Speaker 1: I'm Hillary Clinton, and this is you and me both.
Speaker 1: I've said it here before that I'm a big admirer
Speaker 1: of people who get things done well. My guest today
Speaker 1: is someone who proudly claims she doesn't like to work.
Speaker 1: She thinks she's pretty lazy, and she would have been
Speaker 1: a good heiress.
Speaker 2: Well, fran Lebowitz is not.
Speaker 1: An heiress, but she is an icon and an institution
Speaker 1: of New York City and American culture. As you'll hear,
Speaker 1: she's whip, smart, funny, and full of opinions. Fran famously
Speaker 1: wrote for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, and she is the
Speaker 1: author of two best selling collections of essays, but hasn't
Speaker 1: written another book since the mid nineteen nineties. Instead, she
Speaker 1: can be found talking in documentaries. She's done two with
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese, and the latest from twenty twenty one is
Speaker 1: called Pretend It's a City, or on late night television,
Speaker 1: or in her speaking tour across the United States and
Speaker 1: around the world. Few voices out there are as original
Speaker 1: and unapologetic as fran Leebwitz's. She's a truth teller and
Speaker 1: a real breath of fresh air. I was so delighted
Speaker 1: to have this chance to sit down and talk with her.
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how pleased I am to talk
Speaker 1: with you today, friend, and I thank you. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've got all of New York City, or at
Speaker 1: least Manhattan, right here in this booth with me. And
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about your speaking tour,
Speaker 1: your docuseries, and of course New York City. And I
Speaker 1: was just asking you. You're heading to Brooklyn for a
Speaker 1: live event. You've been to Brooklyn, right, yes, New Yorst times.
Speaker 1: My grandparents lived in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: So when I was young, that's where grandparents lived, uh huh.
Speaker 3: And then I got older, and then now it's where
Speaker 3: kids live, by which I mean people in their twenties.
Speaker 3: That's right. And I always say to them, you know,
Speaker 3: when I was young, Brooklyn is a place where people.
Speaker 3: The people live there were all the time eating talking
Speaker 3: about food and watching TV or talking about TV. And
Speaker 3: now it's a place where people are eating all the time,
Speaker 3: talking about food, watching TV. Except they're seventy years younger,
Speaker 3: you know, and they're not my mcgwen grandparents.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: Well, you're going to King Theater, which you haven't been
Speaker 1: to before. I've been there for two events, and it's
Speaker 1: an extraordinary renovation.
Speaker 3: So Mashine photographs. It was a movie theater.
Speaker 1: It was a movie theater in the old days, the
Speaker 1: very old days, but they've done an amazing job bringing
Speaker 1: it back and they have live events like what you're
Speaker 1: going to be doing. You know, you have had one
Speaker 1: of the more interesting, kind of one of a kind
Speaker 1: careers that I know of, And.
Speaker 3: Well, I would have to say I bowed to you
Speaker 3: in that Missus Well maybe schecking.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we're you know, we're kind of on
Speaker 2: parallel tracks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're exactly right, Astra Twins.
Speaker 2: Part of it is.
Speaker 1: You are a person of incredible gutsiness. And I admired
Speaker 1: gutsiness a lot.
Speaker 3: Yes, I could tell, because you have it.
Speaker 2: You got to have it in today's world.
Speaker 1: And I just wanted the listeners to get a feeling
Speaker 1: for how you ended up in New York as a
Speaker 1: very young woman, as I recall, like like nineteen twenty, very.
Speaker 3: Young, nineteen twenty. No, I'm not fair, I was nineteen
Speaker 3: or twenty. I actually can't remember, because I think, you know,
Speaker 3: I think I was nineteen. I grew up in New Jersey,
Speaker 3: so people who are not from around here say, oh,
Speaker 3: it's the same thing. It's no, it's the same planet.
Speaker 3: It make no difference being from like Iowa, you know.
Speaker 3: But I really had a very happy childhood. And I
Speaker 3: know that's against Sola, but it was really a nice
Speaker 3: town to be a child in. But at a fairly
Speaker 3: young age, we used to come to New York. I
Speaker 3: always said, when I grew up in little of New
Speaker 3: York and we used to always go. They would at
Speaker 3: a certaindage, they said, where do you want to go
Speaker 3: on your birthday? What do you want to do to
Speaker 3: a birth that I want to go to New York? Where
Speaker 3: do you want to go to? Museum Motorn Art. That's
Speaker 3: the place I always wanted to go. And I think
Speaker 3: that possibly, like the age of ten or eleven, I
Speaker 3: imagine I would move to New York and live in
Speaker 3: the Museum Modern Art. This has not happened, And so
Speaker 3: you know, people say, well, how did you get to
Speaker 3: New York? I would say, bus buss. Okay, if your
Speaker 3: goal in life is to live in a certain place,
Speaker 3: you achieved your goal easily. Yeah, you know, people set
Speaker 3: the bar too high. My goal was I'm going to
Speaker 3: live in New York.
Speaker 1: I lived in New York and I mean you've driven
Speaker 1: cabs in New York. You've been a housekeeper, not a housekeeper,
Speaker 1: a cleaning lady. Cleaning lady, Oh my god, that's a
Speaker 1: phrase from my past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, believe me, no one would hire
Speaker 3: me to keep a house.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you ended up in an incredible position of
Speaker 1: actually starting to be a writer.
