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Pretend It’s a City consists of roughly four different settings: Fran Lebowitz walking through Manhattan, Fran Lebowitz talking to Martin Scorsese in the dimly lit Player’s Club, Fran Lebowitz scuttling around Robert Moses’s miniature model of New York City, and Fran Lebowitz pontificating to audiences of New Yorkers. Between these scenes Lebowitz herself appears interchangeable, wearing the same, or similar, outfit of a button down shirt, blazer, blue jeans, and sturdy looking shoes. These scenes follow a call-and-response format: Lebowitz offers a wry, dry opinion and the listener — Scorsese, a famous counterpart, or a faceless audience member — laughs.
Pretend It’s a City is seven episodes of Lebowitz talking about her favorite place: New York City. ‘Cultural Affairs’ differentiates artistic talent from work ethnic (you need both to be great, though you can’t work your way into being talented, Lebowitz says). ‘Metropolitan Transit’ is exactly what it sounds like. And in ‘Hall of Records,’ we learn that Lebowitz doesn’t believe in guilty pleasures. Pretend It’s a City isn’t just about words, it’s about perspectives. Wandering through Moses’s New York, Lebowitz is literally larger than New York City, she could crush the Empire State Building with a blue bootied foot, she could trample on the gentrifiers and posers who she credits (partially) with the city’s cultural downturn. And quite literally, New…
