TCM Classic Film Festival 2012: A Conversation with Thelma Schoonmaker

Since I’m at the TCM Classic Film Festival, and you will be soon, could you talk a little bit a Hugo and its role in this resurgence in the popularity of silent cinema and classic cinema in general, of people remembering who Méliès is again. They’re doing a great screening of Méliès’s film A Trip To The Moon on Sunday. How do feel about that part of that film?

TS: It was just a joy to be making it, frankly. First of all we’re passionate fans of the silent cinema. Michael Powell was one of the people who got Scorsese to start looking at silent films and he had grown up in the silent era, so he knew how great it was, what great artistry had been laid down there – most of which is lost now, unfortunately. We always wanted to celebrate silent film and it was great chance for us to finally do that in a very emotional way. I don’t think we though the film would have such an emotional wallop at the end, but the wonderful actors and the way Marty directed them gave us that fantastic emotional end to the movie.

Scorsese’s recreation of a Méliès film in Hugo

Really, the movie is about all that Scorsese has done over the years to resurrect the careers of great directors like Michael Powell, who is only one of the many that Scorsese has reached out to and encouraged people to look at their films. When we were making the movie, I was describing it to somebody who came into our editing room and I said, “You know this story of Georges Méliès being rescued from oblivion really is a distillation of everything Marty has been doing for year.” Marty said, “oh I didn’t realize that.” [laughs]

But it is, it’s this wonderful story of how great art will live on forever, despite the personal sacrifices people have to make for it. In this case, it had such a happy ending – as it did with Michael Powell.

Thelma Schoonmaker working on Raging Bull

Could you speak a little bit about how film editing as traditionally been a woman’s job – there have been women film editors since there were film editors., could you speak briefly on that?

TS: You’re saying there are a lot of women who are drawn to film editing?

Yeah.

TS: I’m glad you’re saying that because a lot of people say just the opposite, which is not true. One of the first people who ever won an Oscar for editing was Cecile B. DeMille’s editor, Anne Bauchens, who was a woman. I think what happened was that women, in the days before there was editing, when they first started filmmaking, there was just these hundred foot rolls of film and they would just film a train coming into the station like in Hugo and that was it; there were no cuts.

But great filmmakers like D. W. Griffith in America and Eisenstein in Russia just started editing and when that happened I think women had probably been rolling the film in the labs – the negative being developed and prints being made – they were probably brought in to start making splice, which in those days they did what we call a hot splice with cement, it was like a liquid glue. Probably women began being editors because of that, because they were brought out of the labs, is my supposition. Then when it became sort of significant part of filmmaking and probably people were beginning to make good salaries at it, I think men said this is something I should get into and I think women were sort of shoved aside a bit at first in the 30s and 40s.

But then came back strong in the period when I began to be a filmmaker in the 60s and 70s. Dede Allen and Margaret Booth and Verna Fields. These were all women who had substantial careers. I think that we cooperate better, possibly, with directors who have strong egos. It’s not such a battle, an ego battle over the film. I do think that’s a very strong, positive thing that women bring to a collaboration with a director.

That’s wonderful.

TS: Thank you so much, you asked great questions.

Thank you for talking with me, I really appreciate it and I hope you enjoy L.A. when you get out here. It’s rainy, bring an umbrella.

TS: Make sure you watch The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp when it comes to San Francisco.

I’m going to be like a hawk now, thank you for telling me about that.