Speaker 2: How did that go?
Speaker 1: I mean, you went from cab driving, being a cleaning
Speaker 1: lady and all of a sudden you're meeting Andy Warhol
Speaker 1: and oh.
Speaker 3: No, no, I was doing the same time. Because you I
Speaker 3: didn't make enough money. No, I had those kind of
Speaker 3: jobs until my first book came out, you know, So,
Speaker 3: I mean I always had to have those kinds of jobs.
Speaker 3: It wasn't that hard, you know. Partially there were all
Speaker 3: these little magazines that we called underground newspapers. They weren't underground,
Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't Russia. And all you had to
Speaker 3: do is like ask because it wasn't that hard. Because
Speaker 3: no one my age wanted to be a writer. That
Speaker 3: was a good thing. I had almost no competition. Everyone
Speaker 3: my age who wanted to be an artist wanted to
Speaker 3: be a filmmaker or a musician.
Speaker 1: Not.
Speaker 3: Now everyone's a writer, even without being able to write,
Speaker 3: and so it was not hard at all, you know,
Speaker 3: to get these jobs. And they paid nothing, so it
Speaker 3: was pretty easy.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: New York was when people hear the rent I paid,
Speaker 3: then they got that. You know, that's impossible.
Speaker 2: Okay, what was the rent?
Speaker 3: You're paid that apartment one hundred and twelve dollars and
Speaker 3: seventy eight cents a month. When I first moved in,
Speaker 3: like nine years later whatever it was, seven years later,
Speaker 3: it had jumped to one hundred and twenty one dollars.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, the minimum wage was a dollar
Speaker 3: and a quarter an hour. Also, it was an incredibly
Speaker 3: horrible apartment. No one would live in this now. The
Speaker 3: other thing is that people my age, you know, then
Speaker 3: we didn't really care where we live.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean we expected to live in horrible places and
Speaker 3: we were just never home. It didn't matter, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean it never occurred to me, why don't I
Speaker 3: have a nice apartment?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, No, I was thinking about the house I
Speaker 1: lived in when I was in law school, which was
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, and you know, the floors were
Speaker 1: all tilted and the bathroom was so small, literally it
Speaker 1: was just you know, as wide as a card table,
Speaker 1: and every time you tried to lift the toilet seat
Speaker 1: down or up, it would scrape against the bathtub.
Speaker 2: I mean all of that. And I thought it was fine, That's.
Speaker 3: What it was fine. I knew there were nicer apartments
Speaker 3: in my believing. But when I first moved in, the
Speaker 3: super of that building, that's the only time I ever
Speaker 3: saw him. The super came in the apartment with me,
Speaker 3: and I pointed out to him that there was no
Speaker 3: ceiling in the bathroom. Adjust the beams from this building,
Speaker 3: which was like a nineteenth century building built actually as
Speaker 3: a sailor's roominghouse, so there were no kitchens. And I said, look,
Speaker 3: there's no ceiling here. He said, yeah, I know, I'm
Speaker 3: going to get to that. I moved out like eight
Speaker 3: years later. There was still no a sailing So it
Speaker 3: turns out you actually do not need a ceili in
Speaker 3: a bathroom. You do not. No, you can live without it.
Speaker 1: When did you publish your first book, because it was
Speaker 1: a phenomenon, it was fantastic, nineteen seventy eight, And how.
Speaker 2: Long did you work on it?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it was really kind of a fluke.
Speaker 3: What happened. I was writing this column for Interview, which
Speaker 3: no one read it or that was see Andrew Warhol magazine, right,
Speaker 3: and very few people read it, but it was available
Speaker 3: on newsstands in New York. And a woman who since
Speaker 3: died named Laurie Colwin, who actually became pretty well known writer,
Speaker 3: was a little junior editor at Dunton, which doesn't assist anymore.
Speaker 3: And she was sick, she had a flu or something,
Speaker 3: and she said to her boyfriend, I have nothing to read.
Speaker 3: Go to then a stand by every magazine that I've
Speaker 3: never heard of, and he did, and she read this
Speaker 3: and then she read another one. And then she called
Speaker 3: me up and said, would you like to write a book? Oh?
Speaker 2: My god?
Speaker 3: And I said no. I said no, I'm not ready
Speaker 3: to write a book. She said, well, I'm an editor
Speaker 3: at EP Dunton. Would you like to have lunch?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Lunch?
Speaker 2: It is great.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so that's how it happened. Really, no one
Speaker 3: had ever heard of me. I didn't know this, by
Speaker 3: the way, because the places I hung out and everyone
Speaker 3: read an interview. It was really a fluke. It was
Speaker 3: also a fluke. Then Laurie got fired and usually like
Speaker 3: a little first book like that they paid nothing for.
