Mad (Wo)Men: Season 6 premiere & speculation

The women of Mad Men

As the show progresses into 1968, the backdrop of SDCP and its characters will be the Vietnam War, the rise of feminism and the ERA, as well as the continued civil rights movement, not to mention two assassinations of powerful American figures. Many cite 1968 as a historical turning point from the Baby Boom and suburban life of the 1950s to the turmoil and anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early '70s.

Author's Note: In light of these historical conditions, I plan on writing weekly posts about the show's female characters. Mad Men is a show with a long narrative burn and I thought a weekly discussion of the female-centered storylines would be an interesting endeavor. I'm not going to claim my character speculation will hold up throughout the season, but half the fun is seeing what small steps the characters take every week towards a bigger arc.

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While Roger and Don contemplated their looming mortality for most of the two-hour season six opener of Mad Men, the women's storylines were a little more diverse.

Last we left them, Megan was starring as Beauty (as in Beauty and the Beast) in a Butler shoes commercial.

Peggy left Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (SCDP) to take a better position at Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough.

Joan felt pressured to sleep with a client in order for SCDP to secure an account. In return, Joan asked for partnership in the firm, which she was granted.

And Betty was comforting Sally over the arrival of her period.

As the show returns, the characters are celebrating Christmas of 1967 and New Year's of 1968. While the show has made mention of events which informed the civil rights movement, not as much mention has been made of the rise of the second wave of feminism. Perhaps Weiner and company feel the feminism of the era is implicit in the text of the show via the female characters, without citing specific events, but since the show takes place in New York, it seems likely one of the characters would have encountered a feminist demonstration or meeting.

Hawaii. Don is here for work and Megan appears to be living the good life. While they're attending a typical tourist Hawaiian pig roast, the audience discovers she's "made it" as an actress. She gets recognized by another guest and asked for her autograph. Megan seems a little put off by the attention, but she's soon back to her bubbly social ways.

The character of Megan is an interesting amalgamation. Weiner has spoken about being influenced by the books of Helen Gurley Brown when writing the character of Joan and the career ambitions of Peggy seem to categorize her as a someone who would support second wave feminism, but it's unclear what school of thought Megan's character would fall under. Peggy chooses to use her brain to move up the ranks at work, as does Megan. She's capable and intelligent and rises from a secretary to a copywriter, similar to Peggy. Don points this out when he tells Peggy of their engagement: "You know she reminds me of you. She's got the same spark."

On the other hand, by marrying Don, Megan is ensuring financial stability for herself, a goal which Joan states in the pilot episode of the series. "Of course, if you really make the right moves, you'll be out in the country and you won't be going to work at all."

But rather than climb the advertising ranks like Peggy or become a homemaker, Megan pursues her own goal: to become an actress.

Megan's success may make her character more interesting in the long run, but sadly for now, it only makes her interesting in relation to Don. Here's why: Don's never been in a real relationship with a woman who works. Yes, he's slept with many women who had careers (Midge, Rachel Menken, Sally's teacher), but being in a relationship--a marriage--with one is different.

Joan barely appears in the premiere, other than a brief scene where the partners are having pictures taken. She's also mentioned in reference to her relationship with Roger, a not-so-well kept secret at the office, since Peggy and Stan discuss it later in the episode.

Peggy is handling advertising emergency crises at midnight on a Friday, during a holiday weekend. It's clear Peggy isn't afraid to speak her mind to clients or staff who work for her. In fact, it seems Don's style of management has rubbed off on her, maybe more than she would like to acknowledge. She puts in the same long hours Don would have back in the day and ultimately saves the idea. Her boss comments she's "good in a crisis." Since she took a big career step last season by choosing to leave SCDP, it'll be interesting to see what Weiner and Co. have in store for her this year.

One of the more complex storylines in the premiere was Betty's. One of Sally's friends, Sandy, seems to spend a lot of time in the Francis household. Sandy's a talented violinist whose mother recently passed away. Betty seems to feel a close bond with the girl, because as she points out, Betty lost her mother, too.

There's been much discussion over Betty's bizarre rape joke to her husband, Henry, about Sandy. Although the joke seemed out of place, it fits with Betty's sometimes off-color sense of humor. Early on in the series, Betty joked about Sally being a "little lesbian". The rape comment was an odd choice for a joke, to be sure, but it seems to fit in with the characterization of Betty.

