Fran Lebowitz: caustic wit or boring complainer?

Martin Scorsese's hugely entertaining new film featuring the dyspeptic wit Fran Lebowitz is not a traditional documentary. Public Speaking, which debuts November 22 on HBO, is more like a beautifully shot and edited monologue. This is Scorsese's deft, elegant portrait of Lebowitz in her own words. It's her version of who she is.

Lebowitz, the author of two celebrated books of comedic essays, is a brilliant talker. Her set pieces about smoking, tourists in New York, the truth about Andy Warhol's "superstars," the disastrous decision to turn New York City into a "tourist attraction," and the cheapening of American public life are all original and proudly caustic.

as obsessed as I am w/NYC in the 70s/Andy Warhol/etc etc I do not "get" (and never have) the cult of personality surrounding Ms. Lebowitz and her utterances.

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

I must take issue with the term 'a mere child,' for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.

I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.

If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail.

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.

My favorite animal is steak.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.

Success didn't spoil me, I've always been insufferable.

The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

Humility is no substitute for a good personality.

Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

[slaps forehead] wait: she invented tweeting!

i liked metropolitan life and social studies. haven't read them in years though. same with without feathers and getting even.

i haven't seen her on law & order yet. certainly a big reputation resting on two slim volumes, but there are people who still love those books.

I just want to know how she makes a living. Those Law & Order guest appearances can't have paid that well. I'd be interested to find out she's secretly the night manager of a Duane Reade or something, between parties.

Long-running MST3K riff whenever someone who vaguely looked like her appeared in a movie: "Fran Lebowitz! Still not writing..."

I loved her when I was in junior high, but she's the kind of thing you move on from...

Born and raised in Morristown, New Jersey,[1] Lebowitz is best known for her sardonic social commentary on American life through her New York sensibilities.

I have no idea who this broad is

i read her books when i was a little kid cuz they were lying around the house

so many weird age-inappropriate things i read at that age because i liked to read and i was bored and antisocial

lol yah thats how i ended up reading Frank Zappa's autobio when i was 6 ¯\(°_o)/¯

that + woody allen books + this big 'jewish humour' compendium i read 1000 times meant that at age 8 i talked like a neurotic '60s-era jewish tv writer

Never heard of her. I think I'm unfavorably predisposed to her by her name, which makes her sound like some menopausal synagogue matron that my parents would have asked to keep an eye on me.

She was on Letterman a lot in 1982-83 (always with cigarette, I believe). Liked her presentation/look more than the content.

my father went to high school in morristown. he grew up in summit. just like law & order's ice-t!

I used to go to Morristown a lot for work. It's a nice town. Lots of hot moms hanging out in the cafes.

i like where this is going

my 6th grade history teacher was named mr morris and he lived on morris ave in morristown nj

at age 8 i talked like a neurotic '60s-era jewish tv writer

If only you posted like one! :)

this big 'jewish humour' compendium i read 1000 times meant that at age 8 i talked like a neurotic '60s-era jewish tv writer

― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:36 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i read that book a thousand times too!

was that the leo rosten one? read that all the time at the library when i was a kid. i read an asimov joke compendium too. i think? rings a bell.

between woody's books and that book and the big marx brothers books at my library that i devoured i was also steeped in jewish lore.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/6179ZJX647L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

^ knew this by heart

I went thru a major Marx Bros phase in high school but I led such a blinkered existence I didn't identify them as "Jewish humor" or even Jewish, necessarily

this book blew my mind a couple years later, not sure how it would read now

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/90/36/3f90225b9da01a67a76a2110.L.jpg

so did any of you play The 2000 Year Old Man LPs? Brought Jewish humor in the American mainstream to an even more overt level.

that + woody allen books + this big 'jewish humour' compendium i read 1000 times meant that at age 8 i talked like a neurotic '60s-era jewish tv writer

holy crap, I think we are THE SAME SARDONIC MIDDLE-AGED JEW.

Formed an opinion at the time that FL was one of the great American geniuses, haven't read the books in years but see no reason to deviate from my original judgment.

