The Last Temptation of Thelma
It has been a hectic year for film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, mostly celebrating past achievements. She has been traveling to events honoring the 100th birthday of legendary British director Michael Powell, her late husband, who created the classic The Red Shoes. She has also been making the rounds to promote the 25th-anniversary DVD release of Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, for which she won the Academy Award for film editing in 1980.
It might seem like the 65-year-old New Yorker is doing a victory lap, or at least getting ready to retire, but, oh, did we mention that she just won her second Oscar for editing The Aviator, beating out a quartet of younger men? And that she's already hard at work on Scorsese's next film, The Departed, the story of moles in the Irish mob and FBI that will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson?
"This year felt like a solid win," says Schoonmaker, who never dreamed of becoming a film editor. The daughter of an oil company executive, she had aspirations of going into the Foreign Service instead, but she was too outspoken to pass muster with the CIA and FBI. "They told me I would be very unhappy because of my liberal feelings," she says.
At loose ends, she worked at a Peace Corps project at Columbia University and took night classes in primitive art. Then she stumbled upon an ad for an assistant film editor in 1962. Bitten by the film bug, she enrolled in a summer film course at New York University, where she met fellow student Martin Scorsese.
"My first impression of him was that he was very tired," she says. "He had been up for days editing his movie. I helped him re-edit it. I saw right away that he was a remarkable talent. He just had it... the way he designed shots, directed actors. He, of all of us, had the most to say and the strongest vision."
Schoonmaker has been there ever since for Scorsese. Although she worked with Allison Anders on Grace of My Heart, she's Scorsese's almost exclusively, having worked with him now on more than 20 films. She doesn't regret her commitment for a second.
"The great thing about Marty is that he's investigating something new for himself in each film," Schoonmaker says. "It's a thrill to have to learn something new. I had to learn about airplanes and Howard Hughes and special effects with The Aviator."
She adds: "Marty trained me. He taught me everything I know about editing."
While their partnership has remained constant, the film editing world has changed. First of all, it's not as much a restrictive boys' club as it was when she started. The rules that kept her out of the union until she had already won an Oscar are now abolished. The process itself has also been modernized, moving from film stock to digital, and allowing her the freedom to experiment more quickly and often. But the hours remain backbreaking. Schoonmaker starts working at 9am and can be editing until 11 at night. Still, her passion for the art hasn't waned.
"You get to contribute so significantly in the editing room because you shape the movie and the performances," she says. "You help the director bring all the hard work of those who made the film to fruition. You give their work rhythm and pace and sometimes adjust the structure to make the film work ‑- to make it start to flow up there on the screen. And then it's very rewarding after a year's work to see people react to what you've done in the theater."
She can reflect calmly on her past year now, but the six-time nominee was sweating the odds of her Oscar victory until Orlando Bloom called out her name and handed her the gold statuette. In her part of the industry, the competition is fierce, and even though things have opened up, she's one of the only women at the top, so the stakes are high. "At the Oscars, they had positioned my colleague Paul Hirsch, the editor of Ray, right behind me. It was clear they didn't know which of us was going to win," she says.
To celebrate, she, the sound mixer and the sound editor from The Aviator and some other friends went to the chic Chateau Marmont hotel for drinks afterward. And yet the celebration was bittersweet. Scorsese, her director and collaborator of 25 years and a four-time nominee, lost once again.
"All of us were very disappointed," she says. "But I am afraid we're getting used to it."
