{"id":157690,"date":"2021-01-19T05:44:19","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T02:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/fran-lebowitz-has-tough-love-for-tough-covid-19-times\/"},"modified":"2021-01-19T05:44:19","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T02:44:19","slug":"fran-lebowitz-has-tough-love-for-tough-covid-19-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/fran-lebowitz-has-tough-love-for-tough-covid-19-times\/","title":{"rendered":"#Fran Lebowitz has tough love for tough COVID-19 times"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Fran Lebowitz has tough love for tough COVID-19 times<\/strong>”
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In the earliest days of the lockdown, with New York City suddenly quiet, empty and experiencing a kind of terror not known since September 11th, one of our most iconic inhabitants spoke.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFran Lebowitz is Never Leaving New York,\u201d<\/a> ran the headline in \u2014 where else? \u2014 The New Yorker. \u00adLebowitz, now 70, served up her state of the city \u2014 beating Jerry Seinfeld by four months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor at least 20 years, I have been dreaming of the time when there were no tourists in Times Square,\u201d she said. \u201cNow there are no tourists in Times Square, but, of course, there\u2019s no one in Times Square.\u201d (She also spat her contempt for a friend who \u201cfled to Montana.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly one year into quarantine, with New York City emptier and quieter than ever, we have Fran Lebowitz \u2014 directed by that other great New Yorker, Martin Scorsese \u2014 on Netflix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She gripes and opines and truly, it is quite the tonic. Such are the times that hearing this particular New Yorker grouse in the quotidian way only she can is the most comforting and hilarious thing going. (The series<\/a> title comes from Lebowitz\u2019s common rebuke to tourists ignoring actual New Yorkers trying to get somewhere: \u201cPretend it\u2019s a city!\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t get our promised vaccine shots, our restaurants are dying by the minute, theater is dead and we are governed by two self-regarding incompetents, but Fran Lebowitz is here to distill and articulate the ever-abiding, specific rage of the New Yorker. Or, as she puts it, \u201cThe anger is, I have no power but I am filled with opinions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aren\u2019t we all?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lebowitz, a writer famous for not having written in decades, talks to Scorsese prepandemic from a clubby room at The Players Club on Gramercy Park, in conversation with fans and at the Queens Museum, where she walks around a small-scale replica of the city and offers a tossed-off take on Robert Moses: \u201cBest as a miniaturist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over seven half-hour episodes, Lebowitz indulges in what she calls \u201cthe pleasure of observation.\u201d She is a throwback to the 1970s, when charismatic, witty intellectuals and writers were commonplace on TV \u2014 daytime and late night \u2014 household names on par with athletes and movie stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She has been compared to a modern-day Dorothy Parker, albeit one who started smoking at 12, never graduated high school, had a close friendship with Charles Mingus, and has never turned down a party invite \u2014 except that one time she was invited to a very small, intimate dinner party for Leni Riefenstahl. (To the host, in sum and substance: \u201cAre you out of your mind?!\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lebowitz is a self-invention, the kind that could only be born and cultivated here. How does a writer who doesn\u2019t write dress in Savile Row bespoke and live in a reportedly $3 million Chelsea apartment? We don\u2019t know, yet such vagaries add to her mystique.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lebowitz is the last of a dying breed, the surly New Yorker so sure she\u2019s the smartest person in the room (she is), filled with contempt for those who don\u2019t agree with her or can\u2019t keep up or have come to New York for all the wrong reasons and want to make it clean, nice, safe. Fran Lebowitz, in the grand tradition of New Yorkers who do not give a f\u2013k, has no time for safe spaces or trigger warnings or political correctness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At one point, when Lebowitz casually uses the phrase \u201cpimp culture,\u201d it\u2019s almost shocking. Then you think: Wait, should I be shocked? Aren\u2019t we all too easily shocked and offended these days?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fran Lebowitz, in this incredibly fraught and traumatic moment, gives us permission to laugh. She is, as ever, rude, condescending, judgmental and can turn anything and anyone \u2014 no sacred cows for her \u2014 into a punchline. She doesn\u2019t care if she hurts your feelings. There\u2019s no one you\u2019d rather sit next to at a dinner party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Bloomberg remaking Times Square into a lounge for tourists: \u201cYou know what I hate about New York? There\u2019s not enough places to lay down in the middle of Times Square.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

What she told a friend\u2019s daughter, wary of moving back due to the cost of living here: \u201cLet me tell you something: No one can afford to live in New York. No one can afford to live in New York. Yet 8 million people do. How do we do this? We don\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On staying too long in her beautiful yet falling-down Midtown apartment: \u201c[It\u2019s like] an abusive husband \u2014 yes, he beats me up, but he\u2019s so handsome.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On never leaving: \u201cWhen people say, \u2018Why do you live in New York?\u2019 you really can\u2019t answer them \u2014 except you know that you have contempt for people who don\u2019t have the guts to do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only foreshadowing \u2014 no less poignant for being unintentional \u2014 comes as Lebowitz looks down at the tiny replica of New York, missing only one thing: people. Must be nice to see the city so calm, she is asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city\u2019s calm \u2019cause there\u2019s no one in it,\u201d she replies. \u201cNew York City this quiet? Something happ<\/a>ened.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Fran Lebowitz has tough love for tough COVID-19 times” In the earliest days of the lockdown, with New York City suddenly quiet, empty and experiencing a kind of terror not known since September 11th, one of our most iconic inhabitants spoke.\u00a0 \u201cFran Lebowitz is Never Leaving New York,\u201d ran the headline in \u2014 where else?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":157691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/fran-lebowitz-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[89901,70344,88023,2004,1377],"class_list":["post-157690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-1-18-21","tag-coronavirus-in-ny","tag-fran-lebowitz","tag-martin-scorsese","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}