Original subtitles

The media requires there be a new genius every season.

You would be very lucky if, in your whole life,

you saw the work of one genius.

But very few people are great young,

great, great, great, great all along,

but Picasso was.

It was widely reported that this man owned

what was consistently referred to in the press,

I'm not sure of the figure, but a $120 million Picasso.

And he was showing it to some friends.

And he hit it with his elbow and tore a hole in it.

And I was very amused by this, for numerous reasons.

One is that I kept asking people, "Which Picasso is this?"

And people kept saying, "A $120 million Picasso."

And I kept saying, "But which Picasso?

"I don't know which one is the 120 million one."

You know. And also, that changes.

You know, the price changes,

but the Picasso remains the same.

And then-- But really,

I was interested in this story and in this man,

because this man can't see.

And so I thought there is no more suitable and potent image,

symbol, for our time

than the image of the blind art collector.

I think that sums it up. I mean, you could--

If you were gonna write just a history of the era,

you should call it The Blind Art Collector and Other Stories.

It's a plot. It is a plot. How you been?

Hi. How are you? Okay.

We asked for your booth,

but we're not sure if we're in the right one.

Is this your booth?

The audience is going to come in

and it's going to be hard to get through that lobby.

7:35. We're supposed to start at 7:30, right?

If I was in the audience I'd be saying--

Happy about it? Really optimistic?

Did I strike you as unhappy?

Because this is me at my most buoyant.

I was going to say, "With all due respect."

This is me at my most buoyant.

Writers have to know things.

You know, they have to know things about life.

You know, musicians don't.

That's why there's musical prodigies.

You know, there was Mozart.

There's no equivalent to Mozart in writing.

Because even if you were that innately talented,

you would still have to know something

to write it down, you know.

And so in fields in which you have to know something,

there are no child prodigies.

Hence, the child actor,

a field where you actually are not well served

by knowing anything.

You may or may not learn more things about writing.

Some people don't. Some people are fully formed

with their first book.

With Philip Roth, you see that.

You know, they have that voice right away.

Some people specialize in youthful things in writing.

And then, of course, they get worse.

If you're gonna specialize in youth, you know,

you're gonna get worse.

I like doing this

because it's what I've always wanted my entire life.

People asking me my opinion.

And also in this situation,

people are not allowed to interrupt.

So it's not a conversation.

That's what I like about it.

You seem to me almost always right.

What do you mean "seem"? And almost--

But also, ahem, never fair.

That's why.

I'm always right because I'm never fair.

I never thought about it, but I have to concede

that I have way too frequently for my own moral comfort

been asked if I was an only child.

Which means obviously people feel

I have the personality of an only child.

Which I guess I do.

I actually wanted to be a cellist

when I was a small child.

I loved Pablo Casals. I had Pablo Casals records.

But I was remarkably untalented.

And when I realized I wasn't gonna be as good

as Pablo Casals, which was, like,

in the first four minutes of listening to the first record,

I realized I didn't want to be a cellist.

I had excessive standards.

But I was the worst cellist in my school orchestra.

I don't mean I wasn't just marginally not as good

as Pablo Casals. I mean that in a school--

A little grammar-school orchestra with five cellos,

I was fifth cellist.

And it was not an unfair assessment.

It was a fair assessment.

In my neighborhood, and I think all girls--

You had to do certain physical things,

you know, like climb trees, things like that.

All those type of things I was always very afraid of,

terrified of.

And I believe that this is at the point

at which I, like, thought, "If I say something funny,

"they won't notice I'm only on the first branch of the tree,

"not the fiftieth branch of the tree,

where I have, like, no intention of going to."

Because even as a child,

it really struck me as an idiotic exercise

to put yourself in danger for no reason.

In other words, all right, if--

Like, climbing a tree to me makes sense

if behind you are Nazis.

Okay? Right. I would-- You know--

Being in the tree is a smart thing to do

if on the ground are the Nazis.

If on the ground are the other kids

seeing how high you can go up,

even at that age, it seemed to me like, "Oh. No."