Speaker 3: There gets fired, the book goes away. But luckily there
Speaker 3: was a man, Henry Robbins, also dead, who had just
Speaker 3: come to be the head of this publishing house, and
Speaker 3: he was a very important editor. I made a big
Speaker 3: deal in New York and I was hanging around in
Speaker 3: his office. I didn't even know who he was. I
Speaker 3: was hanging around this office because the heat. And so
Speaker 3: when she left, she said, Henry wants your book, and
Speaker 3: also another guy, lovely guy, and also Bill. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: I like Bill, I know him more. She said, don't
Speaker 3: be stupid. Henry's the head of the house. So he
Speaker 3: became the editor. And then he did something that Laurie
Speaker 3: never could have done. There was like a really really
Speaker 3: important there's no such thing anymore, the most important book
Speaker 3: critic on the country, John Leondard for the New York Times,
Speaker 3: and he did the daily reviews. And Henry could call
Speaker 3: John Leonard and he said, I think there's a book
Speaker 3: you might like, and he took him to lunch. He
Speaker 3: gave Hi the book that would never have happened with Laurie.
Speaker 3: So it was very lucky for me that Laura got
Speaker 3: fired and then there was also another review on the
Speaker 3: Sunday Time the same week, and then there was no news.
Speaker 3: So because there was no news where people paid attention
Speaker 3: to this. You know, people never talk about luck in
Speaker 3: this country. You know, luck is really probably the most
Speaker 3: determinive factor in anyone's life. I agree with that, you know,
Speaker 3: and no one talks about it. Everyone asks, like in
Speaker 3: the United States, it all has to do with how
Speaker 3: hard you work, and that is just not true. Okay.
Speaker 3: The most important luck you first have is where are
Speaker 3: you born?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: Okay, who are your parents? Where are you born? What
Speaker 3: are their circumstances?
Speaker 2: And how healthy are you?
Speaker 3: Yes? And that is ninety percent of your life. You
Speaker 3: were kidding yourself, if you think, because they show you
Speaker 3: these things they do they say, look at this person
Speaker 3: born into total poverty, you know, with the thirteen year
Speaker 3: old mother and you know she was not well, and
Speaker 3: you know, yet he became this. Yeah, that's like really
Speaker 3: an anecdote. But basically it's not true, you know, It's
Speaker 3: just simply isn't true. And it's a very I think,
Speaker 3: kind of destructive myth.
Speaker 1: Well, people beat themselves up all the time and look
Speaker 1: like why can't I do that? They have failed in something,
Speaker 1: or they're ashamed. Yeah, I feel guilty, or they feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, why can't I do that? It's just like
Speaker 1: being old.
Speaker 3: Okay. They're always showing you a ninety seven year old
Speaker 3: man who finished a marathon. Okay, that's what they're showing.
Speaker 3: Here's this ninety seven year old guy, he just ran
Speaker 3: the New marathon. He's in perfect condition. Yes, there is
Speaker 3: a guy like that. But the other ninety seven year olds,
Speaker 3: you know, not in very good shame.
Speaker 1: But I'd even go and say that when it comes
Speaker 1: to the outlier, the person who was born in terrible circumstances,
Speaker 1: if you really look at that person's life, somebody provided
Speaker 1: a path forward.
Speaker 2: Somebody handed that person.
Speaker 1: An opportunity something because something happened, the serendipity of you
Speaker 1: having an editor who's homesick reading your you know, your columns,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden everything takes off from there.
Speaker 1: Something happens, and that's luck. That's an intervening event.
Speaker 3: I think it's really a disservice to the country for
Speaker 3: someone not to say, you know, here's the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, you should work hard, you could, you know,
Speaker 3: very often improve your leg.
Speaker 1: And we could as a society do more to create
Speaker 1: the opportunity or.
Speaker 3: In fact anything, yeah, not just more, but in fact
Speaker 3: maybe anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll be back right after this quick break.
Speaker 2: So what was Andy Warhol like?
Speaker 3: Oh? You know, truthfully, I did not like Andy and
Speaker 3: he did not like me. I know, now everyone loves Andy,
Speaker 3: especially if you didn't know him, Loving him is much easier.
Speaker 3: I think I didn't get along with them. And I
Speaker 3: noticed most of the people around the factory because they
Speaker 3: went there because they wanted to be around Andy. But
Speaker 3: I just went there because there was a magazine.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: But I don't like him. He don't like me because
Speaker 3: I wouldn't talk to him, and you know, I talk
Speaker 3: a lot. I didn't talk to him because he stole everything.
Speaker 3: I could see that right away that he stole everything.
Speaker 3: The reason he had these kids around him was maybe
Speaker 3: this kid would come up with this thing or you know,
Speaker 3: and so I had nothing else but that, right, and
Speaker 3: I wasn't gonna let it go away. Now. I mean,
Speaker 3: I have to say that after my second book came out,
Speaker 3: I still worked interview and I only make money during
Speaker 3: democratic presidencies, which means I only make money when taxes
Speaker 3: are high. And when my first book came out, Carter
Speaker 3: was president, and these top income tax bracket if you
Speaker 3: were single. This is another unfair thing. Why do single
Speaker 3: people pay more taxes than married people? They shouldn't. It's
Speaker 3: totally unfair. You might be able to do something about it.
