Fran Lebowitz photographed in Chelsea, New York, January 2021. I would wake up and be so excited because I could smoke. Volume 1: Best of First Decade 1969-1979. President Biden repeatedly framed his campaign and his administration as defending "the rule of law" after what he and others portrayed as the lawless reign of President Trump . 15 Times Fran Lebowitz Was The Most Interesting Woman In The Room. Lebowitz: Tareyton, because thats what my mother smoked. By the time my youngest brother was born her life had collapsed on her, but she was a very elegant woman when I was young. - Booklet on 'New York's Underground' - Large . Im sorry, were full up. If someone else has to write, then you know you have a willing companion to talk to on the phone for hours and hours while they put off their writing. I also wrote plays for my cousins to perform at various family gatherings. January 30, 2011. High Times: What was the first thing you wrote as a serious attempt to be a writer? If theyd known anyone in London, they would have sent me there. But I did actually graduate from high school, because I took the New Jersey High School Equivalency Test. Metropolitan Life is a 1978 bestselling collection of comedic essays and the debut book by writer Fran Lebowitz. I remember walking in the hot sun to one of the American bases in Antiguapast the crazy house, as we called the lunatic asylum, and the dead house, where the bodies of people who died in the hospital were put until they were collected by the undertakerto be interviewed by an American soldiers wife. The Broad Stage presents An Evening with Fran Lebowitz, star of the recent Netflix series Pretend it's a City directed by Martin Scorsese. [Clemente laughs] I mean, the great thing about New Jersey is that its close to New York. They had a vision of me in a pink smock with a little square badge on it saying Fran. Although complaint was her form, the result was a celebration of practical intelligence, a kind of Dr. Atkins epicureanism. One of the other ones was a Manson-type film, a hippie death cult. Since we are on the pages of Interview magazine, should we go back to your beginnings at Interview? My favorite thing to do is to call another writer who has a deadline, because they will stay on the phone with you. You might say that was the influence of my mother. I Cover the Waterfront is a 1933 American Pre-Code romantic drama film directed by James Cruze and starring Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, and Hobart Cavanaugh.. Based on the book, by Max Miller, a reporter for the San Diego Sun, the film is about a reporter who investigates a waterfront smuggling operation, and becomes romantically involved with the daughter of the man he is . I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself. I was pulled out of school to take care of my youngest brother while my mother went to work, and when she realized I hadnt been looking after him properly, that I had been reading instead, she gathered all the books I had stolen from the library over the years and burned them. Then I start thinking that maybe somewhere in the house is a column that I never turned in. You have to say fuck, you have to have these kinds of sex. Im only afraid when I write. I wrote for the school newspaper. I just dont like domestic life. Obviously, I was opposed to this, and I still am. Wielding a sharp pen in one hand and cigarette in another, Fran Lebowitz wrote for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine beginning in 1968; published two classic collections of tart, humorous essays Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981) and has ever since remained a fixture of the Manhattan social scene as a sort of critic without portfolio. She takes one. A sense of, Im all alone in the world, and I have integrity. That was on the second floor. You cant do it. So I remember I said, Look, if you dont like it, give it back to me. At least to my face. "That is ridiculous as an amount of money. I remember one of the best days of my life was an all-day A.I.P. High Times: What was the style? Ill also invent things, like I have to clean the entire apartment before I write. She is widely recognized for her collection of essays, including Metropolitan Life, The Fran Lebowitz Reader, and Social Studies. It was the only thing I wanted to be except for a brief flirtation with wanting to be a cellist. Meet Fran Lebowitz and join her on her rambles as she muses about deadly distractions, Times Square terror, subway stoppers and total building fails. I wasnt glamorous and rebellious. And the truth is that most families have no smart ones and no pretty ones. It was incredibly boring writing that stuff. Thats good for at least an hour of not writing. Im very vilified for this, I have to say. At first Fran had to sneak in her own brand of humor. But it's a pleasurable one. The Modern Farmer came on before Sunrise Semester, and it was about farming. I wait until the editor says, Unless its in tomorrow morning at ten oclock we cant run it. Then I stay up all night and do it. This conversation began at a public event at the 92nd Street Y in 2013, and was picked up again in her Vermont kitchen eight years later, in the summer of 2021, when the social restrictions of the pandemic had, for a time, eased. I remember it because when I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. And then I would go to the Factory and turn it in. It wasnt enough that he had Charles Mingus playing there every night. They dont know what anything is, so they have to