Always heard tha, that it was like she was some untouchable genuis. She got her own Paris Review interview, she was in party photos every month in Vantiy Fair and Interview (maybe still is).

I just want to know how she makes a living.

Have wondered this too. Family money, or is she a colorful New Yorker who, like Bill Cunningham living above Carnegie Hall, has a rent controlled hole in the wall?

Born 10/27/50, so those books came out young.

Since it's Scorcese too, very interested in the documentary.

According to Wikipedia:

On November 17, 2010 Fran made a return appearance on Late Night With David Letterman after a 16 year absence. She discussed her years-long writer's block, which she jokingly referred to as "writer's blockade."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DLgoKejUVE&feature=channel

I walked past her on 6th Ave. in the Village a few nights ago. She was dressed exactly as she always dresses and looked mean.

i.e. always in character?

i read an asimov joke compendium too.

I read this one!

I went to school in Madison, so I am familiar with various towns in Morris County.

I went through a Marx Brothers phase too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujjJlT9cCts

Lebowitz on Austen and writing does not wow me.

i don't get what she does, just say obvious/meaningless things and make faces? m coleman's list of quips made me cringe

^^^this

like "In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra." is pretty funny, is what you do considered "real life"? lol

I don't get what she's saying about Austen at all. People think she's a Victorian who writes romances? What?

i think that's kind of true tbh, but not an earth-shattering observation.

she could have expressed it much more clearly and less digressively too

TBF I remember something about a director of a Jane Austen film describing it as a "bodice-ripping romance" (in the context of a discussion of how stupid and shocking the quote was), but I think anyone who ever read a Jane Austen book in a college or even high school course knows better if they were paying any attention. And I find it hard to believe that Jane Austen is "popular" among people who don't actually get the books at all.

like, in my undergrad jane austen class, which was packed with young women, we went around the room saying why we were taking the course and 3/4 of the students were like "i love these books they're so romantic!" which...seems like an incomplete reading if not a misreading. but that's how she's been taken up.

xp i think the cultural pull of the romances for girls safe version of Austen is really strong

i am cringing at this video clip, though, like jane austen does not need anyone to point out her intelligence, thank you very much

I'm not the biggest reader of Austen, but I always thought of her more as like an anti-Bronte. Instead of doomed passion you get smart, complete but tempered love that works out in the end.

i don't think Leibowitz is arguing against some notion of Austen as writing bodice-rippers. no one thinks that. Leibowitz is pointing out that the books seem less affirming of romantic love than ironically focused on the tension between a certain ideology of romantic love and the economic necessities underlying it for women of a certain class.

except she refuses to actually talk about what the books are about; it seems like she's just identifying with Austen, so she doesn't say much except she was an ironist! she was smart! which, duh.

yeah

also

that + woody allen books + this big 'jewish humour' compendium i read 1000 times meant that at age 8 i talked like a neurotic '60s-era jewish tv writer

― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Sunday, November 21, 2010 10:36 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3

There are moments, such as on a recent-ish appearance on Bill Maher's show, where she's starting to sound a bit fogey-ish, but yeah, like 98% of the time she absolutely rocks.

this thread is the ONLY time i am ever reminded of fran lebowitz.

The last time I was reminded of her before this thread was bumped was when I saw her trotted out in the Candy Darling documentary to make casually transphobic remarks, but with an air of fogeyness more than of conscious malice.

I'm barely aware of her but she comes across as a sanctimonious boor in that interview

wkiw fran

Shakey doesn't like old Jewish lesbians who are voting for Clinton if they're delightfully obnoxious

(ie if they're one adjective up on him)

Would prefer they were funny, it's true

as with Monty Python's late work (eg Mr Creosote), i like vituperative, disgusted spleen just as much as belly laughs

same with Michael O'Donoghue and vintage NatLamp, Roseanne uncensored

love her

“You are a white person who is boring … you are deeply embarrassed by your complete lack of interesting qualities … humility is no substitute for a good personality … this will not change.”

The halfway point between Virginia Woolf and Travis Bickle.

