“You’re of your era,” Fran Lebowitz says in response to a question that was addressed to her from the audience last Sunday, in Berlin. I can’t actually remember the question, but it’s beside the point the anyway, as Fran takes the essence of every question from the crowd and answers it by talking about whatever she wants to talk about — admittedly, more interesting than the initial inquiry.
With her signature grouchiness and comedic timing, many of the things Fran says in her sold-out show in Berlin are opinions and stories she’s told before, in the myriad of interviews, TV shows and public appearances she’s had since the 1980s. This is fairly common to public figures. The one thing I had never noticed before, however, is her Slavoj Žižek’esque throat tic, which I assume is more the result of her lifelong commitment to smoking, rather than a nervous tick. But who knows?
For an avid Fran-fan like myself, attending the show was exciting in a, “when will I ever get to see Fran live again” kind of way. But, for an avid Fran-fan like myself, the show was also a sad reminder of how fame reduces an individual to a number of traits that ultimately become a narrow, entertainment persona; a caricature.
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First question from the audience is about Andy Warhol and The Factory. Fran says what she’s said several times before: Andy was not exactly her favourite person, but they tolerated each other — and, of course, his hiring of Fran at Interview magazine indisputably propelled her career. “A genius, he was not,” Fran laughs dismissively. I wonder what it’s like to have had an encounter with someone who will define the outcome of your entire life moving forward — and this someone happens to be a person you couldn’t stand on a personal level. That’s what I’d ask her.

Second question from the audience: how was Studio 54? Fran says, “Well, it was a club.” After a brief, disappointed silence, she indulges the question by offering a few more details. “With a lot of drugs. And some cute people!” She laments how it had become a money-making machine towards the end of its time, making it less fun of a place.
The questions continue, mostly gravitating around the US and good ol’ New York. The fame of Andy Warhol and Studio 54 seem to define what makes Fran interesting in front of a wide audience in Berlin that has paid to come see her speak. In a sense, to the public, Fran is seen as embodying an era in itself; a survivor of a time that’s highly idealized and romanticized across the board, perhaps even more so in Europe: the New York of the 1970s and 1980s.
There’s no question that this time was formative for Fran’s life and career alike.
Hell, she’s probably the last famous culture critic this world will get to know across all generations — quick, tell me the name of another contemporary influential critic, with great style. No Joan Didion, no Susan Sontag, no Harold Bloom. The truth is contemporary critics like Alexandra Schwartz, Vinson Cunningham, or Naomi Fry are hardly known outside of literary and intellectual circles. Slavoj Žižek is perhaps the only one to come close in mainstream fame.
Despite not having actually written a book in forever, Fran has a lot of interesting things to say beyond Andy Warhol and Studio 54. Thankfully, she’s come of age in a time where print media was all the sh*t, and her stories and opinions are recorded for posterity.
Here are some of my favourite bits.
What actually makes up Fran’s era?
Fittingly, Fran picked up on the youth’s obsession with the New York of the past:
We live in an era where people are nostalgic for eras they didn’t even live in… Now, kids say to me, ‘Fran, I wish I had lived in New York in the 1970s.’ This is someone who was born in the 1990s. I never thought, I wish I were in the 1940s when I was young. That is very bad for the culture.
Fran arrived in New York from New Jersey in the late 1960s, which meant she was there for arguably some of the most exciting, and equally agitating, times for New York. The social and political context: the Civil Rights Movement, the height of the Vietnam War, second wave feminism, AIDS, and, alas, Studio 54 and Andy Warhol.
Yet Fran often dispels the popular romantic ideas about New York of the 1970s:
That it was so much cheaper: “New York has always been more expensive than any other place. Even when the city was bankrupt in the ’70s it was still too expensive for most people I knew.”
That people lived decadent lives: “I think another element of constantly going out for me — and I think for all the people I knew at the time — was we had such awful apartments. No one wanted to stay in them. It never occurred to me that staying home could be pleasurable, because it wasn’t.”