make it up. Everyone was paid in cash. They were these huge hardcover books that were different aspects of Interview. CLEMENTE: And the illustrations were by Marc Balet? Would you say, You just cant afford to house four children. FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: After a certain age, in the early hours of the morning, the pressure drops, which is the reason why. I remember it because they gave me the topic: What was the effect of AIDS on the culture? Immigrants are good, tourists are bad. I styled myself to look like no one else. No one else remembers things from this whole period, but I wasnt high. ever react to your devotion to their product? People seem to think there is some connection between talking and writing, but I love to talk and if there were some connection between the two of them I would be the most prolific writer in the history of the world. It was charity really. While working in the local Carvel ice-cream store, she attended an Episcopalian day school until she was thrown out for non-specific surliness. Certain that she would starve to death following this banishment, Lebowitz skipped college and moved to Manhattan, where she pursued such jobs as taxi driving, belt peddling, apartment cleaning (with a small specialty in Venetian blinds), and selling advertising space forChangesmagazine. Ill take you to 21 if you type for me. Ive typed some of my columns. Since 1974, High Times Magazine has been the #1 resource for cannabis news, culture, brands and marijuana legalization laws. I get rid of the ones that I can bear to give up or never wanted to begin with. LEBOWITZ: I only know how many there are because for the last several years Ive moved every five minutes, so theyre counted. Then to Merits. The essays were published inMetropolitan Life(1978) andSocial Studies(1981). And I reviewed those. Fran Lebowitz is 69 years old October 27. But since that apartment was infested with roaches, I decided not to bring them to my nice, new apartment. I get tired, but fear keeps me awake. A decade seems like a good enough time for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and cultural critic-writer Fran Lebowitz to return to the screen. One was called Catherine the Great, and it had a picture of her on the label. The whole time before I write I spend on the phone begging people for ideas and solace and sympathy. Fran Lebowitz is 69 years old October 27. The study where she writes is a sunroom surrounded on three sides by windows. I mean, knowing James Joyce . It was one room, but that makes it sound grander than it was. Maybe Ill donate them to one of those film schools in Los Angeles for a tax write-off. I just dont want anyone in the apartment, not for longer than a few hours. And then all this junk in the theater, we would no longer need the kind of stuff that tourists like. Required fields are marked *. At that point one of the boys I was with realized I was feeling better and got really mad at me for insisting on going to the hospital, and he screamed at me, which made me perfectly crazy by the time I got to see the psychiatrist. June 15, 2021 6:30 AM PT. I cant believe anyone has ever made a ballet. China is not a great idea: capitalism and a dictator. As a child I kept the opposite hours. Children would get up to watch other children playing marbles and Ping-Pong and stuff like that. There are a lot of funny people around, and a lot of writers too, but somehow the combination of great humor and great writing has become an exceedingly rare commodity in the modern world. So we always have this fight, because I have a biography section, and he doesnt like that, because its so inelegant to have a biography section. "If you can eat it, it's not art. It's such a ridiculous idea. The person who checks you in and takes your name and insurance came over to me and actually said, to me, Why did you choose Mass. High Times: Tell me about your career as a poet. Im always sorry when I see that someone has tried out 11 new comedians and I wasnt there. Children played marbles on it. I like Mel Brooks, especially the 2,000-year-old-man records with Carl Reiner. There is only nervousness or death. And at the end of the book report you were supposed to tell people where they could get the book, and I would always say. Like, this is the smart one, this is the pretty one. LEBOWITZ: I drank my lifetime supply of alcohol and I took my lifetime supply of drugs between the ages of 15 and 19. I have a real aversion to machines. CLEMENTE: One of my favorite quotes of yours is when you said that youve never been in a relationship for longer than six months, because you didnt want to switch from boredom to contempt. High Times: Tell me about your writing habits. She thought it might be broadening to be banned from fashion shows and book-launching parties as well, and came up with a new name for her new, improved column, I Cover the Waterfront ." But in modern America - where, despite ostensible separation of church and state, the only thing that trumps the cross in terms of influence is the dollar sign - its possibly even worse. A pen. I wasnt an interesting behavior problem. As boring as reading it. They made me wait three hours to see the psychiatrist, and by that time I was starting to come down. Truckstop Women was one of my favorites. I was not surprised to see this. The title refers to her frustration with people so absorbed in their devices that they bump into you on the street. Then I moved to New York and switched to exotic foreign brands. It was like the