When Betty finds out Sandy has left for Juilliard (after Sandy admitted to her she didn't get in), Betty performs an act of kind-heartedness, driving into the city to search for the teenage girl. Sandy's mention of St. Mark's Place leads Betty to the rundown tenements there. While two of the occupants are tolerant of her presence, when their friend returns, he is not as willing to put up with this blonde suburban housewife. The ne'er do well informs her Sandy was trying to get money to go to California. He calls her "Blondie" and says she's a goodie and wants her out of the building.

The encounter gets under Betty's skin. She doesn't want to be perceived as simply a blonde housewife, so she dyes her hair dark black. Henry asks if she was inspired by Elizabeth Taylor, but seems accepting of the change.

The question is if the hair color change will be enough for Betty or if she wants to make other changes in her life. From the beginning of the series, it's clear she has been unhappy, but she has remained the most stagnant character, afraid to step outside of her role as wife, mother, and housewife.

Nordic Noir's Women: Sarah Lund & Saga Noren

A couple years ago, the question which plagued the television landscape was: Can women be funny?

Now a more relevant question would be: Where are all the tough female characters on television?

The answer may be overseas.

The Danish television series, Forbrydelsen, features a prime example in Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (Sofie Grabol). At the beginning of the series, Lund is getting ready to leave the Copenhagen police squad and move with her boyfriend and son to Sweden.

The day she is due to leave, a nineteen year old woman, Nanna Birk Larsen, goes missing and is later found raped and murdered. Lund feels compelled to stay and help investigate the case, even if that means delaying her move to Sweden.

The concept may sound familiar. This series has immigrated to the U.S., but The Killing's tough female lead was not as popular with audiences here. AMC cancelled the series after two seasons, but then recently decided to bring it back for a third.

For the original Danish series, lead actress Sofie Grabol worked closely with series creator Soren Sveistrup to develop the character of Lund. During season one, when the writers wanted to imply Lund had carried on an affair with the politician Troels Hartmann, Grabol was outraged. "I rushed into the writers' office and said: 'You are not doing that. It's a sell-out.' I remember saying: 'I am Clint Eastwood! He doesn't have a girlfriend!'”

While American audiences might categorize Lund as 'unfeeling', I happen to find the character to be extremely relatable. In the first season, it's implied she sticks with the Nanna Birk Larsen case because she wants to see the perpetrator brought to justice. Justice may partly be the reason, but I think it's also her empathy for the victim and the victim's family, even if there is not any outward display of emotion from Lund.

It's the men in Sarah's life who are the emotional ones and who can't seem to understand her drive to solve the case. By the time the case has resolved, her boyfriend has dumped her, and her son, Mark, is annoyed at her for not spending any time with him.

The thing is: I like that Sarah Lund is a bit emotionally repressed. I find it a very human quality to have. You don't always do or say the right things in your relationships, even if they are important to you.

Men are allowed to be portrayed as isolated and unemotional. Look at the characters Clint Eastwood and John Wayne played. They had difficulty communicating with others, but are considered some of the great characters in film.

There is a lack of strong, often isolated characters for women, on television and in film. Last week, Enlightened co-creator Mike White pointed out Hollywood's discernible gap between female and male protagonists: “If I have a male protagonist, it’s a studio movie, and if it’s a female protagonist, it’s an indie movie. That’s just how it is. It’s not about the studios. It’s about America and who goes to see movies. Women are interested in men and women, and men aren’t interested in the woman’s story. They just aren’t. There are exceptions, but by and large....I mean I do think that it’s feminizing for a guy to go see a movie with a female lead unless it’s Angelina Jolie shooting people or Zero Dark Thirty or something that feels like it’s in the male sphere.”

Looking around the current American film and television landscape, White is correct. There are not many female protagonists in general and certainly far fewer “tough” female protagonists. As he mentioned, Maya, the female protagonist in Zero Dark Thirty (played by Jessica Chastain) was driven by her work and not by her personal relationship with a man. Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal said they wanted to create a character that was “only defined by her actions” and not by a dense backstory.

Bigelow is a master of balancing action with personal, human moments in her films, especially in her most recent outings, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

Forbrydelsen does this balancing act as well, but the third season, which recently aired in Britain, may have struck the perfect mix.

Once again, Sarah Lund is facing a life change. She is coming up on 25 years of service and preparing for a transfer to OSHA, a career change which would probably take her out of police work (the details of her new job are never discussed and conclusions are left up to the viewer.) While investigating the murder of a sailor, Sarah is partnered with an officer from Special Branch, Mathias Borch.