Speaker 3: But however, I can't remember what it was. It was
Speaker 3: like one hundred thousand dollars a year, seventy percent seven
Speaker 3: zero percent. Before that, I paid no taxes because I
Speaker 3: made three thousand dollars a year. I was completely shocked,
Speaker 3: and so I thought money, which I always thought would
Speaker 3: be like helpful, try out to be bad. So I said,
Speaker 3: you know, to the edir of interview, don't pay me
Speaker 3: money is terrible. I will take it in art. So
Speaker 3: I had all these warholes. However, what also, when no
Speaker 3: one remembers about Andy, is that before he died, his
Speaker 3: reputation was very very low. Yes, and I needed money.
Speaker 3: I couldn't pay my maintenance, and I sold all my
Speaker 3: warholes all two weeks before he died for nothing, I
Speaker 3: mean in order to All I did was pay the
Speaker 3: maintenance of my apartment for one month, and I paid
Speaker 3: a lawyer Okay, one of the lawyers I paid with
Speaker 3: actually gave them a warholes. I'm sure, like you know,
Speaker 3: it was a Tuscundy now, And I actually think that's
Speaker 3: that's why he died, because he knew I had sold me, right,
Speaker 3: That's why he died. But the prices, I knew that
Speaker 3: we're going to go up, but no one would ever
Speaker 3: what they are now. Yeah, I mean they are so
Speaker 3: psychotic now that I really think if Andy knew they
Speaker 3: go up that high, he would have died way before.
Speaker 1: Well, you had these two very successful books, and then
Speaker 1: you had a third.
Speaker 3: Book, the children's book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then you stop writing. And I've read where
Speaker 1: you are very open about this. You tell interviewers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've had writer's block and you haven't been able to write,
Speaker 1: but you're sure doing a lot of great talking.
Speaker 2: So is that the trade off?
Speaker 1: You don't want to be like closeted away having to write,
Speaker 1: which anybody who's ever tried knows is really hard when
Speaker 1: you've got a lot to say, So you go out
Speaker 1: and tell people across the country, in the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, because talking is easy, I'm lazy? Is it
Speaker 3: basically laziness? I mean, you never hear anyone say they're
Speaker 3: lazy anymore, even though there's tons of lazy people, you know,
Speaker 3: many of them are you know, Republicans or congress I mean,
Speaker 3: so I was like, I'm lazy. Writing is really hard
Speaker 3: for me. If it's not hard for you, I don't
Speaker 3: mean you sparking to you. Yes, if it's it's not
Speaker 3: hard for someone, you know, it's they're not doing it. Well,
Speaker 3: it's a hard thing to do. Some people like to
Speaker 3: work hard, but I don't. So talking is easy. I
Speaker 3: don't even think about it. So I took these.
Speaker 1: Away on well, but but you're touring now or the
Speaker 1: traveling is horrible? The travel I was going to say,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not easy going from town to town,
Speaker 1: venue to venue. What's that like for you?
Speaker 3: It's horrible for me because the way that airlines are
Speaker 3: running basically nice, you know. I mean, I know for
Speaker 3: a fact, no matter where I am in the world,
Speaker 3: I am the angriest person in the airport. And that
Speaker 3: is because I don't have a phone. I finally figured
Speaker 3: it out, like why should everyone else in a fury?
Speaker 3: And it's because, except for me, everyone's looking at their phone.
Speaker 3: So if you're looking at your phone, that's where you are.
Speaker 3: It's a geographical thing. It's like, but I'm in the
Speaker 3: airport where no one wants to be, and I'm always
Speaker 3: at the counter, and I always have to say, I
Speaker 3: know it's not your fault exactly, okay, but whoever's fault
Speaker 3: it is? You know, they're never here, that's right, whoever are?
Speaker 3: Where are they? I mean, you know who is in
Speaker 3: seeing the people who run the airlines, and I would
Speaker 3: say you realize, of course that no other businesses run
Speaker 3: like this, none. And there's not a single person in
Speaker 3: the airport who, if they did their work this way,
Speaker 3: could afford to fly. Okay, who says you know we're
Speaker 3: going to be leaving, We'll let you know, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean if you go to a restaurant and they say, yes,
Speaker 3: we're gonna open for dinner, but we're not.
Speaker 2: Sure, we're not sure what.
Speaker 3: Just hang around for two or three days and we'll
Speaker 3: let you know, you know. So, yeah, the traveling is
Speaker 3: really horrible.
Speaker 2: But how do you prepare for that trip?
Speaker 1: Because you are famously known not to have a cell phone,
Speaker 1: not to have a computer.
Speaker 2: So here you are, you do have I guess, like maybe.
Speaker 1: A written list telling you you're going to you know,
Speaker 1: Dubuke and Boise, and I have people go with me.
Speaker 3: I have like like they with phones. You've got people
Speaker 3: got a phone patrol, right, well, you know, they call
Speaker 3: themselves to our managers. But a friend of mine calls
Speaker 3: them your babysitters. So yeah, people have to go with
Speaker 3: me because of course I can't do it. And I
Speaker 3: I actually have almost no skills at all, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it's not just I can't travel like this.
Speaker 3: You know, basically I can talk, I can write. When
Speaker 3: I can write, I can read, and that's pretty much it.