myth where if a girl gets pregnant and takes the boy to court, if three other boys come into court and say that they had slept with her, they would all get off scot-free. Lebowitz: I dont really remember it. The building is still there. High Times: Did you ever get any bad reactions from your bad movie reviews? Oh, now I remember my favorite TV show from my childhood. The first thing I did was a movie review column, just bad movies, called Best of the Worst. There used to be a company called AIP, American International Picturesthey mostly made movies for drive-ins; some of them would come to Times Square. She cooks with flair. Lebowitz: I dont remember. She has published the novels Annie John (1985), Lucy (1990), The Autobiography of My Mother (1996), Mr. Potter (2002), and See Now Then (2013). I said, How could I help you choreograph a ballet? In the case of most good writers the writing is better than they are. CLEMENTE: I know you follow politics, and I always thought you would make an excellent mayor of New York. . And thats the reason why a person of a certain age wakes up early morning with a slight sense of anxiety. Fran readily agreed, as she was banned from most movie screenings because of her old column, Best of the Worst. And a piano player is sitting there as well. But this was the 60s, and there were all of these Harvard medical students there learning to be doctors, so all the doctors in the hospital had hair down to their shoulders and granny glasses. "Eric Adams I saw coming. I didnt have any adventures. High Times: If someone offered you an hour TV special that you could do anything with, what would you do? I was simply sent away to support them. Most families are a bunch of unattractive dopes. And I said, Well, I dont really care. When I was young, I liked romance. My mother and father thought that because I didnt go to college Id probably end up working in the five-and-ten. Her early fiction, much of which also appeared in that magazine, was collected in At the Bottom of the River (1983), a book that, like her Talk stories, announced her themes, her style, the uncanny purity of her prose. I saw the super once, just when I moved in, and I pointed out to him there was no ceiling in the bathroom. Their antidote to this was giving me about 22 Thorazines. The day my grounding was up and I was going to be allowed to go out on Saturday I got the flu and was sick for two weeks. And its also not a modern idea; dictators are an old-fashioned idea. Im happy none of it was ever published. I didnt lead a riot or set fire to the gym or do anything James Deanish. Biography She was born on October 27, 1950, in Morristown, New Jersey, USA, as Frances Ann Lebowitz. Theyre all right-wing nuts. Gauloises, English Ovals, any cigarette that looked like it would annoy people. What are those computer letters made of anyway? So every time I move, they have to be moved around, and I always fight with this guy when we do this, because he is a private librarian, which means, generally, he works for very rich people who never read their books. Lebowitz: No. Her first published work, movie and book reviews, appeared in that magazine when she was twenty years old. High Times: Do you remember the first funny thing you ever said? Lebowitz: A writer. LEBOWITZ: I dont cook. She is alive to the advantage in the irony that her literary heritage had not predicted her, exalted, brave, free. Thats what Id like to do. She is a presence; everything begins to happen when she talks. What you couldnt have at the time was male homosexuality, because the only books with male homosexuality were for male homosexuals. Because someone once told me that horses legs are actually like fingers and that their hooves are actually fingernails. But for I Cover the Waterfront, ordinarily I would go out to dinner with Marc the night beforeand when I say dinner, I mean some hamburger place or somethingand I would think of ideas, and then I would go home. I dont like to go out during the dayits too crowded. FRAN LEBOWITZ: The thing I did with Marty prior to this was a documentary film called Public Speaking. I had this aunt who had a book called The Night Visiters. The episode closes with Dear Someone, a poem by Deborah Landau. And you didnt have to think about money every second. Like everyone else, I never imagined Donald Trump would get this far. But then I found out it was fraud or something and I could go to jail, so I sent the money back and wrote to the people who sent it to me. Not at all, because I was going as a servant. People say, "All the things that we like about New York are gone.". In person and on the page, Kincaids is a literary voice. There may, in fact, still be no ceiling in the bathroom. Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. You can see in it the sentimentality of Jane Eyre. Im a horrible girlfriend. Thru Show Type: Comedy Box Office: 800-775-2000 www.auditoriumtheatre.org Fran Lebowitz is an American author and a public speaker. To me, it would be even a slower way to write. Did you write it at the last minute? This idea that people have to love and understand each other is absurd. Here's one guarantee in 2021: author Fran Lebowitz won't read this. And just think how fantastic New York would be. Id read five or six each time I went on. In fact, most of the offending language appears in the trailer alone. Even ones that preceded me. Once a girl was sitting on the window ledge smoking a cigarette and the matron walked in and the girl jumped out the window. LEBOWITZ: Yes, the night before. These four guys figured out how to lift New York out of this dire financial condition with the campaign I Love NY. I hated this thing. LEBOWITZ: I drove a cab. Three or four hours, okay, fine. High Times: What was your best subject in school? Lebowitz: Actually my main occupation in bed was book reports. Things that people will say to me, mostly, is that you shouldnt have all these books. The novel is reputedly about rich people who want to be artists, and artists who want to be rich people. