“When I was a child, it was called talking back. Now it’s called public speaking – but it’s really the same,” says Fran Lebowitz towards the beginning of Martin Scorsese’s delightful 2010 documentary profile Public Speaking. “So the thing that I used to get punished for at home and at school, and get bad marks for, at a certain point in my life I got, I dunno, paid and rewarded for.”
This reflection was in response to a comment on the eloquence of James Baldwin, whom Lebowitz claimed was the first intellectual she encountered. “I’m the only Jew in America whose first exposure to an intellectual was a Black guy.” This stream-of-consciousness collection of personal anecdotes, memoir, insightful insights into the Human condition and dry, sardonic hilarity is a good representation of what you’re in for with this 82-minute HBO production–and why it’s one of Scorsese’s most genuinely enjoyable films.
Lebowitz is a writer in the humorist tradition, alongside such legends as Oscar Wilde, H. L Mencken and The New Yorker cartoonist James Thurber, whom Lebowitz cites as an influence. Unlike other humorists and satirists, though, she never seems to get mired down in bitterness or cynicism. She also never succumbs to nostalgia, taking an equally candid view on her own personal history. “Do I think New York was better in the ’70s?” she muses at one point. “Yes, I do. Because I was in my 20s. And it is objectively better to be in your 20s than your mid-40s.”
Much as it does in the work of her role model James Thurber, New York comes up a lot throughout Public Speaking – particularly the New York of the ’70s and early ’80s. It’s little surprise these two survivors of Old New York would be paired together to discuss life, love and New Yorkers’ strange sense of ownership over their dry cleaners to create this insightful, entertaining documentary.
Like many New Yorkers, both Scorsese and Lebowitz love to talk. It’s the engine that drives Public Speaking and makes it such a joy to watch, even if Scorsese doesn’t have to do much. By and large, he lets Lebowitz expound on everything from pumping gas to the unnecessary risks of tree climbing to the cataclysmic impact of the AIDS epidemic. It’s like getting to hang out with Oscar Wilde for an hour and a half, talking about anything and everything. All Scorsese has to do is roll tape. It’s almost nothing but talking, and you never want it to end. That, more than anything, speaks to its success.
That’s not to suggest that Scorsese had no hand in making Public Speaking such an utter delight. The candid, in-depth interviews are interspersed with plenty of footage and vintage ephemera from Lebowitz’s past as well as topical archival footage from her inspirations, including numerous appearances from role model James Baldwin. These asides help to contextualize Lebowitz and the world in which she rose to prominence. It also helps to make the movie’s pacing more sprightly and breezy – a fitting approximation of Lebowitz’s quick-witted New Yorker conversational style.
Lebowitz’s no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is sense of humor and observational eye feels refreshingly candid in today’s world of walking on thin ice. “When Toni Morrison said write the book you’d want to read, she didn’t mean everybody,” she quips at one point. At another, she tells a story of getting booed by a quarter-of-a-million people when reading a letter at a Jews out of Russia event for saying, “you know when Gorbachev hears these demands, he’ll acquiesce immediately. Who would want that many Jewish women mad at him?” It was, she goes on to comment, “a sound you’ll never forget.”
She may have never forgotten those jeers, but she also doesn’t seem particularly bothered by them, maintaining her characteristic sense of dry wit and casual cool while weighing in against gay marriage to how too much democracy can be a bad thing to the deleterious influence of fame seeking. Note, “wit,” not “humor,” as Lebowitz is quick to point out she’s not a comedian. Comedians require a sense of warmth, she claims, even if you’re making fun of someone. You’re usually not making fun of the person you’re talking to. Wit, on the other hand, demands a certain coldness and a sense of judgment that Lebowitz has no problem owning.
A career like Lebowitz’s could never happen today. She’s famously suffered from decades-long writer’s block, which she refers to as a “writer’s blockade.” She came to prominence when New York was still cheap and weird. And she speaks her mind, on anything and everything, from the suburbanization of New York City to criticism of both feminism and anti-racist movements to an almost technophobic distrust of modern technology. Any one of these soundbites would be enough to scuttle a career. Even Scorsese himself was nearly torpedoed just a few years ago, in 2019, for daring to take the very mild position that “Marvel movies aren’t cinema.” In such fraught, hair-trigger times, it’s hard to imagine such truth-tellers gaining traction. It’s also that much more entertaining – and important – to listen to what they have to say.
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