Pre­tend It’s a City is a wry love let­ter to pre-pan­dem­ic New York

New York has a way of turn­ing peo­ple into land­marks, one of them being the writer and social com­men­ta­tor Fran Lebowitz, who is now so ingrained in the city’s fab­ric that she recent­ly referred to her­self as ​“the des­ig­nat­ed New York­er” in an inter­view with the New York­er.

Her decades-long career began in the late 1970s with a film col­umn in Andy Warhol’s Inter­view mag­a­zine. Two books, count­less talk show appear­ances, film cameos and speak­ing gigs lat­er, Lebowitz has become well-known for her intel­lec­tu­al wit and for aim­ing sly, pre­cise at any­one and every­thing – US polit­i­cal fig­ures, the annoy­ing habits of oth­er peo­ple, her own writ­ing, and more than any­thing, herself.

Now Lebowitz has part­nered with direc­tor and fel­low New York­er Mar­tin Scors­ese the delight­ful sev­en-part Net­flix series Pre­tend It’s a City. The premise is sim­ple: Lebowitz, pro­duc­er Ted Grif­fin, and Scors­ese (who direct­ed a pre­vi­ous Lebowitz doc­u­men­tary, 2010’s Pub­lic Speak­ing) meet up at the Play­ers’ Club in Gramer­cy and chat in the emp­ty din­ing room.

These con­ver­sa­tions are inter­spersed with found footage and Lebowitz vis­it­ing her favourite – and occa­sion­al­ly most hat­ed – places in New York. Each episode cen­tres around a spe­cif­ic top­ic, such as Lebowitz’s love of read­ing, the Sub­way, or the fan­ta­sy of New York, but gives the humorist the space to explore wher­ev­er these prompts take her. She turns a stroll with Scors­ese through the New York Pub­lic Library into an explo­ration of the city’s immi­grant her­itage and goes to Times Square to bash for­mer may­or Mike Bloomberg’s embrace of tourism that she sees as a gen­tri­fy­ing force.

It would be too easy to cast some of Lebowitz’s past work as snark for snark’s sake, but Pre­tend It’s a City cor­rect­ly por­trays her ideas, humour and gripes as (most­ly) com­ing from a place of love. She scolds New York’s taxis, pedes­tri­ans and hous­ing only because she cares about her city, plain and simple.

This for­mat sim­ply wouldn’t work if Lebowitz wasn’t such an engag­ing pres­ence. Her casu­al but con­fi­dent atti­tude is an enter­tain­ing con­trast to her quick-wit­ted jibes that the series breezes by. While Grif­fin is a most­ly silent observ­er at the table, Lebowitz and Scors­ese bring out the best in each oth­er. They are equals in enthu­si­asm, but Scorsese’s wide-eyed admi­ra­tion for New York teas­es out a more opti­mistic side to Lebowitz; she’s no less acer­bic, but occa­sion­al­ly will­ing to express good­will towards the city.

This is most evi­dent in Lebowitz’s impas­sioned defence of work­ing-class women in the #MeToo move­ment, as well as her rem­i­nis­cences of her late friend Toni Mor­ri­son. Don’t mis­take this for a mel­low­er Lebowitz though: her com­ment about the death of her for­mer Inter­view boss is espe­cial­ly vicious. But Pre­tend It’s a City does sig­nal that she has entered into her wis­er elder states­man period.

As the wild­ly mis­guid­ed ​‘New York is dead’ dis­course rages on and the city adapts in the face of var­i­ous crises, it’s a balm to see Lebowitz defend – and, of course, lov­ing­ly ridicule – the place. New York is not dead as long as Lebowitz remains.