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her shape or identity or essence. Next, Allan Gurganuss reading of his story It Had Wings, about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. Good Books Books To Read Acceptance Speech National Book Award Wordsmith Great Words Ex Libris Reading Material Women Humor More information . High Times Greats: Fran Lebowitz, Americas Funniest Femme Fatale. On the other hand, in the last few weeks, a couple of times I had dinner with people where I was the only American at the table, and I was yelled at for Donald Trump, like he was my fault. Then I started getting suspended from school for smoking. And I like cities. Then 50 questions, then 20 questions, then, finally, you said, Can you see Im trying to read?. My mother came from Dominica, and the thing about those little islands is that people from one island or the other dont like each other. This is another thing most people don't know about Toni: though she was incredibly hardworking, she was physically incredibly lazy. I was really very proud of that. I have to take the TV off the chair. I also have several writing habits necessitated by living in this apartment. EW cover star Bowen Yang stopped by Late Night With Seth Meyers . Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images. It's a drug. Every single one. I wrote an editorial about the matron and got kicked off the paper. They used the big Big Apple sign to lure these people who hate New Yorkbecause everyone hated New York thento New York. Because I was stupid. But I know a lot about them because its impossible not to. More information CLEMENTE: You were not good at math in school? In the past ten years, Lebowitz has been a regular guest on the television showLate Nightwith David Letterman. At the foot of his driveway in California, Jack Douglas had a sign that said Have you called these people? I also thought Oscar Levant was hilarious. Everybody else was. LEBOWITZ: Thats kind of backwards. CLEMENTE: I think in your life youve said no more than yes. People say, Well, what would you do with Times Square? And I always think, Gee, I dont know. Author Fran Lebowitz was a guest on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night and got herself in hot water when she spoke about President Trump. But this idea that people cannot kill each other? Lebowitz: Daddy. My mother taught me to say that so I would wake my father up instead of her. Why dont you just put some of your books in storage? And I always say the same thing: What if I told you I had four children? The effect of AIDS was like a war in a minute country. I have about ten thousand. Steve paid me excessive amounts of money to answer his telephone. CLEMENTE: And when you wrote these columns, how did you go about that? People always say pop culture. As if we have some high culture to distinguish it from. Lebowitz: Ive gotten some marriage proposals, but I dont think they were serious. Fran Lebowitz.the toast of the town; a brilliant writer who almost never writes. And I was really distraught. Fran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese Seek a Missing New York in 'Pretend It's a City' The Netflix series, featuring Lebowitz and directed by Scorsese, offers acerbic commentary and a sense of. Your email address will not be published. But all the girls I knew when I was young who had to workthere were rich girlsbut the ones who had to work were waitresses. I didnt want to have my consciousness expanded, I wanted to have it restricted. I saw the only job that was worse than writing. Fran Lebowitzs trademark is the sneer; she disapproves of virtually everything except sleep, cigarette smoking, and good furniture. It is boring and it is arithmetic. I am alternately very gregariousvery sociableand then very solitary. He said, Id like you to come and sit there while Im doing it. But what I cant be is monogamous. He had only the biggest movies, and he acted like I was affecting the box office. I just talked it while a speed freak typed it. Theres no reason why it has to be the way it is. This has never occurred. 817K views 3 years ago #amanpourpbs Known for her sardonic wit, social commentator Fran Lebowitz is a New York legend. In time, she put herself on another path. February 10, 2022 Fran Lebowitz doesn't care what you think, unless you're carrying a gun. Its very disconcerting to be in the basement of a night club at ten oclock in the morning reading poetry on a stage with a spotlight on you and no one there. The Fran Lebowitz Reader. I always was.FRAN LEBOWITZ. Fran Lebowitz slams NYC mayor Eric Adams. People ask me, Arent you interested in what theyre thinking? Lebowitz maintains that she wrote the columns with the intention of building a distinct collection of essays. Now I call up friends during the day and theyre writing. Im the worlds greatest daughter. I have to take all the junk off the desk and wash the desk. But why do these things have to be either/or? LEBOWITZ: I used to. I used to be able to do it without feeling it, but now Im in bed for