The Refreshing Negativity Of Fran Lebowitz And Netflix’s ‘Pretend It’s A City’
While Lebowitz doesn't even own a computer, she is filled with enough hot takes to fuel an entire internet by herself - and it'd be much warmer than this one.
Taking a step back, Pretend It’s A City has to have one of the least appealing log-lines of a Netflix show in recent history (or, at least, it’s tied with its polar opposite, Emily In Paris): a 70-year-old wealthy New Yorker is given writ to complain about her city, as well as society and culture at large.
But Fran Lebowitz’s relentless criticisms are affirming, even in an era where hostility is a defining characteristic of social media, which favours opinions that generate brash, “engaged” conversations.
The seven-part Netflix series, directed by longtime friend Martin Scorsese, opens with the writer deriding New Yorkers so addicted to their phones they can’t walk properly. Lebowitz is, notoriously, a staunch Luddite, with no interest in a typewriter or microwave, let alone an iPhone.
But foremost, she’s a synecdoche for ‘New York’, a crotchety, charming intellectual who came to prominence in the ’70s but, unlike Patti Smith or other figures of the time and place, never left.
She also (almost) never writes, having had “writer’s blockade” since the ’90s — instead, she supports herself mostly via talks and appearances. As Lebowitz said in Scorsese’s 2010 doco on her, Public Speaking, “It’s what I wanted my entire life. People asking me my opinion, and people not allowed to interrupt.”
That’s more or less what Pretend It’s A City does. The anecdotes and rants are divided into seven episodes, guided by loose topics such as health, technology, transport, and money, and are punctuated with shots of the city and incredulous laughter from Scorsese, or other interviewers Alec Baldwin, Olivia Wilde and Spike Lee.
Her opinions are bold, unmoving, and endless. We see audiences at events throw any topic at her just to hear how she’ll lob back a criticism: whatever she says, it always garners laughter.
Each is given with an idiosyncratic rhythm: you can tell Lebowitz is really enjoying herself when she riles herself up with an open mouthed smile or licks her lips, savouring her own opinion.
While Lebowitz’s wit is hard to match, her cadence is easily imitated. On Instagram, writer Mike DiCenzo is offering Lebowitz’s ‘opinion’ on anything his Instagram followers throw at him, from crystals to Mr. Ed (“Can we just call him Ed? He’s a horse. Okay? Do we have to address him so formally?”).
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Lebowitz has enough hot takes to power an internet of her own: “Most writers who love to write are terrible writers.” ‘Jews don’t eat bacon because they love punishment’. “I have no guilty pleasures, because pleasure never makes me feel guilty.” ‘I hate sports’ (which Spike Lee can’t help but argue against, in one of the show’s funniest segments). “Nothing is better for a city than a dense population of angry homosexuals.”
“The anger is, I have no power,” she explains in Pretend It’s A City. “But I’m filled with opinions.”
But that anger never comes across as purely contrarian or iconoclastic. Where contemporary thinkers/writers/tweeters/intellectual grifters may be (unconsciously or otherwise) pushed into incendiary opinions to gain attention or find an audience, Lebowitz’s opinions, no matter how ridiculous, are always guided by her belief of what could make a less terrible world.
“I think complain is mild; sometimes I get enraged by things that have happened,” she told Vogue, when asked about the documentary’s blend of reverence and disdain for New York.”…If you don’t love something, you don’t care that much if people are ruining it.”
The love for New York is immediately clear in Pretend It’s A City. Scorsese and Lebowitz are united by it, and the writer’s laments about the old New York or working as a cab driver are matched with romantic shots of the city and archival footage.
fran lebowitz has had the kind of career that you just can’t have anymore: write two (kinda short) books about your gripes, spend the next 40 years absolutely vibing, show up at 92Y every once in a while to talk shit. a dream life!!
— Olivia Craighead (@oliviacraighead) January 10, 2021
Cameras or none, Lebowitz trudging through pedestrians or looking impatient while waiting to cross the street is a love letter to New York — a persistence to stay and treasure the charms that remain, and even create a sense of unity within it. The series gets its title from Lebowitz’s request the pedestrians using their phones while walking simply “pretend it’s a city — where there are other people”.
Her opinions, of course, don’t always land. Lebowitz is a little too romantic at times: comments about how 20somethings will always find a way to live in NYC despite its ever-rising costs feel a bit rich from someone who came-of-age during ’70s rent control.
Still, it’s hard to not get swept up in the nostalgia, especially as the New York of Pretend It’s A City barely exists right now.
Filmed prior to COVID-19, the documentary is a love letter to an urban life that’s compromised right now, with the few merits Lebowitz lists off (restaurants, book stores, cultural institutions) either temporarily closed or gone for good.
Most of all, though, it’s a delight to step back not into a pre-COVID city, but a pre-COVID mindset. The meandering conversations that make up Pretend It’s A City are fuelled by a leisurely interest in the world.
With the onslaught of outrage-inspiring events and global traumas, we are collectively zapped of curiosity but for seven half-an-hour episodes, we can sit back and watch a master at work.
Pretend It’s A City is available on Netflix.
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee and freelancer who has written for The Guardian, The Big Issue and more. He’s on Twitter.