I was at least 9, if not older, when I learned to tell time.

It was the central disaster of my childhood.

My parents sent me to my aunt and uncle's house

for my winter vacation

with the idea that since my uncle was an engineer at IBM,

that he would be able to teach me how to tell time.

I mean, I suppose there was the idea

that this kid was so challenged--

Not a word they used then, --at learning how to tell time

that it required the expertise

of an MIT graduate who was an IBM engineer.

That's the level of person they felt I needed

to teach me how to tell time.

And it was just like the continuation, really,

of my own experience at home,

which was that everything was a clock.

Like, in other words, you know--

Did they try to help that way?

Yes. "Here's an oatmeal cookie.

Now, see, if this raisin was 12 and this raisin was 3..."

And I would like...

Just eventually it came to me,

although not fully, because, even now,

by which I mean my entire life,

I see that other people, if you ask them what time it is,

they look at their watch and they tell you.

This is something I've always envied because I have to like--

Then I tell you. Okay?

It lacks Ă©lan,

my telling you what time it is,

because you can see me concentrating.

Like I have to-- It's like whatever--

It's the time-telling equivalent

of moving your lips while you read.

That's how I tell time.

Then at some certain point in life, you know,

which I think was in the '70s, they invented digital clocks,

you know, which I resisted tremendously,

purely out of envy.

Like, "Oh, if they'd had this when I was a child,

I would have learned how to tell time."

And so since I didn't have it, I don't like it.

You know, the same reaction

that men of my father's generation had,

like, during the sexual revolution.

Like, "Oh, no, you don't. We never got that.

You're not getting it."

I felt the exact same way about digital clocks, you know.

I was a very, very bad high school student. Terrible.

The worst you could be.

Let me put it to you this way:

I was expelled from my school.

So you can't be a worse high school student than that.

Did you read...?

Constantly.

I mean, that's one of the reasons

I got expelled from high school.

Because I would be always reading

behind my actual textbooks.

And I was constantly punished for reading as a child,

even as a young child. Reading what?

Anything, instead of doing my homework.

Like, my mother would knock on my door,

"I know you're reading in there."

You know. I had-- My desk in my room when I was a child,

you know, had a drawer, like in the middle,

and my books would be on top,

and I would open the drawer and put a real book,

by which I mean one I wanted to read, as opposed to a math book.

And when my mother came in the room,

I would, like, close it like that.

And I want you-- This was not The Story of O, you know.

This would be, you know,

just a novel, just something that wasn't my schoolwork.

There are days,

this is one of them,

when you wonder

what your role is in this country

and what your future is in it.

How precisely you're going to reconcile yourself

to your situation here

and how you are going to communicate

to the vast, heedless,

unthinking, cruel white majority

that you are here.

I mean, I remember

the first time I saw James Baldwin, you know,

on The David Susskind Show when I was kid,

I never heard anyone talk like that.

You know, I always said, "I'm the only Jew in America

"whose first exposure to an intellectual,

it was a black guy."

You know? I mean, I didn't know

was there such a thing as Jewish intellectuals,

I did not grow up among them.

So my idea of an intellectual was James Baldwin.

I never heard anyone talk like that in my life.

I was, like, completely mesmerized by him.

I obviously love to talk,

so I never thought about being good or bad at it.

I mean, talking, to me, is like having a trick thumb.

Only when people started remarking on it did I realize

that people thought of it as anything special.

You know, I never really thought-- I was never--

And that's partially because

I was never complimented on it as a child.

I mean, in fact, the opposite.

When I was a child it was called talking back.

Okay?

You know, now it's called public speaking.

You know, but it's really the same.

So the thing that I used to get punished for

at home and in school and get bad marks in school for it

then, you know, at a certain point in my life I got,

actually, I don't know, paid, you know, and rewarded for it.

But it's the exact same thing.

Do you think there's a difference

between a female voice and a male voice in literature?

Even on the phone there's a difference

between a female voice and a male voice.

I think it's very important

that writers write in a real voice.

In their own voice.