I'm actually kind of surprised she liked Hamilton

i don't own a phone and i know next to nothing about hamilton and i'd like to keep it that way. i do own a computer though...

what is the last thing she actually wrote? like an essay or whatever.

http://cdn03.strandbooks.weblinc.com/images/products/partitioned/9/f/0/0679860525.1.zoom.jpg

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/09/13/t-magazine/13tmag-seventies-t-slide-M9RP-copy/13tmag-seventies-t-slide-M9RP-facebookJumbo.jpg

Legitimately confused as to whether that's Fran Lebowitz or Sandra Bernhard

the real star of that photo is the wallpaper

Her hilarious takedown of Bernie Sanders ("who leaves New York when they're 18 to go to Vermont?!") on this week's Real Time with Bill Maher was the most Fran Lebowitz thing ever.

haha

Uh, New Yorkers like Fran may think that New York is the omphalos of the world, unsurpassed by any place on earth. I'd guess that most of those New Yorkers are well-to-do, have nice living spaces they can easily afford and they feel their lives have a measure of big-city glamor. Many other people would find it loud, smelly, crowded and ugly compared to Vermont.

You're not a NYer are you

Yes. I share that distinction with 99.9% of the world's population.

lol

"Immigrants make the culture and tourists ruin it."

Great interview from Sydney Opera House:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvmRbq-5h-o

For me she is emblematic of a particular type of NYC bore, a person with nothing going for them other than being smart and an avid culture consumer, who thus either lacks the imagination or defensively refuses to acknowledge that there could be anything more to life than living in NYC and consuming culture.

like what?

posting obv

I like her Photos

Frannie Leibovwitz

to the first question "what did you have thought you would have done with your life" she answers, "well, i wanted to be a writer... and now I am" which begs some serious questions.

"what did would you have thought you would have done with your life?", rather.

I kinda like her but I know what man alive means seems like her whole worldview is kinda obsolete

Yeah, thirded

Netflix series with Martin Scorsese premiering January 8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MClMxqD-HNA

Will watch

Blew through the first three episodes this morning, laughing hard enough to wake my sleeping husband at least twice. I'm as worn down by the world as anyone else right now, but the presence of Lebowitz, Scorsese and, in a few interview clips, Spike Lee just makes me feel overwhelmingly grateful that we have these people right now.

Love the moment in ep 1 where she talks about being on the subway and observing her fellow man

Felt her 90 mins in the movie previously translated better than several episodes

best thing about it is scorsese’s uncontrollable laughter at every single thing she says

A friend has been bugging me to watch this.

I only saw the first ep a few months ago and I’m still thinking about some of the things she said

https://cultmtl.com/2022/03/fran-lebowitz-on-will-smith-chris-rock-and-the-slap-heard-round-the-world/

“No one should hit people because they don’t like a joke. First of all, this is a terrible precedent because most comedians tell lots of jokes that are bad, most jokes are not funny, most people are not that good at their job.

Thank you for posting that here and not in the will smith thread

Author Fran Lebowitz is in attendance for tonight’s game. #WNBATwitter pic.twitter.com/jFhQ5UfFeW

— Her Hoop Stats (@herhoopstats) August 28, 2023

I saw her live and she made a sincere parallel between that Will Smith slap and Putin invading Ukraine.

I think of when authors like Mark Twain spent as much time on lecture tours and the Chautauqua circuit as they did actually writing. She's making her living in a job that hasn't existed in 100 years.

the slap heard round the caucasus

I saw her live and she made a sincere parallel between that Will Smith slap and Putin invading Ukraine.

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, August 29, 2023 3:56 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i feel like you have to explain more

As best I can remember: Leibowitz was talking about Ukraine, and making it very clear she thinks Putin is a tyrant and the war an act of unprovoked aggression, "there are no two sides to this!". And this then segued directly into "just as there are no two sides when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, there is no two sides to this", delivered without the slightest hint of irony. I found the idea that I should bring the same amount of moral clarity and conviction to an actual war and some silly showbiz event puzzling.

i feel like launching into some baudrillardian thing about the surreality of both events and their identical function in the american media as a locus for the affirmation of certain kinds of moral convictions but i won't do that actually, even if i kind of think that

which wouldn't make the FL thing any less silly but idk