Through the arrival of Borch, the audience finds out more about Lund's past. Lund and Borch attended the police academy together and dated during this time. Not only is Lund forced to partner with a former lover, but she's trying to repair her relationship with her son, Mark, who now has a girlfriend.

After Mark blows off dinner plans with her, Lund sees him and his (unbeknownst to her) pregnant girlfriend at a train station during a crucial moment in the investigation. The third series portrays Lund as more emotionally vulnerable, but in the end, her work and need for justice still define the character. (No spoilers here.)

Another Scandinavian show with a strong female lead is Broen/Bron (The Bridge). The show is set in Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden. It follows the police investigation after a dead body is discovered on the bridge connecting the two countries.

Saga Noren, a Swedish police officer, must work together with Martin Rohde, from Denmark. (Each character speaks in his or her native language.)

Saga, although a good investigator, is categorized by her co-workers as being a little “different”. Martin quickly becomes aware of this. Saga is blunt in her answers and doesn't understand why Martin is curious about the personal details of her life. “It's what partners do. They talk,” he explains.

While her devotion to her work is the same as Sarah Lund's, Saga's quirky qualities make her quite different from Lund. Her personality quirks make her a fun character to watch and likeable in an unique way.

Saga's actions seem to imply she has symptoms of Asperger's, which results in difficulty in picking up on social cues or understanding what other people may be feeling emotionally. Her relationship with Martin seems beneficial to her, because he is not afraid to point out her lack of social graces, and although she seems unfazed by his comments, by the end of the series, we see Saga trying to be more sensitive to others.

Both series are also commendable for their plot twists and high tension moments throughout the investigation, as well as the excellent cinematography.

Much like the crossover of The Killing to the States, the popularity of Broen/Bron has not gone unnoticed by British or American TV executives. There have been announcements that a joint production between France and Britain is planned, The Tunnel, which will have the murder occur in the middle of the Channel Tunnel. FX developed the series to take place in the U.S and Mexico, between El Paso and Juarez. Diane Kruger is slated to star.

Maybe introducing versions of Sarah Lund and Saga Noren to American audiences will start to expand audience's perceptions of women and what female characters can do and be.

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Why Zero Dark Thirty is Important for Women

For over a year, Jessica Chastain kept her role in Zero Dark Thirty a secret. Chastain plays Maya, a CIA operative who spends years of her life hunting down Osama Bin Laden.

“There was speculation I was playing a Navy SEAL's wife, which just drove me nuts. I wanted to shout from the rooftops 'No, I'm playing a woman who was at the center of the greatest manhunt in history!'” Chastain said at the Zero Dark Thirty premiere in Los Angeles.

And she had good reason to want to shout it from the rooftops. Not only does Chastain carry the movie, but Maya is a strong, independent woman, who while surrounded by male colleagues, does not allow herself to be defined by them.

Zero Dark Thirty is a lot to take in upon first viewing, but more than anything else, by the time I left the theater, I was blown away by Chastain's performance. There's something haunting about her performance (Bigelow's direction may deserve credit here), but we spend a lot of time on Maya's face, as she puts together the pieces, hits walls, and starts over again. We see the exhaustion on her face, the grief and disbelief when civilians and colleagues are lost to the effort, and maybe most importantly, the self assurance that her work is not in vain.

Maya is not afraid to confront her superiors—there is a memorable scene where Maya confronts her boss, Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler)--and pushes them towards action when it comes to capturing Osama Bin Laden.

“Historically, in movies, lead female characters are defined by men. A love interest or they're the victim of the villain of the piece. Maya is not that. She's intelligent, she's capable, she's strong, she stands on her own. In my opinion, she's the perfect representation of this generation of women,” Chastain said.

Yet despite Chastain earning several accolades for her role, Jennifer Lawrence is rumored to be the Oscar favorite for Silver Linings Playbook. Critics and audience members claim that Lawrence's performance is more emotional than Chastain's.

Ironically, women being emotional is the same argument used against women when it comes to being elected to positions of power. Oh, women are too emotional to run the country or a corporation. But we want them to be emotional on our movie screens? 

In Playbook, Lawrence's Tiffany is not the main character of the film. She is introduced as a foil/friend to Pat (Bradley Cooper), and her entire storyline revolves around him. We don't see any scenes with her alone, except one where she's waiting for Pat to show up for a dance lesson.