But only if they're really good writers.

And I have noticed,

and surely even someone of your tender years have noticed,

that too many people are writing books, period. Okay?

There are too many books. The books are terrible.

And this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem.

And apparently, you have so much self-esteem

that you think, "You know what?

I shouldn't keep these thoughts to myself."

I should share them with the world."

When I first came to New York,

I fell in with a group of incredible talkers.

You know, I mean, incredible talkers.

And I thought my whole life would be like that.

There are certain things that happen to you when you're young,

the thing you always would imagine would happen,

and then you find out it was like a fluke.

You know, of course it disappeared.

But I fell in right away

with this bunch of incredible talkers.

They were all guys. They were all gay.

They were much older than me,

by which I mean a minimum of 10 years.

And I was 18 when I came to New York.

And it was a kind of--

I mean, it wasn't really competitive, you know,

but it was nasty, let me tell you. That's the other thing.

Once I met these guys, when I was, like,

literally, like, off the bus from Port Authority,

these are the first people I meet.

After that I suppose nothing could faze me.

What I did when I first came to New York, I drove a cab.

I did things like that, you know,

but just exactly enough to pay the rent,

and then I stopped working.

As soon as I had that $121 for the month

I wouldn't drive the cab anymore, you know,

because I wanted to hang out.

You know, I wanted to do nothing.

It's very important, I think,

for getting ideas or thinking of new things

that comes from, like, hanging around with other people.

You know, talking. You know, that life.

You know, sitting in bars smoking cigarettes.

You know, I mean, that's the history of art.

New York was not better because there was more crime.

It was better because it was cheaper.

And I mean relatively cheaper.

When a place is too expensive,

only people with lots of money can live there.

That's the problem. Okay?

You can like people with lots of money for certain reasons,

hate them for certain reasons, but you cannot say

that an entire city with lots of money is fascinating. It is not.

All these things, in my opinion, seem to occur

when they decided to get the city out of bankruptcy

by making it into a tourist attraction,

which everyone thinks was the smartest thing ever done.

In other words, in the '70s,

when the city was going bankrupt,

three guys got together and said, "What can we do?

"The city's going bankrupt.

"Well, no one here, you know, can think of anything.

"We'll just have to bring a lot of people here

"to come and look at it.

And, you know, that will be the way that we cure it."

And it apparently did. You know.

Ahem, it was an incredibly horrible idea.

And even at the time I thought it was.

I thought, "This is New York City." You know.

"We don't need this kind of, you know,

Sinclair Lewis boosterism here."

You know. "You don't want to come here? Don't.

Good, don't come here."

Ahem, it was a very bad thing,

because it made it seem like, you know,

New York had no resources.

You know, by which I mean human resources.

It's not like New York was a boring place. No.

You cannot lure these herds of hillbillies

into the middle of a city

and not have it affect the city. It's not possible.

You know. And sometimes-- And I'm like,

trying to, well, I would say, walking behind them,

trying to get past them, you know.

And I hear them say they don't like something.

"Oh, yes, we went there, you know."

"Oh, you mean that diner that has the waiters who sing?"

"Yes." "Did you like it?"

"No, they were singing too loud."

And I sometimes feel like saying,

"Really? You don't like it?

Tell us, because we built it for you."

"So if you don't

"like the diner with the waiters singing,

we're happy to close it down."

Like, what would we do with Times Square

if there's no tourists?

You know, a place that we built for them.

I mean, it used to be just a neighborhood.

Okay, it's a place that we built for them.

I live near Times Square.

So I want to tell you something.

Here's something we could use in this neighborhood:

A butcher.

A shoe repair. A stationery store. A bookstore.

You could fill it with things New Yorkers need.

Times Square now, in the last many years,

here's what it's like in Times Square.

If you're a New Yorker

and you run into another New Yorker in Times Square,

it's like running into someone in a gay bar in the '70s.

You--

You instantly start making excuses as to why you're there.

"I'm not really here..."

"I'm not really in-- I'm not really in Times Square.

"I'm on my way to some other-- I'm doing research."

