Thelma Schoonmaker | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Schoonmaker in 2023 | |
| Born | Thelma Colbert Schoonmaker (1940-01-03)January 3, 1940 (age 85) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Occupation | Film editor |
| Years active | 1966–present |
| Spouse | |
Thelma Schoonmaker (/ˈskuːnmeɪkər/;[1] born January 3, 1940) is an Americanfilm editor, best known for her collaboration over five decades with directorMartin Scorsese. She has received numerous accolades, including threeAcademy Awards, twoBAFTA Awards, and fourACE Eddie Awards. She has been honored with theBritish Film Institute Fellowship in 1997, theGolden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2014, and theBAFTA Fellowship in 2019.
Schoonmaker started working with Scorsese on his debut feature film,Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), and has edited all of his films sinceRaging Bull (1980). She has received a record nine nominations for theAcademy Award for Best Film Editing and has won a record three times forRaging Bull,The Aviator (2004), andThe Departed (2006). She has also been nominated for theBAFTA Award for Best Editing a record 11 times, winning twice forRaging Bull andGoodfellas (1990).
Thelma Schoonmaker was born on January 3, 1940, inAlgiers (then part ofFrench Algeria), the daughter of American parents, Thelma and Bertram Schoonmaker.[2][3] Bertram, descended from the New York DutchSchoonmaker political family,[3] was employed as an agent of theStandard Oil Company and worked extensively abroad.[4] The Schoonmakers were evacuated to the United States shortly after theFall of France during theSecond World War.[2] In 1941, the family moved to the Dutch-Caribbean island ofAruba,[2][4] where Schoonmaker's father continued to work for Standard Oil and her mother ran nursery schools.[5] Schoonmaker was primarily raised in Aruba, in a community she described as "a colony of expatriates from over the world";[5] she also spent part of her childhood in Portugal.[6]
Schoonmaker did not live in the United States until she was an adolescent in 1955, and was initially alienated and dumbfounded by American culture.[4] She settled inRidgewood, New Jersey[7] and graduated in 1957 fromRidgewood High School.[8] Schoonmaker was interested in a career in international diplomacy and began attendingCornell University in 1957, where she studiedpolitical science and theRussian language. When she graduated from Cornell in 1961, she began takingState Department tests in order to apply for positions within theU.S. government.[4][9] Politically inclined and opinionated, Schoonmaker wasopposed to the Vietnam War and supported theCivil rights movement.[5] She passed the State Department exams but failed the final "stress test" when she expressed distaste for the South African policy ofapartheid, a stance which did not sit well with those administering the tests.[4][10] The State Departmentclaimed that her views were "too politically liberal" and that she wouldn't be happy having a job at the Department.
You get to contribute so significantly in the editing room because you shape the movie and the performances. 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.
While taking a graduate course inprimitive art atColumbia University, Schoonmaker saw an advertisement inThe New York Times that offered training as an assistantfilm editor.[12][13] She responded to the advertisement and got the job. The job entailed assisting an "editor" who was randomly cutting frames from classic European films (such as those byTruffaut,Godard andFellini), so that their length would conform to the running times of U.S. television broadcasts.[4]
She signed up for a brief six-week course in filmmaking atNew York University, where she came into contact with youngMartin Scorsese, who was struggling to complete his short filmWhat's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?. Anegative cutter had butchered the film, not leaving enough negative frames to allow for hot splicing, so a film professor asked Schoonmaker to help Scorsese.[4] Schoonmaker went on to edit Scorsese's feature directorial debut,Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).[14]
Schoonmaker received her first major screen credits when she and Scorsese both became part of the editing team onMichael Wadleigh's seminal music festivaldocumentary, 1970'sWoodstock.[15] She received an Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing for her groundbreaking work—the first documentary ever to be nominated in that category.[16] Her use ofsuperimpositions andfreeze frames brought the performances in the film to life and added to the movie's broad appeal, thus helping to raise the artistry and visibility of documentary film-making to a new level.[13]
