To some it may seem like a small thing, but it’s not: Nora Ephron made movies.

In an industry where M. Night Shamalamadingdong can continue to get movies financed despite making some of the worst movies ever, women continue to be seen as “too much of a risk” to gamble on.

It boggles the mind.

Predictably, when Kathryn Bigelow won the Best Director Oscar (for the movie she had to get independently financed because the director of Near Dark, Strange Days, Blue Steel and Point Break wasn’t a good risk for funding -_-) it was hailed as a ‘new era’ for women in film, but most of us rolled our eyes because we knew.

Same ol’ same ol’ — if not worse.

So, Nora Ephron made movies and whatever you might think about Silkwood, Heartburn, Mixed Nuts, Michael, My Blue Heaven, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, Lucky Numbers, You’ve Got Mail, Bewitched, Hanging Up or Julie & Julia, that’s an impressive list of films (to say nothing of all her other writing and work). You might complain that her view of gender was often essentialist and failed to critique the cultural construction of norms or that her acceptance of the march of corporate capitalism should be challenged (in what world could the small book store owner run out of business by the gleeful [they were gleeful!] corporation, fall for the head of that corporation?), or that her life of privilege blinded her to very annoying assumptions in her films–

–which you could say about pretty much everyone in Hollywood. But today let’s remember a smart, funny woman who got things done and made us laugh and cry, because now there’s not just one less terrific dame in the world, there’s one less woman with power in the film industry and we are all much poorer for that.

Resquiescat in pace, Ms. Ephron.

Thanks to The Cultural Gutter for posting this clip.