The reason that people used to move to cities--

One of the reasons, in fact, that I moved to the city.

--is that if you grow up in a small town,

it's incredibly oppressive.

You know, it's very oppressive

to have people know every single thing about you.

You know, the nosy neighbor is not an urban figure.

You know,

the nosy neighbor is a small-town figure.

And everybody knows everything about everybody

and it's very suffocating.

And so that people used to move to cities

so they could do what they wanted.

Even if what they wanted to do was just walk down the street

without someone calling up and saying,

"I saw Joe walking down the street."

But if you want to do something, like--

Other than that, you had to live in a city.

And now, people don't-- I mean--

Anonymity is the worst thing that people can have, I think,

because there's such a general desire for fame.

You're a star, baby. Let me see that star quality.

Within the last 25, 30 years,

fame itself became an extremely valuable thing to people,

divorced from anything else.

And that is basically the fault of Andy Warhol.

I mean, one of the things Andy did

was he made fame more famous.

Because Andy kept, like, using the word "fame" all the time.

It was a joke.

Let me assure you, this was a joke.

You take these drag queens, who are actually criminals,

because it was against the law to wear a dress

if you're a man at the time. And you say, this drag queen--

Of course they want to be a movie star.

They want to be an exact movie star.

In other words, you know, Candy Darling, you know,

wants to be exactly, you know, Marilyn Monroe. Okay?

This is a drag queen fantasy at the time.

No one takes it seriously, except Candy does.

And then Andy says, "You're not just a movie star,

like Marilyn Monroe, you're a superstar."

He makes it up. It's a joke. It's a joke.

This is what ruined the world.

This is what happens when an inside joke

gets into the water supply.

I'm Fran Lebowitz. I started writing for Interview,

I think, in 1970.

And the first time that I met Andy at the Factory,

when I went to apply for this position,

the door of the elevator opened

and there was a metal door behind it

that had a sign taped to it saying,

"Knock loudly and announce yourself."

Being 20, and this being my day of humor,

I knocked on the door, and someone said, "Who is it?"

I said, "Valerie Solanas," Andy opened the door.

When I was young, in the late '70s early '80s,

my first real audience was from Interview Magazine,

and at that time that audience was 99.9, you know, homosexual.

Male homosexual.

And that audience was very important to me.

This was part of what formed my voice.

Everyone talks about the effect that AIDS had

on the culture in the sense--

I mean, people don't talk about it anymore,

but when people did talk about it,

they talked about like what artists were lost.

But they never talked about this audience that was lost.

You know, when people talk about, like, you know,

"Why was New York City Ballet so great?"

Well, I mean it was because of Balanchine and Jerry Robbins

and people like that, but also, that audience was so--

I can't even think of the word. I mean,

"Suzanne Farrell went like this instead of this."

That was it. She might as well just kill herself.

There would be like a billion people who knew exactly

every single thing, you know.

There was such a high level

of connoisseurship of everything,

that people like this were interested in,

you know, of everything, that made the culture better.

You can-- You know, a very discerning audience.

A very-- You know--

An audience with a high level of connoisseurship

is as important to the culture as artists.

It's exactly as important.

Now we don't have any kind of discernment.

When that audience died,

and that audience died in 5 minutes.

Literally, people didn't die faster in a war.

And it allowed, of course, like,

the third, the second third, fourth tier

to rise to the front.

Because, of course, the first people who died of AIDS

were the people who, I don't know how to put this,

got laid a lot.

Okay, now imagine who didn't get AIDS, okay?

That's who was then lauded as the great, you know, artist.

Okay?

You know, if the other people that hadn't died had been alive,

if they all came back to life, I would say to them,

"Guess who's a big star?

"Guess who has a show on Broadway?

Guess who is, like, a famous photographer?"

They would fall on the floor. Are you kidding me?

Because everyone else died.

Last man standing, okay? I mean, that had a--

The loss of that audience had a terrible effect,

and a terrible effect on me,

I mean, by which not just a sad,

personal effect on me,

but a terrible effect on me

because everything has to be broader.