The early period of Schoonmaker's career was difficult. Despite being an Oscar nominee, Schoonmaker could not work on feature films unless she became a member of theMotion Picture Editors Guild.[5] The union's entry requirements included spending five years as an apprentice and three as an assistant, which Schoonmaker was unwilling to meet.[5][11][17] Schoonmaker remarked, "And I just couldn't see why I, who had been a full editor and had been nominated for an Academy Award, should suddenly have to become an apprentice. ...And of course,they couldn't see the sense of why I, who had never been in the union all those years and had never paid dues all those years and had never served my time in their sense, should be allowed as a full editor. So it was quite understandable on both sides. It was just insane."[5]
Consequently, Schoonmaker did not work with Scorsese in a formal capacity in the 1970s;[17] however, she did make an uncredited contribution toTaxi Driver. Scorsese had decided not to edit the picture during principal photography, but to save all the editing until shooting had wrapped. Unfortunately, this left him very little time to cut the picture, as Columbia's contract stipulated that a finished cut had to be supplied by the middle of February. Scorsese brought in Schoonmaker to help. At one point,Steven Spielberg visited Scorsese and chipped in with some contributions toward the final edit.[18][19]
In the 1980s, Schoonmaker, with some help from Scorsese, was eventually accepted into the union. They worked together on the classic sports dramaRaging Bull, which is widely considered masterful editing and won her the Best Film Editing Oscar.[20] During her acceptance speech for the film, Schoonmakersaid "I want to thank, first of all, Marty Scorsese; he edited this film with me every minute of the time. I want to thank him particularly for his brilliant direction, and Robert De Niro for his incredible performance which gave me gold to work with — pure gold."
She was introduced toMichael Powell by Scorsese and London-based film producer Frixos Constantine.[17] The couple were married from May 19, 1984, until his death in 1990. The couple had no children.[21]
Since Powell's death, Schoonmaker has dedicated herself[22] to preserving the films and honoring the legacy of her husband, who directed many classic films with his partner, Emeric Pressburger. In aninterview with A.Frame asking Schoonmaker what her five favorite films of all time are, she listed two of their films,The Red Shoes andThe Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. (The others wereFaces,The Flowers of St. Francis andRaging Bull.)
| Year | Title | Director(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Who's That Knocking at My Door | Martin Scorsese | |
| 1968 | The Virgin President | Graeme Ferguson | Co-edited withMark Rappaport and Burt Rashby |
| 1970 | Woodstock | Michael Wadleigh | Documentary Assistant director & editor Co-edited with Michael Wadleigh, Martin Scorsese, Stan Warnow, Yeu-Bun Yee, and Jere Huggins |
| Street Scenes 1970 | Martin Scorsese | Documentary short film | |
| 1979 | The Kids Are Alright | Jeff Stein | Rockumentary Special consultant |
| 1980 | Raging Bull | Martin Scorsese | |
| 1982 | The King of Comedy | ||
| 1985 | After Hours | ||
| 1986 | The Color of Money | ||
| 1987 | Michael Jackson: Bad | Short film andmusic video byMichael Jackson | |
| 1988 | The Last Temptation of Christ | ||
| 1989 | New York Stories | Segment: "Life Lessons" | |
| 1990 | Made in Milan | Documentary short film | |
| Goodfellas | |||
| 1991 | Cape Fear | ||
| 1993 | The Age of Innocence | ||
| 1995 | A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies | Martin Scorsese Michael Henry Wilson | Documentary Supervising editor |
| Casino | Martin Scorsese | ||
| 1996 | Grace of My Heart | Allison Anders | Co-edited with James Y. Kwei and Harvey Rosenstock |
| 1997 | Kundun | Martin Scorsese | |
| 1999 | My Voyage to Italy | Documentary | |
| Bringing Out the Dead | |||
| 2002 | Gangs of New York | ||
| 2004 | The Aviator | ||
| 2006 | The Departed | ||
| 2007 | The Key to Reserva | Short film and long-form advertisement forFreixenet | |
| 2010 | Shutter Island | ||
| 2011 | Hugo | ||
| 2013 | The Wolf of Wall Street | ||
