It’s not an original observation, but one of the problems with the assertion that “women can’t understand GoodFellas” is that the film was edited by a woman. So either she was just a puppet, which the evidence does not indicate, or else the movie was damned lucky to have ended up in its final form, given that its editor didn’t understand it? Or else maybe, just maybe, not only can women understand GoodFellas but a woman was crucial in making it the film it is.
Indeed, Thelma Schoonmaker is so pivotal to the work of Martin Scorsese that he fought with the guild to get her in so she could edit Raging Bull. Born in Algeria, daughter of a Standard Oil agent, Schoonmaker had originally studied poli sci at Cornell, but her opposition to apartheid made her no friends at the State Department. She ended up answering an ad in The New York Times that offered on-the-job training as a film editor. The actual work—trimming foreign films to meet the length requirements of TV schedules—horrified her, but she learned. While taking a class at NYU in film editing, she met Martin Scorsese. Her three Oscars are all for editing his films; of her remaining four nominations, only one is not for one of his films.
It’s depressing how often these articles about women end up explaining the fights the women in question had with the male power structure in Hollywood, but we’ve reached that point. The Motion Picture Editors Guild requires eight years of work before you’re allowed in—you must be an apprentice for five years and an assistant for three. It took Scorsese’s lawyers to get Schoonmaker in—after her Oscar nomination for Woodstock, mind. This was thirteen years after editing Who’s That Knocking At My Door? I don’t know what the requirements are to get into the Directors’ Guild of America, but you figure Marty made it in a little more quickly than Thelma made it into the editors’ guild.
It’s interesting, however, that she is more closely associated with Scorsese than with her own late husband, the great Michael Powell. Since his death, she has worked to preserve his films. However, while she has worked on several documentaries over the years, she hasn’t made one of his films. I love watching Scorsese talk about movies, and I have a gut feeling that Schoonmaker could be at least as interesting. Of course, I’d also love to see an analysis of her eye, because it’s quite clear that she’s got a good one. I think a lot of the shape of modern film is owed to her, though her name isn’t brought up as often as many others.
There was a time, once, when film editing was primarily women’s work. This, presumably, is because it was difficult, thankless work. The work involved in physically manipulating the film itself was greatly challenging. It took precision and care. Still, Graham once told me that he didn’t think there should be a Film Editing Oscar, because he didn’t think it was all that complicated. So yeah. Difficult? Unappreciated? Low-paying? That was a woman’s job. Clearly, that had shifted by the ’70s. Still, imagine how Scorsese’s movies might have looked in that decade had Schoonmaker been able to get into the guild.
