LEBOWITZ: Yes. Fran Lebowitz: I cover the waterfront. LEBOWITZ: When I move, I do. When I got to the hospital I was restrained. The 70-year-old . So just think, if there were, say, only 10 percent of the hotels that exist now, there would be all these apartments for people who live in New York, as opposed to people visiting New York. I picked up two famous people: one was Dr. Joyce Brothers, who undertipped me, and one was Rod Steiger. It was minute. First of all, there were a zillion bad jobs. Your friends who dont write will not stay on the phone with you, because they have other real things they want to do. But you need more room to do that. They were terrible. And you would have cash at the end of the day. CLEMENTE: One of my favorite quotes of yours is when you said that youve never been in a relationship for longer than six months, because you didnt want to switch from boredom to contempt. When I moved out nine years later, there was no ceiling in the bathroom. So he wasnt a surprise to me. She said theyd take one pack out and then move the rest up. Lebowitz: No. Fran Lebowitz kicks off her career working for a small magazine, "Changes" at the age of 21 where she sold advertising space, then wrote book and movie reviews and was hired as a columnist for "Interview" by Andy Warhol where she wrote a column called "I Cover the Waterfront." Because I could not possibly be in a relationship now for more than six days. All-around cultural oracle Fran Lebowitz really began her ascent to that pulpit here at Interview, in 1972, writing a wonderful column about terrible movies, and then covering the waterfront, as she called it: opining on sundry topics, giving advice, ranting, reflecting, and hooking the reading world (such as it is) on that voicethat saucy, At my high school they employed a woman known as the matron whose sole job was to go into the girls bathrooms and catch people smoking. Fran took on modern manners, aesthetics and culture the way William Buckley takes on liberalism. Initially, she covered "Best of the Worst Movies," but later changed the name of her column to "I Cover the . More information I didnt know how to type, Marc knew how to type. Its very disconcerting to be in the basement of a night club at ten oclock in the morning reading poetry on a stage with a spotlight on you and no one there. Things that people will say to me, mostly, is that you shouldnt have all these books. I have a number of bookcases, big wooden bookcases with glass doors; most of them are 19th century. I used to be able to do it without feeling it, but now Im in bed for three days afterward. Homesicknessthis kind of interrupted loveis a big element in your work. Thats really interesting. This must be about 15 years ago. Bloomberg was always bragging how many hotels were being builtI remember seeing him on the news, saying, And this is the nine millionth hotel in Queens. Queens! And you know what we have enough of? More at IMDbPro Contact info Agent info Resume Born October 27, 1950 Add to list Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy 1 win & 3 nominations total One of the movies was The Thing with Two Heads, starring Ray Milland and Rosie Grier. When I first came here, meeting writers wasnt available to me; but now that I have met tons of those people, I wish I hadnt. I have to take all the junk off the desk and wash the desk. I really wanted someone to save me. Theres no reason why it has to be the way it is. I dont remember who published it. was he fascinating? Fran Lebowitz, ace epigrammatist, is further a first-rate conversationalist, a hall-of-fame bibliomaniac, a chronic self-caricaturist, a gal-about-town, the soul of the city, a snappish social . At the age of. Lebowitz: I had a parakeet when I was four called Polka Dotty, and I killed Polka Dotty by eating its food. "Pretend it's a citywhere there are other people ," she pleads. Im a great relative. I have to move the lamp to the desk. I always was.FRAN LEBOWITZ. CLEMENTE: How do you keep ten thousand books in order, do you have a personal librarian? LEBOWITZ: Yes, the night before. by Anonymous: reply 136: January 15, 2021 3:23 AM: I adore her. CLEMENTE: So everything that you write is written by hand? When I was really young I wanted to be a toll taker because I thought they kept the money. Now, even if you have money, you can have a horrible apartment. Alison Roman Dishes on Resy, Air Fryers, and Erewhon, The Gatekeepers of New Yorks Most Coveted Tables Tell All, Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd on the Joys of Being Extra, Alex Cooper Calls Her Daddy Mel Ottenberg at the Prada Show in Milan. . Even ones that preceded me. Good Books Books To Read Acceptance Speech National Book Award Wordsmith Great Words Ex Libris Reading Material Women Humor More information . Because you could always get shifts in a restaurant. In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself. People seem to think there is some connection between talking and writing, but I love to talk and if there were some connection between