroad – and when I came back to the States I wanted to become a diplomat, but after I'd passed all the exams I was told I was too politically liberal to be happy in the foreign service. So I went to graduate school at Columbia University and then saw an ad in the New York Times for an editor, which never happens, but there it was. I answered it, because I loved watching old movies on television, and I took this job for a horrible hack who was butchering the great films of Godard and Truffaut for late-night television. It was awful, but I learnt enough to know maybe I should pursue it, so I went to the New York University for a summer film course, met Scorsese and that was how I became a film editor.

He asked you for help didn't he?

Well, what happened was someone had cut the negative of one of his films wrong and because of my work with this terrible hack I knew how to fix it, or help him fix it as best we could. The professor asked if there was anyone who could help and I said 'yes, I think I can,' so he took me over and that's how we met. It was all by accident – if I hadn't read that ad, if I hadn't taken that horrible job, if I hadn't decided to go that summer to NYU – it was all just a fluke. And then he introduced me to my husband, which gave me the happiest ten years of my life. I've had a lot of luck.

Can you define the special relationship you have with Scorsese?

All of us, from the day we met him, could see he was going to be great. His student films were remarkable – he just had a grip on things much earlier than the rest of us. We were still learning, so we knew he was going to be good. An artist like that needs someone to support them and bring their vision to the screen, and I immediately worked extremely well with him in that we didn't argue. I was on his team, learning from him constantly, and I was able to bear a lot of the load for him in the editing room, which is sometimes important for a director – organisation and things like that. Marty was always a very gifted editor, but gradually what happened over the years is that I became more proficient and he began to rely on me more. But we've always had a collaborative relationship; it's never been ego-driven. And we've shared so much together – Woodstock, Michael Powell – that the relationship gets stronger and stronger as the years go by.

So you don't argue at all?

If we have a disagreement we screen it both ways for friends and ask them afterwards what they think. Marty is very quick to see if something isn't working, but sometimes he needs another eye – he likes that I bring a fresh view because he's been living with the film a lot longer than me – planning it, writing it and shooting it. He likes having another cold eye to look at it. But we don't argue – partially because he trained me and we sort of have the same taste. But he's very quick to see if something doesn't work. I don't push that. The most famous example of one of our disagreements is when DeNiro was talking to himself in the mirror in 'Raging Bull'. Marty wanted a very cold performance from him, and both DeNiro and I thought a slightly warmer performance was better, so we screened it two ways. And Marty was right.

Is there any one scene that you've worked on that you are most proud of?

Well, the beautiful fight sequences for which 'Raging Bull' won the editing Oscar were really Marty. I helped him pull it together, but he had designed them so beautifully. But there's one scene that I had to work on for a long time because it was improvisation between DeNiro and Joe Pesci, and Marty couldn't get two cameras in the room because we were working in a small, very cramped location. So because he didn't have two cameras, Pesci would go off on some wonderful improvisation and I wouldn't have a reaction from DeNiro, or DeNiro would go off on a wonderful improvisation and I wouldn't have the reaction from Pesci, so it took me a long time to put that together and make it work dramatically as a scene. But the whole film for me is like my baby. It was a stunning piece of work, a complete and utter joy to work on, and I'm very proud of it.

And the film's reputation just seems to grow and grow…

Because it's so truthful, it's burned into the screen. It was a very interesting point in Marty's life, and he used that to drive the film. We recently had the 25th Anniversary screening in New York, and the audience was riveted and the reaction after was just as strong as ever. It wasn't very well received when it first came out, by the way.

That's seems to happen with a lot of Scorsese films.

That's right, Marty's films often takes ten years. Now everybody loves 'Casino', but when it came out they all said 'It's not 'Goodfellas', but of course its not 'Goodfellas', it's 'Casino'. It's a whole different story!

Have you ever been tempted to direct yourself over the years?

I haven't, because working on Scorsese's projects is so incredible. If I had something burning inside me to say, then yes, I would. But I think Jean Renoir's father said to him 'Never make a work of art unless you have to make it so hard it’s like having to piss', and I think that's true. There are so many films made for the wrong reasons. If I had something that kept me awake at night, saying 'I've got to express this,' I would, but there's always a wonderful project coming along with Marty, and then we do these documentary features which I adore working on. We're actually doing one on British film – we began it but had to stop to work on 'The Departed'. When we did one on the Italian film industry, I learnt so much. To live with those films every day – those great masterpieces – and to learn from them and to try and sell them to the rest of the world was just wonderful. I just love working on those in between, and so there's no time for me to do anything else.

Do you have any idea what you will be doing next?

A movie called 'Silence', which is based on a great Japanese novel about 16th century Portuguese missionaries in Japan. It's something very close to Scorsese's heart – he's wanted to make it for many years but he's never really had the time to write the script and get it funded. But we're all hoping that this time it's going to happen, and it looks like we're going to shoot it in New Zealand as well. That will be very exciting, and I think I will have to do a lot of research for that one!

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