That it was simply the best time ever, when the city was in fact being torn to shreds by the AIDS epidemic and the impact that had on culture at large: “The effect of AIDS was like a war in a minute country. Like, in World War I, a whole generation of Englishmen died all at once. And with AIDS, a whole generation of gay men died practically all at once, within a couple of years. And especially the ones that I knew… The New York Times, they gave me the topic: What was the effect of AIDS on the culture? Which, in my opinion, was: What is culture without gay people? AIDS completely changed American culture. People always say ‘pop culture.’ As if we have some high culture to distinguish it from. The first people who died of AIDS were artists. They were also the most interesting people. I know I’ve said this before, but the audience for the arts—whether it was for writing or film—the knowing audience also died and no longer exists in a real way… And it allowed people who would be fifth-rate artists to come to the front of the line. It decimated not just artists, but knowledge.”
Studio 54, by the way, was not Fran’s no.1 favourite place — she talks about her favourites, Max’s Kansas City, 12 West, Le Jardin, in this great interview in The Paris Review, Max’s being the all time favourite: “The great thing about Max’s was that it wasn’t sexually delineated in any way, so you could be with a bunch of people of wildly varying sexual tastes, and you would have someone to talk to. You could talk to your friends, have actual fun, and then everyone could get laid. What way would you prefer to spend an evening? That was to me the greatest place.”
That everyone had sex, all the time — well, that’s actually true: “During the time that I went out every single night of my life, it wasn’t that you had sex every time you went out, but that’s why you went. That’s what propelled you out the door. So at least if you didn’t actually have sex, it was sexy. There was a sexual atmosphere.”
That it was a great time for being gay: “When I was young, it was actually illegal to be homosexual. You had to pretend to be straight to find a job. And they always said what was dangerous about homosexuals was that they’d convince kids to be homosexual. It was this second-hand homosexuality they were afraid of. And there was tremendous contempt expressed for homosexuals that was totally allowed, totally encouraged. You can’t do that anymore. People still hate homosexuals, but they can’t say that.”
Fran is of her era, and she has lived to tell the tale. Martin Scorsese referred to Public Speaking, his 2010 documentary on Fran, as an ode to a “vanishing breed of New York celebrity”. And, kind reminder, she didn’t have it easy, as a gay, woman, writer, in the 1970s and 1980s — despite this being her calling card now. She embodies a specific personality, of a specific zeitgeist, simmered to its quintessence. Unapologetic, unfiltered, occasionally tactless, overflowing with definitive maxims — no wonder her shows are always sold out, with us, people of a different era, desperate to experience a different worldview, a different way of voicing opinions.
Fran is well aware of this:
This is not an age where any type of intellectual harshness is welcome in our culture. There are two reasons for that. The first one is that most expression has become so personal. Even politics have become so personal. Things that really should be more abstract have become really personal. People respond personally to everything, and people are encouraged to be really solipsistic.
Secondly, our culture has become immensely democratic, but the society has become much less democratic. For me, I would prefer the opposite. I’m not saying it used to be perfect; it didn’t. I’m saying that the way it is now, where there’s this idea that everybody’s expression is as good as everyone else’s, is absolutely not true. It’s a lie. You can pretend it’s true, but some people are just simply better writers, better artists, and musicians than others. The idea that everyone is an artist is an absurd idea, by the way.
So who, I ask you, will be the next Fran Lebowitz? Who will represent the quintessence of our era?
Fun pieces with Fran:
“Have Tux, Will Travel” Vanity Fair, 1985
“The Voice: Fran Lebowitz” Interview Magazine, 2016
“Fran Lebowitz Doesn’t Dance Anymore” The Paris Review, 2018
“In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui”, Brooklyn Rail, 2014
“Julia Gets Wise with Fran Lebowitz”, Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus Podcast, 2023