As easy as it would be to claim the controversy around Zero Dark Thirty may be having a negative effect on its awards season performance, there's also a much simpler solution. The L.A. Times has reported 77 percent of Academy voters are male and 94 percent are white. What if 50 percent of the Academy voters were women?

Many articles have mentioned how you could turn Zero Dark Thirty into an allegory about how its director, Kathryn Bigelow, (who got snubbed by the white male Academy by not receiving a Best Director nod) feels in Hollywood, but Bigelow has stated she would have made the film whether it featured a male or female protagonist. And we have no reason not to believe her, since her last film, The Hurt Locker, featured three male leads.

And like Bigelow, I will leave readers to make their own conclusions about this Oscar race. Despite the number of accolades it may or may not receive, Zero Dark Thirty will remain important, not just for political reasons, but for how women are represented in film.  

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Of similar interest: Uppity Women: How Maya and Kathryn Bigelow Continue to Threaten the Status Quo   

Kathryn Bigelow: I refuse to stop making movies.

“If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.” -Kathryn Bigelow

If someone made a movie about Kathryn Bigelow's career, it contains all the elements for a success story. A comeback story, if you will.

Her first film, Loveless, a biker movie set in the 1950s starring Willem Defoe, introduced Bigelow and her highly stylized approach to the independent film scene.

In 1997, Near Dark, a vampire Western by Bigelow was released and quickly disappeared into video stores. However, the movie gained a cult following for its dynamic cinematic style.

Already questions arose about a female director's place in the action movie world. During filming for Blue Steel, Bigelow said: "There's nothing, culturally or socially, that would limit women to the more ephemeral, sensitive subjects or men to hardware films.” The director said she wanted to “push the limits” of her subject, whether it be vampires or a police case.

Although Blue Steel had bigger names than her last two pictures—Jaime Lee Curtis was the lead—it was still unsuccessful at the box office.

Point Break (1991) was Bigelow's most financially successful film, making over $100 million at the box office. It featured Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze as bank robbing surfers.

Bigelow's 1995 picture Strange Days, starred Ralph Fiennes in a futuristic version of Los Angeles, and was written and produced by Bigelow's ex-husband, director James Cameron. It was a commercial and critical flop, but much of the blame was placed on Cameron for its failure.

Bigelow's next release in 2002, K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, was yet another box office flop.

Although her stylistic choices as a director were admired, the typical Hollywood studio action movie was not doing Bigelow any favors.

After an eight year absence, Bigelow found her footing again and came back with a high tension film with political and philosophical weight, The Hurt Locker. Set during the Iraq War, it explores the work and lives of Army bomb squad technicians.

During an interview with The A.V. Club, Bigelow was asked about the seven year gap between pictures. “I became familiar with Mark Boal's journalism....These things take time, is all I'm trying to say. I think what people don't realize is how long these things can take in development. I've always developed all my own pieces, and they're time consumers,” Bigelow said.

The Hurt Locker was based off Mark Boal's reporting during his time on an embed with a bomb squad in Baghdad. The film, which featured unknown actors and had a documentary, 'day in the life' style, was nominated for many awards, including nine Academy Awards.

Bigelow, nominated for Best Director, was ironically up against her ex-husband James Cameron, for his work on his self-proclaimed labor of love, Avatar.

On March 7, 2010, Bigelow became the first female director to win an Academy Award. The Hurt Locker also won Best Picture and Boal was awarded for Best Screenplay.

Bigelow grew up in Northern California, where she studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. While there, she was accepted into the Whitney Museum's independent study program. While in New York, Bigelow apprenticed with artists Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, and Lawrence Weiner.

She earned a master's degree from Columbia University, studying film theory and criticism. Bigelow continued to work with avant garde and conceptual artists after earning her degree and in 1978, began work on a short film, The Set-Up.

In typical Bigelow style, The Set-Up, was a film commentating on the violence in film. The Set-Up portrays two men fighting, as voice overs deconstruct the violent images. Bigelow asked her actors to punch and hit each other during the film's all-night shoot. Director Milos Forman, teaching at Columbia at the time, liked the short, and Bigelow used it as part of her application to Columbia's MFA film program, where she studied screenwriting and directing.

Bigelow was not stymied by tepid box office reception for her early films or any possible reluctance by Hollywood to have a woman direct high-paced films, but she prefers to work outside of the studio system.