Speaker 3: And they actually like do everything, you know. And then
Speaker 3: there's also people that you can hire at the airport.
Speaker 3: They're called greaders. They reach you, they take you, They
Speaker 3: put you in the car, They tell you take this out,
Speaker 3: take the car down, takes the you know, do this,
Speaker 3: take your shoes, you know whatever. I just do whatever
Speaker 3: they say, and it works out because I get there.
Speaker 1: You kind of, I know, you say you're angry at
Speaker 1: the airport, but don't you have to kind of put
Speaker 1: yourself into a bit of a zen like trance, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I go where they tell me to go, I do
Speaker 1: what they well, I.
Speaker 3: Do do that. But no, I'm angry. I mean, first
Speaker 3: of all, I'm just generally angry. I try not to
Speaker 3: be because I smoke cigarettes, which now is a terrible thing. Smoking.
Speaker 3: I want it turned out now to be a wonderful
Speaker 3: thing healthy, No one cares, but the smoking cigarettes are
Speaker 3: very bad. And so you know, when you get really angry,
Speaker 3: you want to smoke because it like leaves your tension.
Speaker 3: So I try not to get the name. I had
Speaker 3: to go to Australia about five years ago.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's a journey.
Speaker 3: And I'm going again in a few months. And really
Speaker 3: traveling to me is about smoking basically, because when you
Speaker 3: could smoke on planes and airports, it didn't really bother me.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I look when I think, well they don't smoke. You know,
Speaker 3: they're not thinking when am I going to get out?
Speaker 3: I know exactly every single place United States? How long
Speaker 3: would that a cigarette? And so when I was going
Speaker 3: to Australia the first time, I said, no, I'm going
Speaker 3: to be in a total calm state. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to look at my watch, I'm not going to think
Speaker 3: about it. I'm going to get a perfect book. I
Speaker 3: asked someone, what is a book that will last twenty
Speaker 3: one hours and that will be very engrossing. And someone
Speaker 3: said to me, have you ever read The Master Builder
Speaker 3: about Robert Moses power Broker?
Speaker 2: Power Broker?
Speaker 3: And I said no, So I did. It's like eight
Speaker 3: million pages. I hadn't won bag. Every time someone met
Speaker 3: me at airport and took my bag, it's a small bag.
Speaker 3: The guy would go, what's in here? I would say
Speaker 3: a book, a book, But it worked. The book worked.
Speaker 3: But actually, that fact that I didn't kill anyone on
Speaker 3: that flight is my greatest accomplishment.
Speaker 1: I congratulated you, and I hope you keep that record
Speaker 1: going when you go to I mean, like lots of
Speaker 1: times when you read about people fighting on airplanes, I
Speaker 1: always think they smoke, you know, I mean for sure
Speaker 1: they drink, okay, so I don't drink, So like, that's
Speaker 1: probably why I don't kill people on plays.
Speaker 2: So you bring one big fat book with you when you're.
Speaker 3: Just say that was just for that La to Melbourne trip.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a long okay. No. I bring a lot
Speaker 3: of books with me. Even though everyone says, you know,
Speaker 3: if you had a computer, all the books could be
Speaker 3: on the computer.
Speaker 1: I can't do that, though, fran I have to have books.
Speaker 1: I mean, people say the same thing to me. I
Speaker 1: have a book bag on every flight I take.
Speaker 3: But running out of books on a plane is really
Speaker 3: a much bigger fear of mine than the plane's going
Speaker 3: to crash. I'm not worried about the plane crashing, okay,
Speaker 3: but I am worried, like because I once ran out
Speaker 3: of books on a plane. And it was a long time.
Speaker 3: It was so long ago. They had magazines on the planes,
Speaker 3: and I remember and I ran out of books, and
Speaker 3: I thought, well, what am I going to do? So
Speaker 3: I asked you any magazines? Which just happened this one.
Speaker 3: That's how I discovered there was a magazine called Golf Magazine,
Speaker 3: which is a magazine about golf, okay, which is like, okay,
Speaker 3: it's better than no magazine, but not much. And I
Speaker 3: actually walk up in down the aisles asking people, do
Speaker 3: you have a book you're not reading? Do you have
Speaker 3: a book you might finish? You might have finished, you know,
Speaker 3: because there are more people reading books on plas than
Speaker 3: there or no.
Speaker 2: I've been there, done that. I mean, yeah, I got
Speaker 2: to have a book.
Speaker 1: So now the way I understand your tour, you pick
Speaker 1: somebody to interview you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well I don't always pick them. I mean I picked
Speaker 3: them in places where I know people. Right, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to fade I mean I did this already.
Speaker 3: I was going to Fadeville, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 3: They said, who would you like to interview you? I said,
Speaker 3: choose someone? Yeah, okay, I don't know anyone in favor
Speaker 3: for Arkansas. So usually it's a journalist. You know. But
Speaker 3: as I'm sure you know, many places there's no newspapers anymore,
Speaker 3: so there are no local journalists, right. But usually journalists
Speaker 3: that's usually a best choice because despite what most people think,
Speaker 3: interviewing someone's a skill. It is, okay, like I don't
Speaker 3: have them myself, So interview someone as a skill, and
Speaker 3: they're the better people at it. Usually I do the
Speaker 3: interview for half an hour, and then I that person
Speaker 3: leaves the stage and I go to a podium and
Speaker 3: I ask your questions for the audience for one hour.
