A Metropolitan Life

Illustration by Jordi Ferrándiz

You are returning to the Mondavi Center on Feb. 9, two years after your previous visit. Did anything stand out about your last time here?

I’m pretty sure it’s the [venue] where they have really good food. I remember, I kept saying, “I can’t believe how good this food is!” That is one of the things I remember, and that is not a bad thing to be remembered for—let me assure you that the food backstage all over the world is awful. Is this the campus where there’s also an agricultural school?

That’s the one.

OK, then I do remember it. That’s probably why they have good food.

And are you familiar with Sacramento?

What I always do when I do these [appearances] in California is: I stay in San Francisco, and I drive back and forth—by which I mean, sit in the back of a car [traveling] back and forth. This has nothing to do with California. This has to do with my absolute hatred of changing hotels every night. Most of what I know about Sacramento as a town is from reading Joan Didion, and from knowing her. She’s from there, right? 

Yes, Didion was a Sacramento native. She relocated to New York, where you’ve lived since the ’70s. How did you meet?

[Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne] gave a lot of parties. I’d have to say that’s probably how I met them. When I can’t remember where I met someone, I usually say “a party.” Her work that I loved the best was her stuff about California. Although many people write about California, mostly they’re not from California. And mostly they write about Hollywood. And although she wrote about Hollywood—and she did a very good job—the other aspects of California that she wrote about, there are not many people, if any, who write about it the way she did, like really from the inside.

Did any of Didion’s writing about growing up here stand out to you?

When she was young, she was very conservative politically. And she wrote a lot about that kind of upbringing—which, to me, was a very Eastern kind of upbringing. Joan was quite a bit older than me—and almost no one is quite a bit older than me anymore—and it was my impression that that type of life in California is probably gone. Maybe not wholly, but substantially gone. That was a very Eastern way to bring people up, even though she wrote all the time about how her family were pioneers.

READ MORE: Where She Was From – Joan Didion’s reflections soon after the release of her 2011 memoir

Your appearances usually take the form of an interview on stage followed by an audience Q&A. Is that the same format you plan at Mondavi Center?

Yes. I do that everywhere. This way, I don’t have to prepare. Someone interviews me on stage for half an hour, and then that person leaves the stage—or the venue. They are free to leave the venue if they’d like. And then I take questions from the audience for an hour.

Do you brush up on local news and events before you speak in a city?

I used to ask for a local newspaper in the dressing room, but that is not a very useful question anymore because, first of all, if you ask someone under the age of 25, they don’t even know what you’re talking about. It’s as if you asked, “Would you please put a butter churn in my dressing room?” They don’t really know what [a newspaper] is. Generally, the questions are not that local, because people know I’m not from there.

I feel like maybe you’re the only speaker for whom audiences probably prepare material, rather than the other way around—like they really want to tee up a Fran Lebowitz-ready question or predicament for you to respond to. Do you ever sense audiences doing that?

You know, I never thought about it, frankly. For the number of people who want to prepare something, there is an equal number who—let me put it this way—are perhaps drunk. This happens very often in a city when you are doing it on a weekend. It happens all the time in London, where you have to have an intermission so they can go to the bar. Sometimes I do book signings afterward, and sometimes—I don’t know why they think this—they say, “I was trying to think of something witty to ask you to write.” It would be fruitless, because I don’t do that. Give me your name; that’s what I’ll put in there. If your name is hilarious, then I’ll put your hilarious name in. Lots of times, people respond to the other questions that are asked in the audience. Truthfully, for me, the questions from the audience are the ones I find to be the most fun.

Director Martin Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz in the Netflix documentary series Pretend It’s a City (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

Like many cities, Sacramento is at a crossroads as it envisions the future of its downtown since the pandemic. Audiences who have followed your work over the years—particularly Martin Scorsese’s 2021 Netflix series Pretend It’s a City—are familiar with your grievances about New York’s developments over the last few decades, from Times Square to mega-skyscrapers to the subway, in particular. What is the biggest challenge for civic leaders as they try to rebuild their downtowns, and what can people do to effect change?

The problem since the pandemic is that people didn’t go back to work downtown. Towns and cities were all built with the idea that people go to work there. This is something that no one ever thought about: “What if people never come to work again?” That’s the problem with San Francisco. I know everyone thinks it’s drugs and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t think that’s what it is at all. Those things crop up after no one goes to work. I’m surprised [employers] asked people: “Would you like to go back to work downtown?” Because who would say yes? It’s like asking kids, “Would you like to do homework?” “No thanks.” If no one is going to ever go back to work again, then I cannot imagine what cities are going to be.

Also, there is a general lack of interest in local politics, no matter where you are—including New York City. But people have to be interested in it; they have to care about it. If they don’t care about it, then what you’re going to get is what you always get. [Young people] always say, “I don’t know what to do, Fran.” Run for something. You can complain how old politicians are all you want. And they are old—too old! But the problem is, no one runs! You have to run for stuff. A lot of power resides in the hands of local politicians. A lot. And if you don’t take an interest in it and try to affect it, it’s going to be horrible.

I have seen you described variously as a speaker, a humorist, a public intellectual, a social commentator and an author. [In 1978, Lebowitz made her book debut with Metropolitan Life, which became a New York Times bestseller.] Do you have a preferred designation or title? Like, if you had a business card, what would it say?

[Chuckles] I do not have a business card. I used to say that what I wanted to be was a Supreme Court justice, especially when I found out many years ago that you don’t need to be a lawyer to be on the Supreme Court. And since I am not a lawyer, I thought, “I am ready.”

You got to play a judge in your cameo in Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street. 

Yes, unfortunately, playing a judge is the closest I will get. Truthfully, now—even though it’s not an opportunity available to me—I would not want to be on the Supreme Court. Imagine having to go to work with those people. Those are the people who shouldn’t have gone back to work, frankly.

This interview has been edited for length, flow and clarity. Fran Lebowitz will appear at the Mondavi Center on Feb. 9. For more info and tickets, visit mondaviarts.org.