With Hurt Locker, Bigelow wanted to film in the Middle East and she knew this would garner her a lot of no's in terms of securing financing from a studio. “I also wanted to retain complete creative control, I wanted final cut, and I wanted the opportunity to cast breakout, emerging talent,” Bigelow said.

The team of Bigelow and Boal seems to fit Bigelow's desire to use film to comment on society. “If you hold up a mirror to society and you don't like what you see, you can't fault the mirror. The toughest decision was not wanting to shy away from anything, trying to keep the truth of the moment, of the social environment. It's not that I condone violence. I don't. It's an indictment. I would say the film is cautionary, a wake-up call, and I think that is always valuable.” Bigelow said these words in regard to her movie Strange Days and the social and racial tensions in Los Angeles after the riots in the 1990s, but the same could easily apply to the contents of Hurt Locker.

Even though Bigelow's Hurt Locker success gave her the cache to do whatever film she wanted, she chose to team with Boal again for her next project. “Once you embark on a project that is both topical and relevant, I suppose it sets a new bar,” Bigelow said.

Bigelow claims she's a delivery system for Mark [Boal]'s content and their latest idea was to make a movie about the failed capture of Osama Bin Laden in Tora Bora in late 2001. But even after Hurt Locker's success, Bigelow and Boal couldn't sell the pitch to a studio. Backed by an independent investor, Boal and Bigelow continued to work on the project, after shopping it around Hollywood.

On May 1, 2011, Bigelow and Boal watched as President Obama informed the nation of Bin Laden's death at the hands of a Navy SEALS team in Pakistan. The news turned out to be both good and bad for the Tora Bora project. The day after the news, Sony's Amy Pascal, remembering their pitch from months earlier, called up Bigelow and asked if she was still doing a movie about Bin Laden. Sony agreed to distribute the picture before even really knowing what the picture was.

But writing a movie about the failed capture of Bin Laden seemed silly after his killing. Not wanting to scrap the entire script, Bigelow and Boal talked about trying to frame both events in one movie, but ultimately decided to drop the Tora Bora incident altogether.

Boal still faced a mountain of a task to get through in order to even begin piecing together a new script. He researched the events almost contemporaneously, uncovering information on the SEALS mission and about how the CIA finally, after four years of almost no news, tracked down Bin Laden. Although there is some contention about whether the CIA allowed Boal and Bigelow access to classified files in order to research the movie, researching the script was only the beginning.

And Bigelow seems to have a penchant for never taking the easy way. Like with Hurt Locker, Bigelow wanted to cast mostly unknown actors (Jessica Chastain was not an Oscar nominee when she was cast.) “If you are dealing with characters who are meant to be true to life, I want it to be an original experience for the audience. I don't want them thinking about a past performance of the actor,” Bigelow said during an interview on Charlie Rose.

Again, shooting took place in the Middle East, in Jordan and India, and the forty minute action sequence that ends the movie was the biggest object of all. Bigelow described the process: how the actors playing the SEALS team had to learn how special forces operate and how she had to work with the crew to figure out the logistics of shooting. The raid took place on a moonless night and Bigelow wanted to recreate it as well as use the night vision lenses the real SEALS would have used. “And we built the compound [where Bin Laden was killed] from the ground up,” Bigelow added.

Just as putting the film together wasn't a simple process, Zero Dark Thirty's plot is not simple to describe. Boal and Bigelow say it's really three stories in one: 1) How the CIA found someone to lead them to Bin Laden, 2) How they made the decision to go in, and 3) How they actually killed Bin Laden.

The story revolves around Jessica Chastain's character, Maya, a CIA operative who followed a lead—one of many—that eventually leads to bin Laden.

Many assume the fact the main character is female is a creative choice made by Bigelow and Boal, but in Boal's research, he found a female CIA agent was the one who worked on this particular lead over a period of many years.

“It wouldn't have mattered to me if the main character was a man or woman,” Bigelow said. “I want to tell the story.” In a recent New York magazine Vulture interview, Bigelow recounted a story about a screening of the film in New York. “This woman came out of the theater, and she was crying and shaking, and she came up to me and said, ‘It wasn’t a woman, though, was it?’ And I said, ‘No, it was!’”

Upon its release, there was criticism from politicians and critics alike saying the film supported the use of torture to gain intelligence information.

Both have tried to address the accusations, but Bigelow might have said it best in a recent acceptance speech after winning Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle. "I thankfully want to say that I'm standing in a room of people who understand that depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices," Bigelow said. "No author could ever write about them, and no filmmaker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time."