Speaker 3: This is my favorite activity on a planet Earth, other
Speaker 3: than reading.
Speaker 2: How's it set up?
Speaker 3: Just I just stand in a podium, yeah, and house
Speaker 3: lights go up and people raise their.
Speaker 2: Hand and no microphone. They yell, they yell the question.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't allow microphones in the audience. And this
Speaker 3: is a constant fight between me and my agent, or
Speaker 3: me and the venues, you know, because they say people
Speaker 3: can't hear, and I say it doesn't matter. I sometimes
Speaker 3: can't hear the people repeat the question somewhat, you know,
Speaker 3: because if you have microphones in the audience, you don't
Speaker 3: get questions from the audience. You get answers from the audience.
Speaker 3: You know, they want to make speech, so go make
Speaker 3: a speech, but not here. And that's why I don't
Speaker 3: allow the microphone.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting because you know, I'm teaching at Columbia now,
Speaker 1: I'm teen teaching, and so we teach for seventy minutes
Speaker 1: and then we do questions at the end for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: But we do we have a microphone in the center aisle,
Speaker 1: and we you know, try to keep it moving along.
Speaker 1: But there's always the risk somebody is going to like
Speaker 1: hold the microphone hostage.
Speaker 3: You know they're going to But you're teaching law, right.
Speaker 2: No, we're teaching.
Speaker 1: I'm teaching a course on foreign policy decision making called
Speaker 1: inside the Situation Room.
Speaker 3: Yeah you should be in Washington teaching this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, or somewhere, you know, honestly, So you've
Speaker 1: done something recently, you know, within the last you know,
Speaker 1: year two or three, which I think is pretty gutsy also,
Speaker 1: and that was making a documentary and you made.
Speaker 2: It with one of the greatest filmmakers.
Speaker 3: In well, they didn't make it. Marty made it.
Speaker 1: Marty Scorsese made it. But you were an active participant
Speaker 1: because it was about you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it was. You know, Marty made a movie
Speaker 3: about me about ten years before for ESBO called public Speaking,
Speaker 3: and when he said he wanted to do this, I
Speaker 3: said no. I always said no to documentaries about me
Speaker 3: because I don't want to follow me around. And so
Speaker 3: but with Marty and I know Marty, I said, well,
Speaker 3: it can't be about me, Marty about my life. I
Speaker 3: just wanted to be about what I think. And so
Speaker 3: that's what it was. But you could only do that,
Speaker 3: first of all. First of all, and people say, what
Speaker 3: was like to collaborate with Scorsese, I would have no idea.
Speaker 3: I'm not a collaborator with the greatest living American filmmaker.
Speaker 3: I don't know it all. But I have a great
Speaker 3: rapport with Marty. So you know, basically that is mostly
Speaker 3: just me talking to Marty. There's other stuff. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think Tony Morris and there's other people, but it's
Speaker 3: basically talking. And then he wanted to another one right
Speaker 3: away and I said no. And then this thing with
Speaker 3: Netflix came and I said, I could do it, but
Speaker 3: let's just do it about New York. I'm just going
Speaker 3: to walk around New York and talk about New York.
Speaker 3: Marty goes quait, I'm going to walk with you. I said,
Speaker 3: don't be ridiculous, because, as I'm sure you know, almost
Speaker 3: all famous people said they to get back nice, but
Speaker 3: they're all lying. But Marty hates it. He really hates it.
Speaker 3: So I said, you cannot walk around with me, Marty,
Speaker 3: I said, because we're not going to be able to
Speaker 3: walk more than one step in New York. I mean, Martin,
Speaker 3: you can't do it. So the one day that Marty
Speaker 3: came was actually visible during the filming in the street.
Speaker 3: Within two minutes, he's hiding inside of a building. So
Speaker 3: I said, you can't do that, Marty. It's not going
Speaker 3: to work out.
Speaker 1: And you know, for again for our listeners, it's got
Speaker 1: this really evocative title.
Speaker 2: Pretend it's a city. Where did that come?
Speaker 3: From that's my title. Okay, so I'm not I don't
Speaker 3: make contributions to marty'scorsess, you know work, but that was
Speaker 3: my title because you know, for I don't know how
Speaker 3: many years, it's been like thirty or twenty five years
Speaker 3: where there's been so many tourists in New York. You know,
Speaker 3: the year before COVID, I see in the paper. You know,
Speaker 3: last year, fifty eight million tours came to New York.
Speaker 3: So there's already nine million people here. Yeah, okay, it's crowdy,
Speaker 3: you know, don't come go somewhere else. And these tours
Speaker 3: trive me crazy for numerous reasons, one of which is
Speaker 3: that they have nowhere believe they have to go. Oh so,
Speaker 3: what they don't realize is that in New York, walking
Speaker 3: is a form of transportation. It is, Okay, that's how
Speaker 3: we get a lot of places. Okay. It's also the
Speaker 3: most reliable and also many times the fastest. So but
Speaker 3: they don't do that. They first of all, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of them together, you know, I mean there could
Speaker 3: be like five people together, which you've never seen New
Speaker 3: Yorkers do because that's too sociable. You got to get
Speaker 3: somewhere and they stop. They just stand in the middle
Speaker 3: of the sidewalk. And I am constantly getting in fights
Speaker 3: with these people. By when it fights, I mean I
Speaker 3: yell at them, you know, please move, please move nothing.