the two of them I would be the most prolific writer in the history of the world. High Times: Tell me about your writing habits. They told you what to write. And especially the ones that I knew. High Times: Tell me about your career as a poet. The title song was sung by a truck. That tends to upset people. Okay? Lebowitz discoursed without pause for two hours, chain-smoking all the while. It was charity really. Ill also invent things, like I have to clean the entire apartment before I write. For numerous reasons. To me, it would be even a slower way to write. Fran rose to her now-legend status starting at Interview magazine where she wrote a column called "I Cover the Waterfront," She is also the author of two books, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, and the world awaits further writings. I was simply sent away to support them. There is only nervousness or death. It is boring and it is arithmetic. I have a double policy, which would also solve immigration: I would stand at the border of New York City and I would say, You can come here to live, but you cant come here to visit. If youre coming here, you better be immigrating. I dont want them to come. On the Boston University phone you dialed N-E-E-D and a concerned Jewish graduate student came over and took me to Mass. But they didnt have any long-term plan in mind. If I lived in another country, like a country that was, say, an enemy of the United States, I would be more amused than I am. After nearly half a century as a journalist, author, social critic and "talker," the quintessential. Which, in my opinion, was: What is culture without gay people? It was the most money Id ever made. High Times: Have you gotten any marriage proposals? LEBOWITZ: I drank my lifetime supply of alcohol and I took my lifetime supply of drugs between the ages of 15 and 19. I hate money. And sometimes I went on at ten oclock in the morning and read to the guy sweeping up from the night before. AS NEW.' Known for her white shirts and blue Levis jeans, Fran Lebowitz was named one of the most stylish women by 'Vanity Fair's 68th Annual International Best Dressed List in 2007. My parents did. It would be as if the letters were sitting there, or the words, smoking cigarettes, staring at you, as if to say, Well? - 48-page book (text in German) covering the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground in film and a discography, with many b&w and colour photos. Fran Lebowitz was born on 27 October 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey, USA. Then 50 questions, then 20 questions, then, finally, you said, Can you see Im trying to read?. I also wrote plays for my cousins to perform at various family gatherings. But you could live in New York. In "Pretend It's A City," Lebowitz talks about many subjects, including growing up in New Jersey with parents who raised her to be a wife and mother, what's happened to New York City since she. No, Im just intrigued by them, because, to me, theyre like talking animals. Everyone was paid in cash. Full-time Im watching daytime TV., The following interview took place one afternoon in an apartment overlooking the East River. Customers paid 99 an hour to listen to this garbage. But I thought it was a job. We didnt live well. Lebowitz: Ive had a number of interesting, colorful jobs. I rolled my own cigarettes. The first sentence of one of those books was, It was autumn in New York; you could tell it was autumn because chorus boys all over town were losing their leaves. I thought that was the most hilarious thing Id ever read. Holding a grudge is the modern equivalent of having standards. At that point one of the boys I was with realized I was feeling better and got really mad at me for insisting on going to the hospital, and he screamed at me, which made me perfectly crazy by the time I got to see the psychiatrist. CLEMENTE: The blood pressure will drop. It actually works here. She rented a theater and sat on stage and called people up and didnt tell them. Because if people dont hold grudges, it means they just dont care what people do. Why is that? And the truth is that most families have no smart ones and no pretty ones. I cant believe anyone has ever made a ballet. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her shape or identity or essence. Next, Allan Gurganuss reading of his story It Had Wings, about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. It was like watching children at a birthday party. It was The Modern Farmer. What are they going to possibly say thats of interest? So they would talk to me. Unless they die. At the beginning, every day, you asked me a hundred questions about myself. Im a horrible girlfriend. I went to bed earlier than anyone in the world. Lebowitz: My writing habits are basically nonwriting habits. I loved dressing up and going out. . A pen goes exactly at your speed, whereas that machine jumps. Because it doesnt agitate against human nature. But in modern America - where, despite ostensible separation of church and state, the only thing that trumps