On Thursday, January 10, when the Academy Award nominations were announced, Bigelow was not nominated for Best Director. Zero Dark Thirty garnered nominations for Chastain, Boal's screenplay, and Best Picture.

Maybe the lack of a nomination for Bigelow this year will simply lead to another great comeback story when she makes her next picture.

When asked if the next film she's going to make will be easier than filming in 130 degree heat or Jordanian prisons, Bigelow confesses she often promises herself the next film will be easier. “Oh, I say it all the time,” she said. “All the time. I just don't mean it.”

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Sources: Harris, Mark. Inside Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow's Mad Dash to Make Zero Dark Thirty 

Rose, Charlie. Zero Dark Thirty - Interview with Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal 

Taylor, Clarke. Cult Favorite Kathryn Bigelow 

Tobias, Scott. The AV Club: Kathryn Bigelow 

The arts...

Everyone's been talking about Marvin Hamlisch today. I've read memories of meeting him, stories about when and where people saw their first production of A Chorus Line. That's what I love about the arts. If you connect with the material, the performances, it will be etched on your heart. I love to hear people's stories and memories of when they saw a show and what they remember about it. Some people will claim it changed their life. And I believe that, that art, the arts, can change lives. It may not be a huge, life-altering change, but even in the tiniest of ways. You are opening your heart and mind to this idea, this show, this moment. I think that's amazing.

Formative People (Or How I Fell in Love with New York)

After saying I didn't want to read a bunch of remembrances of Nora Ephron, I went and wrote one of my own.

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The odd thing for me about Nora Ephron's passing was the timing. I'd just read her essay collection, I Remember Nothing last week, where a frequent topic of discussion is old age and death. While I was reading, I thought, “Oh, Nora, you're going to live to a very old age.” She was one of those women I could imagine working until she was ninety.

After admiring Nora and her work for most of my lifespan, I'd finally gotten the opportunity to see her in person at BAM's screening of This Is My Life, the first movie she wrote AND directed (at fifty). I remember being so overwhelmed at seeing her in person. It was a reaction unlike any I've had to other famous people I've seen or met in person. I think some of it was nostalgia bubbling up, because her movies were such an integral part of my formative years, but mostly, it was the realization of how important her work was to me, and how much she inspired me, perhaps moreso than any other person other than my family.

I am not an overly emotional person, I don't usually get upset about things, but I cry at the drop of a hat when it comes to TV and movies. When I was twelve, I remember renting You've Got Mail (on VHS) and watching it with my mom. I cried at the end. There's a happy ending and I was crying. I think it's because it was the first time I remember wanting something so much. I wanted to live in that world. I wanted to live in New York, in a little apartment on the Upper West Side, and work in a bookstore or write children's books.

I have now watched Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally too many times to count. When I went to see Julie & Julia at the AMC theater near Lincoln Center, nearly two weeks after it came out, the theater was packed. There was no where to sit. So I sat on the floor. It was worth it. Throughout the film, I laughed and cried and recognized pieces of myself in the characters.

I don't remember when I found out that Nora Ephron was a journalist, but it doesn't really matter, because it was just another way this wonderful woman mirrored what I wanted out of life. I started out wanting to be a journalist. "A gymnast." "A journalist." "Right, that's what I said."

When I was twenty-four, I moved to New York and I adore it. Sometimes it's hard to find the magic of Nora Ephron's New York when you live in the day-to-day grind of the city, but it's there. She always found it, wrote about it, and captured it on film. When the city is giving me a hard time, I like to take walks to clear my head, and usually there will be a moment, often more than one, that makes me smile and remember why I love this city so much. Or as I have found myself doing lately, I read her words about the city and remember the possibility. New York has so much possibility. You never know what's going to happen.

Last night, I came home, had a very indulgent dinner—I think Nora would have appreciated it—and watched When Harry Met Sally. It made me realize how many places in New York I still want to visit. Yesterday was a very overcast, breezy New York day, but last night, as I sat in my living room, the windows were open and I let the sounds from the street travel into the apartment.

I'm devastated we will never have another new Nora Ephron film or book to cherish, but I am happy to still have her words and movies to discover. I'm ashamed to admit I have never seen Heartburn and I know I will read and re-read her books and essays for years to come.

Mostly, I will think of her in those moments when New York is magical.

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Her essays from The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/06/nora-ephron-1941-2012.html