Speaker 3: And so I started yelling like about ten years ago. Move.
Speaker 3: Pretend it's a city. It's not your living room, it's
Speaker 3: not your backyard. You know. People have to get some places.
Speaker 3: That's where pretend to see if they came from.
Speaker 2: That is great.
Speaker 1: Well, you also mentioned Tony Morrison, such an extraordinary human
Speaker 1: being as well as just a great writer.
Speaker 2: How did you meet her? How did you become friends
Speaker 2: with her?
Speaker 3: You know? Actually people asked me a lot where did
Speaker 3: you and Marty meet? And neither one of us know. Okay,
Speaker 3: but Tony. I not only remember where, I remember exactly when,
Speaker 3: because my experience with Tony is what happened. There used
Speaker 3: to be, or perhaps still is, something called the American
Speaker 3: Society of Poets, and they sent me a letter and
Speaker 3: I said, you know, we have a reading series at
Speaker 3: the McDonald library. Would you like to read in the series.
Speaker 3: This is my name, here's my phone number. So I
Speaker 3: called on the telephone the man and he said, would
Speaker 3: you like to read in this I said, yes, I
Speaker 3: would like to. He said, we always have two people
Speaker 3: reading together. Do you know who Tony Marrison is. She
Speaker 3: wasn't that well known then, so I said yes. He said,
Speaker 3: do you like her work? I said, I love her work.
Speaker 3: He said, would you like to read together with her?
Speaker 3: I said no. He said why not? I said, it's
Speaker 3: too weird. It's a bizarre combination. It doesn't make sense
Speaker 3: to me as a combination. He said, do you object
Speaker 3: to it? I said no, but he said, well, we
Speaker 3: think it's a good combination. So we read together and
Speaker 3: it was a great combination. I don't know why. As
Speaker 3: soon it was over, Tony said, this is a great combination.
Speaker 3: Let's go on the road. So we did not actually
Speaker 3: go on the road, but I became friends with her
Speaker 3: instantly in a way that that's not usually how friendship works.
Speaker 3: That's like maybe like a love affair maybe, you know,
Speaker 3: because you know, love affairs don't have the last and
Speaker 3: so I know exactly what it was. It was nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight. Oh god, I love that story, and yes
Speaker 3: it's true. I mean, Tony was a great writer. Everyone
Speaker 3: knows she was a great writer, but she was also,
Speaker 3: I mean, I've known lots and lots of very smart people,
Speaker 3: but she is the only wise person I've ever known.
Speaker 3: So the lack of not just my life in the world,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, I know a lot of people died,
Speaker 3: I miss a lot of people, but not like Tony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, for people who weren't privileged like you
Speaker 1: and I were to have met her and like you
Speaker 1: to be a friend of hers. Just google her and
Speaker 1: look at that picture of that amazing face and the
Speaker 1: way that she just had a presence. Anything you can
Speaker 1: ever see of her speaking, giving any kind of address,
Speaker 1: doing anything but read her books.
Speaker 3: Read her books, yes, and read them an order. Okay,
Speaker 3: if you've never points present point that's that you asked,
Speaker 3: not that anyone has asked. But my advice to people
Speaker 3: when they've never read a writer before, I mean a
Speaker 3: good writer, or in the case of they're a great writer,
Speaker 3: read the writer in order if you've never read them before,
Speaker 3: because then you see how they change, you know. And
Speaker 3: so I mean, I can't say I wish I'd never
Speaker 3: read Honey, but it'd be a pretty thrilling thing to
Speaker 3: come to it new.
Speaker 2: Yes, it would be. And to start from the beginning
Speaker 2: from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, when I think about pretend it's a city,
Speaker 1: I think about how consistent you've been in really defending
Speaker 1: the culture of the city, the.
Speaker 2: Feeling of the city.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've heard you speak with great regret
Speaker 1: about what you think has happened to New York City
Speaker 1: over time. And you know the role of so called
Speaker 1: gentrification and pushing people out. If you had the proverbial
Speaker 1: magic wand what would you tell or make you know, leaders,
Speaker 1: you know, not just mayor's, governor's presidents, but also the
Speaker 1: business leadership here in this what would you have them
Speaker 1: do to try to restore the spirit of this city
Speaker 1: that you love and deserves everybody's love and attention.
Speaker 3: Pay your taxes, but which I mean is rich people
Speaker 3: pay your taxes. Pay your taxes. You know this whole
Speaker 3: thing about this kind of gigantic philanthropy, you know, giving
Speaker 3: like a zillion dollars and you're going to name this
Speaker 3: museum after me, And I get that. You know that
Speaker 3: kind of philanthropy is unpaid taxes, That's all it is.
