Scorsese makes New York talk through Fran Lebowitz

NETFLIX – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

Officially presented as a seven part documentary (approximately half an hour each) about Manhattan, Pretend It’s a City is in fact a portrait of the city seen through the rather vitriolic and highly singular gaze of Fran Lebowitz, shot just before the onset of the health crisis, by his friend Martin Scorsese.

We no longer present the filmmaker but, in the eyes of a large part of the non-American and, more largely non-English-speaking audience, Fran Lebowitz (born in 1950) is probably an unknown – unless you have already seen Public Speaking (2010), the long documentary that Scorsese himself devoted to it, or to look at New York urban culture from the 1970s to the present.

Lebowitz is the author of two collections of essays and press articles, Metropolitan Life (Dutton, 1978) and Social Studies (Random House, 1981), jointly republished in The Fran Lebowitz Reader in 1994, the year that saw the publication of a children’s book. Otherwise Fran Lebowitz is best known for his endless “Write block” than for his writings themselves.

But the one who was close to Andy Warhol (without either of them ever being appreciated) and chronicled in his magazine Interview willingly, at numerous conferences and public interventions or as a frequent guest of late shows of American television where his humor, his sharp, misguided projections and taking the opposite view of almost everything are a hit.

Monologue

Sometimes presented as a “Humorist” or even a “Cultural satirist”, Fran Lebowitz pays little attention to the words and opinions of others and agrees that the monologue suits him perfectly. This sort of cultural stand-up actress launches bursts of little phrases that often hit the mark, a bit like the late Karl Lagerfeld – whom she also recalls by her vocal flow and the inflexible uniformity of her dress.

While Martin Scorsese talked about jazz about Fran Lebowitz’s way of catching a theme and making it a brilliant solo (because his art of digression is remarkable), it’s blatant. that the latter does not gladly return the ball. Besides, Scorsese is almost mute (even if he scoffs at almost every sentence of his friend) and some questions are asked by a second interlocutor.

The title of Pretend It’s a City (“Act as if it were a city”) is the remark that Fran Lebowitz addresses to those who, in the street, prevent him from moving around as he pleases and bump into him while their noses are on the their cell phone screen. (Recurring subject: the disgust of this die-hard technology bitch, who has no computer, no Internet, no cell phone, not even a typewriter.)

Fran Lebowitz’s coruscating and poignant intelligence, her interlude, and her memory are certainly a valuable testament to New York even as her portrayal of it ends up being overshadowed by this highly narcissistic discourse. One might also think that these some three and a half hours of monologue are excessive. But rest assured: Fran Lebowitz’s jerky, ultra-fast speed (comparable to Scorsese’s) saves half the time it would have taken for anyone else to say the same thing.

–