Talking with Fran Lebowitz – Still Biting After All These Years

When Fran Lebowitz arrived in New York City in 1969, she was determined to be a writer. But she also needed to work, which led her to become a cab driver – one of the few women in the profession at the time – an apartment cleaner, and a writer of erotica. Her professional writing career began when she was hired by a small magazine, "Changes," but initially to sell ads. She moved on to book and movie reviews. Her break came when Andy Warhol hired her to write a column, "I Cover the Waterfront," for Interview Magazine. This led to a stint at Mademoiselle, and her first best-seller of acerbic essay, "Metropolitan Life," and a second, "Social Studies."

But after the publication of a children's book in 1994, writer's block set in. She pivoted to becoming a television commentator and public speaker, which she continues to do to this day. Boston audiences can see Lebowitz on Thursday, March 9 at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. (For details, click here.)

More recently, Lebowitz has been the subject of two projects by her friend Martin Scorsese: a HBO 2010 documentary "Public Speaking," and a seven-part Netflix series "Pretend It's The City," released in 2021. Both projects introduced Lebowitz to a new generation of fans, who will likely be surprised that the acerbic humorist has no social media profile. She doesn't even own a computer or use the internet. And, yes, the die-hard New Yorker and occasional actress has her true Big Apple cred from her appearances on "Law & Order." A true iconoclast and wit, EDGE spoke to Lebowitz recently ahead of her Boston appearance.

EDGE: I will admit I was nervous about interviewing you until I watched "Pretend It's a City."

Fran Lebowitz: Well, you saw what a delightful woman I am.

EDGE: As a die-hard New Yorker, do you enjoy traveling outside of the city for shows?

Fran Lebowitz: No, but there are some places I go. I do like to be in Paris. Who doesn't like to be in Paris? It's not that I don't like to be in Athens. So, there are places I go to that I'm happy to be in. What I hate about traveling is the actual traveling. It's the getting there that is horrible. And that cannot be just me, because everyone I'm sure finds air travel awful.

EDGE: Is there something special about Boston to you?

Fran Lebowitz: Well, at least it's on the East coast and that there is no time change. That's something I love about Boston. Also, that Boston is the last date of my little tour. I also am grateful for that. I like Boston. It's a town I'm very familiar with. Boston's a place that I find very comfortable.

EDGE: How would you describe your stage show?

Fran Lebowitz: It's the same everywhere. Someone interviews me on the stage for 30 minutes, then I go to a podium, and I answer questions for one hour. I don't let the interviewer show me the questions or even discuss them with me. When I take the questions from the audience, I don't take cards up or anything. Someone just asks a question; I answer the question. It's different every place because people ask different questions.

EDGE: During your long career, you must have done a billion interviews. Is there a question are you tired of people asking you?

Fran Lebowitz: There's many by the way. The question that I get pretty frequently that I've never really understood, even though I've answered it. I get this question at least two or three times while touring – If you couldn't live in New York, where would you live? I always think, why couldn't I live in New York? That is such a crazy question. One of the reasons I live in New York is because they let me live in New York and believe me, there's many places I go where they would not let me live. One of the great things about New York is everyone can live in New York. I think we've proven that by the vast array of people we have here.

EDGE: Were you always opinionated and who first brought it to your attention?

Fran Lebowitz: The first people to bring that to my attention would be my parents, who consistently punished me for it. I was a child in the 1950s. This is almost an impossible thing to explain to people who are younger, which is now everyone, because in the 1950s childrearing was pretty uniform. It didn't matter whether you were rich, poor, black or white, basically all parents treated their children the same. We were treated like animals, by which I mean, we were thought of as beings that had to be tamed and told what to do 24 hours a day. We were all afraid of our parents. I don't mean my parents hit me. Some people's parents did, but basically, we just felt they were in charge.

Nothing was ours. It was theirs. They just told us what to do from morning until night. The one thing you were absolutely not supposed to do was have an opinion, because how would you know anything?

I was punished for this all the time. For instance, at large family gatherings, I very rarely was still at the table for dessert. My parents always thought I was fresh. I guess I was always like this, truthfully, lots of people are like this. It was certainly not encouraged in the 1950s and for children, and especially not for girls.

EDGE: Tell me more about how "Pretend It's a City" turned into a docuseries for Netflix.

Fran Lebowitz: Marty had a deal with Netflix, and he wanted to do this. He made a documentary about me for HBO about 12 years ago and as soon as he finished that he wanted to do another one, which I objected to. When he made his new deal with Netflix for "The Irishman," he put this in it. So, Netflix never came to me, it was all Marty. The thing that Marty said to me that I found very disconcerting when we started to do this was, "I don't know how to do this because I have never made a series before." Good thing I know how to do this, because someone has to know how to do it. Marty is, first of all, a great director and he figured out what the episodes were. That's what he meant. He'd never made a series with episodes before, but he knew how the story should go and I think he did a pretty great job.

EDGE: What was it like working for Martin Scorsese.

Fran Lebowitz: I work with him, obviously, but I don't collaborate with him very often. That's the other question. What's it like collaborating with Scorsese? He's a great movie director. I'm not even a movie director. I'm not even a bad movie director. So, I don't collaborate with Marty. With the HBO movie, I didn't have any contractual control. There was one thing in it that I wanted him to take out. It took me a year to get it out. For this show, I did have control in that sense if I didn't want something in it, it didn't happen. The great thing about Marty as a director is when he is shooting, it doesn't take very long, but it is months and months of editing. That is because Marty is never satisfied. He will still tell you know what is wrong with "Taxi Driver" and how he wishes he could go back and fix it. Marty is never done in his mind.

EDGE: I love that you were a taxi driver. As one of our most insightful social commentators, is that a job you miss?

Fran Lebowitz: There's no lazier person on the planet earth than me, so this was a perfect job for me. When I was a cab driver, it was in 1970 or 71, and New York was so dangerous then. I was a young girl, and it was dangerous for men to drive cabs, so the ideal that I would do it was crazy. Back then, cabs didn't have those plastic barriers and we all carried cash.

The city was teeming with junkies, all of whom wanted that cash, so it was quite a dangerous job. Everyone said, "You can't drive a cab, it's too dangerous." Luckily, nothing ever happened to me. I was very strict in who I chose to pick up. By law, you have to pick up everyone. I would never pick up a bunch of men and by a bunch, I mean two. I would pick up any man and he could be brandishing an assault rifle, but if he was with a woman, he got a ride. I had my own rules and nothing ever happened to me. I would listen to people talking, but the truth is that when people are talking in a cab, it is rarely riveting.

I was always stopped by the cops because they thought I stole the cab because there were no girls driving cabs. The stereotypical New York City cab driver, in the early seventies, was a working-class Jewish guy from the outer boroughs wearing a cap and smoking a cigar and yelling about former Mayor John Lindsay. I was distinctly not that person. I don't remember any fascinating conversations that's because they probably weren't very memorable.

Fran Lebowitz appears on Thursday, March 9 at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. (For details, click here.)