three days afterward. To celebrate, we're republishing Glenn O'Brien's interview with the living legend from the August, 1978 print edition of High Times. Her voice is as musical as ever, high-pitched, the Anglo-Caribbean lilt beguiling. Fran Lebowitz has tough love for tough COVID-19 times. Everyone I know says, Fran is a Luddite, she doesnt have a computer. But I never had a typewriter. And I even have the Richie Rich home game. I like Thurber. And that is the only place I have those columns, because when I moved from my first horrible apartment, I had every Interview, ever. Too insubstantial. But perhaps it makes senseI grew up in a place where I saw the sea every day and, near the end of my life, Im living in a place where the water has run out. This is why I have problems with books, because you cannot do that the night before. Im a horrible girlfriend. With one suitcase? CLEMENTE: If you were going to run for office in New York, what would be your program, and what kind of qualifications would you declare you have? Fran Lebowitz : I cover the waterfront | Semantic Scholar Corpus ID: 228333786 Fran Lebowitz : I cover the waterfront Sandra J. Brant, Ingrid Sischy Published 2004 Art No Paper Link Available Save to Library Create Alert Cite Related Papers Sorry, we did not find any related papers. Her father, Harold Lebowitz, owned a furniture store and upholstery workshop. I think I will learn to type. I drove a taxi. Customers paid 99 an hour to listen to this garbage. The Great Gildersleeve. And people sent in money. I used to like this guy Milt Kamen. I met Marc in . Lebowitz: Ill never make it as a typist. Theres a huge gap in what people know, and theres no context for it anymore. Pretend It's a City. No, Im just intrigued by them, because, to me, theyre like talking animals. Alison Roman Dishes on Resy, Air Fryers, and Erewhon, The Gatekeepers of New Yorks Most Coveted Tables Tell All, Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd on the Joys of Being Extra, Alex Cooper Calls Her Daddy Mel Ottenberg at the Prada Show in Milan. So I have a state diploma. Why was your first apartment so horrible, apart from the roaches? So in New York we have zillions of different kinds of people, many of them hate each other, but violence based on that hatred is really uncommon here. It decimated not just artists but knowledge. Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson on Antigua in 1949. Its almost as good as being a mechanic. My first action on coming to New York was walking into Grove Press, plunking down the manuscript and demanding they publish it. When I first came here, meeting writers wasnt available to me; but now that I have met tons of those people, I wish I hadnt. Someone once told me they were sending me 14,000 roses and 12,000 Chinese concubines, but they never showed up. Needless to say, I'm a big fan and I'm telling everyone I know to watch it right away. October 3, 2022 | 2:24pm. I once read that deer are in the rodent family, and I still believe this. The only shows I remember when I was a little kid are Miss Francess Ding Dong School, which I watched because everyone made fun of me because my name was Frances. When I got to the hospital I was restrained. So he gave me enough Thorazine to put the entire college to sleep. They had very good writers, but they were these old, stout white men. And I feel this way more and more about the Republican candidates, certainly. I think I first came across it in one of the Bronts. This is not a middle-aged curmudgeonly attitude; I didnt like people that age even when I was that age. This will come as no surprise to anyone who is even vaguely familiar with her work, which, in the past four decades, has largely consisted of being Fran Lebowitz: a strong-willed, grumpy,. Im not a nervous person. General? And I said, Because I liked your clever ads.. CLEMENTE: How do you keep ten thousand books in order, do you have a personal librarian? The psychiatrist also had shoulder-length hair and Levis under his white coat, and I spent ten minutes arguing with him over whether Id taken acid or smoked pot. But, of course, Ive always been old at heart. Id rather have people shooting up in my apartment; at least I dont have to smell it. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior. - 48-page book (text in German) covering the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground in film and a discography, with many b&w and colour photos. I published it under the name of the headmaster who threw me out of school. I now dread the getting-it-typed part as much as I dread the writing part. He was the only person who took me seriously enough to ban me. And especially the ones that I knew. She has been a resident of Manhattan, New York since 1970. It was the most money Id ever made. I didnt do anything interesting. The book was released in a 1994 compilation entitled The Fran Lebowitz Reader along with Lebowitz's other bestseller Social Studies. CLEMENTE: One of my favorite things that you ever published was something that came out at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when the amount of nonsensical, prejudiced, ridiculous things being said was really extraordinary, and you came up with a few paragraphs that really nailed the situation. It was on West Fourth Street, between Jane and 12th. In conversation with Interview pal Francesco Clemente, Lebowitz here lays out her tongue-in-cheek platform for a mayoral run, declares the Donalds run done, and explains why New York is the greatest place in the world.