| 2014 | Learning to Drive | Isabel Coixet | Co-edited with Keith Reamer |
| 2015 | Bombay Velvet | Anurag Kashyap | Co-edited with Prerna Saigal |
| 2016 | Letters from Baghdad | Sabine Krayenbühl Zeva Oelbaum | Documentary Executive producer only |
| Silence | Martin Scorsese | ||
| 2017 | The Snowman | Tomas Alfredson | Co-edited withClaire Simpson |
| 2019 | The Irishman | Martin Scorsese | |
| 2023 | Killers of the Flower Moon |
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1979 | Wings Over the World | Television documentary Co-edited with Robin Clarke and Paul Stein |
| 2003 | AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Robert De Niro | Television special Co-edited with Debra Light, Adam "Chip" Pauken, Mike Polito, Ryan Polito,Martin Scorsese, and Yoram Inon Tal |
| 2010 | Boardwalk Empire | Consultant only (Episode: "Boardwalk Empire") |
| 2020 | The Right Stuff | Consulting producer only (2 episodes) |
Schoonmaker equaled the record for the most Oscar wins (three) in theBest Film Editing category, shared withRalph Dawson,Daniel Mandell, andMichael Kahn.[23] Furthermore, she holds the record for most nominations in that category, with nine.[24] Schoonmaker is also the first woman to win multiple film editing Oscars.[25]
In 2012, on the 75th anniversary of its founding, theMotion Picture Editors Guild issued a list of the 75 best-edited films of all time based on a survey of its membership. Three films edited by Schoonmaker made the list—all Scorsese's directed and across three different decades—includingRaging Bull (1980), which is ranked first;Goodfellas (1990), ranked fifteenth; andHugo (2011), ranked sixty-ninth.[26] OnlyGeorge Tomasini, the editor ofAlfred Hitchcock's films in the 1950s and 1960s, has more appearances on this list, with four; and onlyDede Allen also edited three pictures, each from a separate decade, hers particularly from the 1960s through the 1980s.[27]
| Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 | Best Film Editing | Woodstock | Nominated | [28] |
| 1981 | Raging Bull | Won | [29] | |
| 1991 | Goodfellas | Nominated | [30] | |
| 2003 | Gangs of New York | Nominated | [31] | |
| 2005 | The Aviator | Won | [32] | |
| 2007 | The Departed | Won | [33] | |
| 2012 | Hugo | Nominated | [34] | |
| 2020 | The Irishman | Nominated | [35] | |
| 2024 | Killers of the Flower Moon | Nominated | [36] |
| Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Academy Film Awards | ||||
| 1982 | Best Editing | Raging Bull | Won | [37] |
| 1984 | The King of Comedy | Nominated | [38] | |
| 1991 | Goodfellas | Won | [39] | |
| 1993 | Cape Fear | Nominated | [40] | |
| 2003 | Gangs of New York | Nominated | [41] | |
| 2005 | The Aviator | Nominated | [42] | |
| 2007 | The Departed | Nominated | [43] | |
| 2012 | Hugo | Nominated | [44] | |
| 2014 | The Wolf of Wall Street | Nominated | [45] | |
| 2020 | The Irishman | Nominated | [46] | |
| 2024 | Killers of the Flower Moon | Nominated | [47] | |
| Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primetime Emmy Awards | ||||
| 2004 | Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming | AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Robert De Niro | Nominated | [48] |
| Organization | Year | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Cinema Editors | 2017 | ACE Career Achievement Award | Honored |
| British Academy Film Awards | 2019 | BAFTA Fellowship | Honored |
| British Film Institute | 1997 | BFI Fellowship | Honored |
| Camerimage | 2009 | Editor with Unique Visual Sensitivity | Honored |
| Gotham Awards | 1992 | Below-the-Line Award | Honored |
| Hollywood Film Festival | 2000 | Hollywood Outstanding Achievement in Editing Award | Honored |
| Las Vegas Film Critics Society | 2010 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Honored |
| New York Film Critics Circle | 2016 | Special Award | Honored |
| New York Women in Film & Television | 1995 | Muse Award | Honored |
| Phoenix Critics Circle | 2019 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Honored |
| Online Film Critics Society | 2024 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Honored |
| Telluride Film Festival | 2024 | Silver Medallion | Honored |
| Venice Film Festival | 2014 | Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement | Honored |
| School | Year | Degree | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canterbury Christ Church University | 2007 | Honorary Fellow | [49] |
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote| International | |
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