"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. 

Gotta Love New Yorkers

You can't love a city unless you love its people -- the people who created it, the people who maintain it, the people who give it its vitality, from the folks who pick up the city's trash, teach in its schools, drive its buses and cabs and trains, police its streets, build its economy, help it to grown, preserve and improve its architecture and greenery, to the people who give it cultural vitality -- the characters who help to define the city's character. 

To say that New York City has produced some interesting characters over the centuries would be an epic understatement. But reading about some NYC characters, a couple of whom recently passed, a couple who are still with us but in their winter years. I blogged in the past about some of the NYC greats, the characters who contributed to its cultural and intellectual life, and it's a tradition I like to uphold. So here are a few more great NYC characters, NYC greats, both past and present, that we should appreciate:

- There's the actor Charles Kimbrough who recently died at the age of 86. Most people will remember him for the decade he spent playing the pompous anchor Murphy Brown. But he was really a man of the stage and he originated roles on Broadway in two of Stephen Sondheim's best musicals -- Company in 1970 and Sunday in the Park with George in 1985. What an incredible acting legacy!

- There was the movie producer Ed Pressman who recently died at the age of 79. A native New Yorker he produced classics like Badlands, Wall Street, Bad Lieutenant, Reversal of Fortune, and American Psycho. He was one of the last big-shot, svengali producers that don't really exist anymore, and he made great movies about people instead of superheroes. A great cinematic legacy.

- Then there's Sonja Wagner. Who's she? She's a classic NYC story -- a bored housewife from Kansas who escaped to our fair city in the last 1970s and built a successful if under-the-radar career as an artist. She worked for adult mags while also creating her own art, and she found a loft that became an epicenter for struggling and successful artists to meet, party, network, and get into chicanery. Sonja is 85 now and terminally ill -- but she's kind of New Yorker who made this city her own and contributed to its culture in great ways.

- And there's always Fran Lebowitz. Look, what more can I say about this fount of NYC wisdom that hasn't already been said more often and better by others -- especially Fran herself? Fran is an NYC treasure, an institution unto herself. If I had to say what it is I love about Fran is that, even though she's a public intellectual, if that she's focuses on reality and not pretentiousness. She focuses on the real issues, not the nonsense. Perfect example, as she says in her latest interview, is that we should stop worrying or caring about the dopey-ness of people like the Kardashians and more about the threat that someone like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy poses. Smart lady, a great New Yorker. 

Scorsese & Lebowitz Talk "After Hours"

If you love the movies of Martin Scorsese and the comedy of Fran Lebowitz, then check out their conversation from 2022 about what might be Marty's least known NYC movie -- After Hours from 1985 (I blogged about it very briefly in 2008).

Even hardcore Scorsese fans might have missed this one -- unlike his crime movies or period pieces, this is a wacky surreal comedy about a guy who gets lost in Soho at night because of some broad.

That's it, that's the movie.

But it's still worth seeing -- even though you should expect it to be a typical Scorsese movies. I love it, not only because it's a Scorsese movie or an NYC movie but because it's a night movie, a movie set in world of NYC all its own.

As I said in my 2008 post, Mary made this movie after his early Golden Age (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) and before his platinum age (Goodfellas, The Departed, etc.). He had just made King of Comedy which was a big flop and he was on the outs with the big studios -- so he made this little independent movie (without regular star Robert De Niro) to show that he was still in the game, still a great talent.

And the rest his movie history. He ended up winning Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for this and soon it was onto The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, etc. 

After Hours might not be Scorsese's best or most beloved movie, but it's certainly one of his best NYC movies and it's the movie that saved his career. 

Gotta Love New Yorkers

New Yorkers are a such a diverse and crazy bunch that calling anyone the "quintessential" or "ultimate" New Yorker is a quixotic exercise in futility. If you live here, and certainly if you've lived here all or most of your life, you are a salt-of-the-earth New Yorker full stop. 

Yet many still try. Many still try to affix this adjective to some of our citizens.

The most famous example, at the moment, is Fran Lebowitz. I've been watching her hilarious if also very skewed show Pretend It's a City on Netflix (already blogged about it) and, while she's brilliant, Fran's NYC is that of a literary affluent type, a denizen of Manhattan and cocktail parties and cultural institutions. She's certainly a great New Yorker but not the ultimate New Yorker -- just one of a bunch.

Another ultimate New Yorker would be a guy liked Ricky Powell who recently died. He spent years as a photographer for bands in the city, most famously for the Beastie Boys in the late 1980s and early 1990s as they were rising to fame. He knew Warhol, Basquiat, even a young Cindy Crawford, and he photographed them all. He was a New Yorker of the streets and downtown and the funky culture -- another one of the bunch.

But perhaps the ultimate of ultimate of New Yorkers are the mayors. For better or worse they define the id and intellect of the city -- at least for their times in office. Right now a whole bunch of New Yorkers are running for the job and, starting on January 1, 2022, one of them will wear the mantel of defining the city and trying to manage it. You've gotta love anyone whole looks at a city that's bigger and richer and more complex than most countries and says, "Yeah, let me run it!" 

See? New Yorkers are so varied, so all over the place, so different, than no one person can embody the city. But hey, it's fun to try!

Fran Lebowitz Talks NYC During the Holidays on "The Tonight Show"