Speaker 3: If you have a job, like a regular job where
Speaker 3: you get paid every week or two weeks, whatever, the
Speaker 3: taxes come out of your pay. So they pay their taxes. Okay,
Speaker 3: they pay you know, a significant percentage of their incoming taxes.
Speaker 3: And so I don't want to know, like you know,
Speaker 3: when I hear some like you know, zillionaire say I
Speaker 3: pay forty million dollars in taxes, not enough. It's not
Speaker 3: a big enough percentage of the money that you made. Also,
Speaker 3: not that anyone asked me. I didn't even know when
Speaker 3: I was young that taxes were hired on earned income
Speaker 3: than on a passive income. First of all, what is
Speaker 3: passive income means? It means you're not doing anything right.
Speaker 2: Your money is making money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your money's making money. And I'm out a communist.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying we should have capitalism. I'm saying we
Speaker 3: should have more fairness. It's really unfair. It is really unfair,
Speaker 3: and it was solful a lot of problems when every
Speaker 3: people say, well there aren't enough rich people, they're enough here.
Speaker 3: I mean, one thing is that New York does not
Speaker 3: lack for rich people.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Where were you during COVID? Were
Speaker 1: you in your apartment?
Speaker 3: Yes? For entire year? For one year, yes, during which
Speaker 3: time at zero income. So like no money. That my
Speaker 3: government put twelve hundred dollars into my bank account, which
Speaker 3: was nice, but huh. For a year, and I had
Speaker 3: never I mean a lot most people, I guess didn't
Speaker 3: know COVID was coming, but I had never thought about it.
Speaker 3: I never thought, what if there's a plague.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it turned down.
Speaker 3: That's what a lot of people had. Because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of people read science fiction or they watched science fiction,
Speaker 3: and it's apparently a common theme of science fiction. So
Speaker 3: I couldn't think about it. I didn't know how to
Speaker 3: think about it, and unfortunately now I do.
Speaker 2: Well, you were home with your what ten thousand books?
Speaker 3: I was home with my books. I mean. The worst
Speaker 3: thing about COVID, I mean, for me, obviously, the worst
Speaker 3: thing about covis people died or got really sick. But
Speaker 3: the second worst thing is fran There were no bookstores open,
Speaker 3: so I buy books by I go in a bookstore,
Speaker 3: I opened a book, I read like a page or two,
Speaker 3: or sometimes last night I go no or yes, sometimes
Speaker 3: I'm wrong, but not usually. But because bookstores were closed,
Speaker 3: I had to borrow a friend's am a on account
Speaker 3: I paid her back. And the only way I knew
Speaker 3: about books. What new books there were was either reviews
Speaker 3: or people recommended them to me. This is a terrible way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't have that first hand experience.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding? I now have about one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty books in my apartment that I never would have
Speaker 3: bought in a million years. Well, you should give them away.
Speaker 3: I've spent a lot of time thinking, it's like when
Speaker 3: my father died. I always my father's in the last
Speaker 3: generation of men. Who when he died you had one
Speaker 3: hundred ties neckties? Yes, so I spent like a year
Speaker 3: like thinking who should have this tie of my father's.
Speaker 3: So now I'm spending like another year agoing who would
Speaker 3: like this book? So my father had a lot nicer
Speaker 3: ties that I have books that I want.
Speaker 1: So, oh gosh, friand I am thrilled to have this
Speaker 1: conversation with you.
Speaker 2: I'm going to end with a future oriented question.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you really want to do or something
Speaker 1: that if it came across your path you'd jump on doing?
Speaker 3: Well, I would like to be the mayor.
Speaker 2: Well, why don't you run?
Speaker 3: I couldn't win this room. I'm sure I couldn't win.
Speaker 3: I would like to be the mayor because we have
Speaker 3: horrible mayors, you know. I mean I've lived here for
Speaker 3: fifty years. There's been two mayors that I felt were
Speaker 3: good in fifty years. Is not enough? Not enough? All right?
Speaker 3: So it's a really great job. And it's the second
Speaker 3: hardest job in New York and in the country, no questions.
Speaker 3: And the mayor of New York one thing, since I
Speaker 3: just am our present mayor of someone I really don't like.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know this scene went last
Speaker 3: week to Mexico City that if you're the mayor of
Speaker 3: New York, do not leave New York until everything is
Speaker 3: fine here, okay. And if you want to take a
Speaker 3: tropical vacation, I don't want to pay for it. You know,
Speaker 3: he went to see why people immigrate. You know what,
Speaker 3: call me, I'll tell you why. Okay, get ten cents
Speaker 3: or whatever it costs to make a phone call. Now
Speaker 3: give me a call. I'm going to tell you. And
Speaker 3: don't get on a plane and charge it to New Yorkers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the city deserves so much love and
Speaker 1: attention and support and leadership and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: So you know, I've run for a few things. If
Speaker 1: you decided to run give me a call.
Speaker 3: I definitely wive a call.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Fran, what a joy.
Speaker 3: I rank you really was. It was a pleasure an
Speaker 3: honor for me too. Thank you.
Speaker 1: For information on where you can see Fran in person
Speaker 1: while she's on her speaking tour, go to Franlibowitz dot com.
Speaker 1: You and Me Both is brought to you by iHeartPodcasts.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week.