"Pretend It's a City" on Netflix

If you were something less than a writer but more than a stand-up comedian you'd be Fran Lebowitz. 

Lebowitz has spent decades famously NOT writing and NOT performing stand up comedy but she's somehow managed to have a long career as a professional raconteur. She wrote two brilliant books of essays in the late 1970s and early 1980s (her book Metropolitan Life is one of the funniest things I've ever read) but since then she's made a career just talking in public as a professional crank.

Lots of people like to talk but few enjoyed being listened to more than Fran Lebowitz. 

Lebowitz is full of opinions about everything and is extremely funny. She "performs" i.e. talks at numerous staged events, on TV, and now on Netflix. She loves to talk about everything and anything but her main subject, the one she's most expert on, is New York City itself.

Her new documentary series is called Pretend It's a City, a seven part look at what's happened to NYC in the last several decades since Lebowitz moved here in the 1970s (it was shot before COVID-19 so it's what you might call a "normal times" look at the city). Her subjects are the evolution of NYC over the years, including episodes devoted to how life in the city is impacted culture, transportation, money, health, history, and libraries. 

It's a holistic look at a city that's almost impossible to ever fully understand. 

The series just dropped on Netflix and I haven't watched it yet but it appears to mainly involve Lebowitz walking around the city, speaking at recorded live events, and chatting with her sidekick, some guy named ... Martin Scorsese (and yes, he directed it). 

I can't wait to see it! Listen to her interview about on NPR here.