the cross in terms of influence is the dollar sign - its possibly even worse. But I will go see any comedian. I couldnt imagine knowing someone who was that funny. Like everyone else, I never imagined Donald Trump would get this far. I hated the we. I got up every morning, brushed my teeth and went to the Village Vanguard and read poetry. Glenn OBriens interview with the iconic Fran Lebowitz from the August, 1978 issue of High Times magazine. The first time I ever came to New York by myself, I snuck to New York on a bus and bought a pair of bongo drums with all the money Id saved my whole life, which was $12. . After I moved to New York, I modeled for people like Steven Meisel. He was the only person who took me seriously enough to ban me. Children played marbles on it. But now, as Ive grown up, all my friends have developed much more mature writing habits. The arrival of my youngest brother had plunged us into a kind of poverty wed never known. I always was. At the foot of his driveway in California, Jack Douglas had a sign that said Have you called these people? I also thought Oscar Levant was hilarious. She thought it might be broadening to be banned from fashion shows and book-launching parties as well, and came up with a new name for her new, improved column, I Cover the Waterfront ." We went to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Connecticut and interviewed the star of the play, and I wrote this incredibly bitchy Rex Reedish interview with her and got an outraged letter from her press agent. After gaining recognition for her I Cover the Waterfront, Lebowitz moved onto Mademooiselle before publishing her first two books, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies. I am alternately very gregariousvery sociableand then very solitary. My first school punishment was sitting in the corner in kindergarten wearing a Band-Aid over my mouth and holding up a sign that said I am a chatterbox. That was my first run-in with authority. I also used to write a zillion songs. But perhaps it makes senseI grew up in a place where I saw the sea every day and, near the end of my life, Im living in a place where the water has run out. She has two children from her marriage to the composer Allen Shawn, the son of the former New Yorker editor William Shawn, and in the living room she displays on a tableproudly, apologeticallyproductions from the arts-and-crafts camps and classes that her son and daughter attended over the years. Maybe 20 people had read it, and he acted like it was in the Daily News. Fortunately they didnt, so its not around to haunt me. There are certain relationships I think Im great at: Im the worlds greatest daughter. The idea wasnt that I would establish myself and then have the rest of my family join me. Fran Lebowitz moved to New York City from her hometown of Morristown, NJ when she was 19. And thats why Frans first book, Metropolitan Life, has become a smash hit. CLEMENTE: I think in your life youve said no more than yes. I dont think I was still writing for Interview, but once you go outside your natural audience, there are tons of people that dont like you. Wielding a sharp pen in one hand and cigarette in another, Fran Lebowitz wrote for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine beginning in 1968; published two classic collections of tart, humorous essays Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981) and has ever since remained a fixture of the Manhattan social scene as a sort of critic without portfolio. Just one day the headmaster woke up and thought. I have a great collection of A.I.P. This is America, what is the culture? In those days you smoked whatever pot you had that day, so rather than share with others I smoked as much as I could humanly smoke. ), occasional actor ("Law & Order . Then she published two books of essays Metropolitan Life and Social Studies - both wonderful. It was one room, but that makes it sound grander than it was. It became the major thing I was punished for. And as soon as we finished, Marty goes, "Let's make another one." CLEMENTE: What were his illustrations like? There are musings about Times. Karl Lagerfeld did this, I dont know what youd call it, this project, where he and his publishing company made this crate. Lebowitz was born in 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey, the daughter of furniture store proprietors. Needless to say, I'm a big fan and I'm telling everyone I know to watch it right away. - Booklet on 'New York's Underground' - Large . My idea of pure hell. Meeting James Joyce would be more on the order of sightseeing, like seeing the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial. I hit my limit at 19, and I havent had any since. But this idea that people cannot kill each other? I ended up smoking Lucky Strikes, just because I liked the way it looked, the gesture. I once read that deer are in the rodent family, and I still believe this. But all the rest of them were, including Jeb Bush. You cant do it. 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