TCM Classic Film Festival 2012: A Conversation with Thelma Schoonmaker

I also wanted to ask you about After Hours a little bit because it is my favorite of Scorsese’s films.

TS: [Laughs] Oh yes!

I’ve seen all of his films and I’ve just seen that one more than any of the others.

TS: [Laughs]

I read that Michael Powell actually suggested the ending. Is that correct?

TS: That’s correct. It was so wonderful having him around because, first of all it was a chance for him to be back in the film business and secondly because he had been stripped of that after the failure of his film Peeping Tom and it was also wonderful for us to have him as an inspiration and a friend, eating meals together and just having a wonderful time. He was just a phenomenal man and Marty just worshipped him.

Griffin Dunne in After Hours

When Marty would get his courage up to show one of his movies to Michael, because he said to me, “if Michael doesn’t like this movie, I’m going to kill myself,” [laughs]. So he finally worked up his courage to show it to him and Michael loved it and the original ending was just that Griffin Dunne, who is incased in plaster of Paris as a way to hide him, has been taken by Cheech and Chong and put in a truck and the truck just drove off on its way to Spanish Harlem. We thought that that was a great ending, but nobody else did. So everyone was recommending things like he should go up in a balloon or all kinds of crazy things.

Michael Powell said, “Oh no no no, he has to go back to Hell. He has to go back to where we saw him in the beginning. The office job he has, training people to use a computer when he really wants to be writing the Great American Novel. He has to go back there.” And Marty said, “you are so right.” So that’s what he filmed and that happened to us a lot with Michael Powell looking at our films.

Last Temptation of Christ we were under a lot of pressure from fundamentalists and we had bodyguards and it was terrible and the film hadn’t been released yet and we showed it to Michael and he stood up and turned around at the end and there were tears running down his face. I looked at Marty and I thought that’s the greatest gift that Michael could have given him at that point, that he sensed the greatness of the film and the powerful religious statement and emotion of it. So having him around was just a joy [laughs] and he got Goodfellas made too [laughs].

Ray Liotta in Goodfellas

I hadn’t heard that.

TS: Marty was having a terrible time selling it because of the drugs and they kept saying you have to take the drugs out and Marty was saying, “but that’s the story! The story is about this guy who is allowed into the Mafia and is told don’t do drugs and he does do drugs. That is the entire story of the book and the movie.” Michael Powell was very upset that Marty was not getting the movie made and he said to me, “read me the script” and I did and he got on the phone with Marty and he said, “Marty, you have to make this movie. This is the best script I’ve read in twenty years.” So Marty went in one more time and got it made.It was a big influence on us.