The wit of a maverick woman comedian may seem an unlikely subject for film director Martin Scorsese. The educated Association Test would rather come up with "the Mafia," "urban violence," "macho macho miserables," than a very literate woman comic.
But that's where Fran Lebowitz comes in. Both in her abandoned writing career and in her current standup/sitdown comedy performances she strikes a fighter's pose to battle against the absurdities and dangers of contemporary city life. Especially NYC.
For there is violence in civilized behaviour as well as in Scorses's mean streets, alleys and boxing rings. Indeed that is what drew him to film Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence - the privileged woman's novel that he and Lebowitz discuss in Episode 2.
Episode 1
"Pretend it's a city," Lebowitz declares and the phrase sticks as the series title. We know NYC is a city so what's there to 'pretend'? Well, it's supposed to be a city but is it? Beyond the streets and population figures, is it really a city? Or its an arena for thoughtless, uncivilized, dangerous, insensitive mis-conduct. The urban behaviour Lebowitz satirizes here points to the latter. "Speaking of people in the street," does it bother you that..." an audience member asks. "Yes," snaps Fran. People in the street do bother her. They are unthinking, self-absorbed, confident in their own invulnerability and completely careless about others. A city should be a community, not a collision of dangerous destructive atoms. Absent that, we can only pretend it's a city. Only once we acknowledge our mutual responsibilities will we have the community the true city connotes. Scorsese's setting for the comedian's riffs is telling. From the street symphonic beginning to the big bluesy end - and in between - the music romanticizes The Big Apple. This is the mythic New York of popular lore. The satirist's reality will play against that. Fran's routines, whether onstage or in interview, are intercut with two series of shots of her moving through the streets. In one: with Scorsese and the photographer unseen, she strides alone - a solid dark-cloaked figure cutting through the heedless crowds. The other is a dramatic contrast: she towers over a miniature model of the sprawling metropolis. It's a brilliant visual representation of her perception - detached from the street scene, towering over it, rendering physical the moral detachment and judging the artist will bring to bear. "Do you tend to look down on people?" Scorsese asks. Of course she does, when she finds their failing in humanity. She is enraged that she has no power to change them. "The only person in the city looking where she's going is me." A young man steering his bicycle with his elbows while texting on his phone and eating a pizza almost hits her in a crosswalk. She is continually besieged by tourists asking direction, obstructing her movement, engrossed in their cellphones, maddeningly selfish. Someone smashed her windshield to steal an apple and a 50-cent pack of cigarettes - and she accepts blame for the temptation. Responsibility is what's pretended to in this city. Lebowitz exults in being out of step. Hence her advice to Robert Stigwood: "A musical about Eva Peron? Don't do it!" He did it - and earned "a million a minute." Meanwhile, buildings like the Mercer Center simply collapse into dust by their neglect. The city remains a challenge. Nothing is permanent there, not even the $40-million concrete couches the mayor ordered for Times Square. Nor all the benches, planters, trinkets, that make the city "look like my grandmother's apartment." This heavy whimsey is another way New York City fails itself. So, too, it's expensiveness: "No-one can afford to live in New York. Yet 80 million do? How? We don't know.' But move there anyway. "You will do enough things to live here." And even better: "You'll have contempt for the people who don't have the guts to do it."
Episode 1
"Pretend it's a city," Lebowitz declares and the phrase sticks as the series title. We know NYC is a city so what's there to 'pretend'? Well, it's supposed to be a city but is it? Beyond the streets and population figures, is it really a city? Or its an arena for thoughtless, uncivilized, dangerous, insensitive mis-conduct. The urban behaviour Lebowitz satirizes here points to the latter. "Speaking of people in the street," does it bother you that..." an audience member asks. "Yes," snaps Fran. People in the street do bother her. They are unthinking, self-absorbed, confident in their own invulnerability and completely careless about others. A city should be a community, not a collision of dangerous destructive atoms. Absent that, we can only pretend it's a city. Only once we acknowledge our mutual responsibilities will we have the community the true city connotes. Scorsese's setting for the comedian's riffs is telling. From the street symphonic beginning to the big bluesy end - and in between - the music romanticizes The Big Apple. This is the mythic New York of popular lore. The satirist's reality will play against that. Fran's routines, whether onstage or in interview, are intercut with two series of shots of her moving through the streets. In one: with Scorsese and the photographer unseen, she strides alone - a solid dark-cloaked figure cutting through the heedless crowds. The other is a dramatic contrast: she towers over a miniature model of the sprawling metropolis. It's a brilliant visual representation of her perception - detached from the street scene, towering over it, rendering physical the moral detachment and judging the artist will bring to bear. "Do you tend to look down on people?" Scorsese asks. Of course she does, when she finds their failing in humanity. She is enraged that she has no power to change them. "The only person in the city looking where she's going is me." A young man steering his bicycle with his elbows while texting on his phone and eating a pizza almost hits her in a crosswalk. She is continually besieged by tourists asking direction, obstructing her movement, engrossed in their cellphones, maddeningly selfish. Someone smashed her windshield to steal an apple and a 50-cent pack of cigarettes - and she accepts blame for the temptation. Responsibility is what's pretended to in this city. Lebowitz exults in being out of step. Hence her advice to Robert Stigwood: "A musical about Eva Peron? Don't do it!" He did it - and earned "a million a minute." Meanwhile, buildings like the Mercer Center simply collapse into dust by their neglect. The city remains a challenge. Nothing is permanent there, not even the $40-million concrete couches the mayor ordered for Times Square. Nor all the benches, planters, trinkets, that make the city "look like my grandmother's apartment." This heavy whimsey is another way New York City fails itself. So, too, it's expensiveness: "No-one can afford to live in New York. Yet 80 million do? How? We don't know.' But move there anyway. "You will do enough things to live here." And even better: "You'll have contempt for the people who don't have the guts to do it."