I mean, I don't do that, you know,

but everyone else did, you know.

Everything has to be more blatant, more on the nose.

Broader, you know, because obviously

they're not going to be pick up little subtleties.

Things in the culture that had nothing to do

with the New York City Ballet,

you know, it just got dumbed down, dumbed down,

dumbed down, all the way down.

One of the reasons we wanted to come here

was to show the country The Oscar Levant Show.

And-- Pretty degrading, isn't it?

No, it is not.

It's probably the most brilliant wit ever on television.

You know, you must understand about wit.

Wit's very infrequent. You mention so-called wits

and they've said two or three things in their whole lifetime.

Almost. It's true. Now humorous is something else.

You know, that cracker-barrel, "Aw, shucks,"

Charlie Weaver stuff, who gets off-color every now and then,

that's-- He's really very funny.

I don't dig my toe in.

I'm not a cracker-barrel philosopher.

The humorist is just a comedian that scratches.

Isn't that more or less what happens?

No, a humorist is somebody like you who has four writers

and then adlibs for the rest of the-- No, that's--

It's hard being his friend, I'll tell you that.

See what we have had in the last like 30 years

is too much democracy in the culture,

not enough democracy in the society.

There's no reason to have democracy in the culture. None.

Because the culture should be made

by a natural aristocracy of talent.

Okay? I mean-- By which I mean, like,

here it doesn't have to do with, you know, what race you are

or what country you're from or what religion you are.

It should have to do with how good are you at this thing?

And that is a natural aristocracy.

"No, your book is not as good as anyone else's book," you know.

"No, your life story would not make a good book.

Don't even try."

I had to introduce Toni Morrison, or something,

and give her an award-- She has not received enough.

And since everyone was gathered to see Toni

get her 8 millionth award, I said, "Since you're--

"Now that I have you all here, I just wanna say one thing.

"When Toni Morrison said, 'Write the book you want to read,'

she did not mean everyone, okay?"

When I read things you've written,

there's something in there that is--

I can distinguish by sound, not by definition,

which is the difference between wit and the comic,

or the humorous in writers.

What do you think that difference is?

Niceness.

Niceness?

I mean, or, what people call, like, you know, warmth.

Wit.

No, comedy.

Ah, oh, I see. I see, I see.

Like, we have a lot of comedians,

because people like comedians.

People like comedians because comedians

usually make fun of someone

other than the person they're talking to.

You know, or if they directly make fun of that person,

it's in a very insulting, vulgar way.

But in writing, wit is something-- It's cold.

It has to be cold. You know.

Wit is judgment.

Oscar Wilde-type coldness.

Yeah. People always say "Oscar Wilde-type"

like there's a lot of other people like Oscar Wilde.

There's only one.

It's true, it's true.

Yeah. I mean-- And it's also usually short.

Mm-hm. You know.

It usually can't be dragged out to the length of a feature film.

And also, it has a lot of assumption to it,

which is not a thing Americans like.

They don't want you to assume, presume, or judge.

That's elite.

I don't remember what your question was.

Yes, you do.

No, you've explained it entirely correctly.

Good.

I adore you.

I'm now 47, but I'm not kidding you,

you rescued me at 15 in Albany, New York,

when Metropolitan Life came out.

I used to be 47.

Last year.

Just last month. Yeah.

Oh, that one's done.

Yeah, this one I got done in '93.

Well, then, keep that. It's a younger signature.

Yeah. Yeah. So very nice to see you again.

Nice to see you. Thank you. Okay.

When my first book came out, I was 27.

There were no people my age who had books out.

That is a generational thing, because people my age,

they didn't want to be writers.

People my age wanted to be musicians or filmmakers.

So all the people I knew who wanted to be--

Who were artists. That was the thing.

So I had, like, no contemporaries, you know.

And it looked like it was dying out.

That's why people should stop saying,

"This is the end of that." You don't know.

"This is the end of that. This is it."

When my first book was published, the publisher said,

"I don't know. This book isn't gonna sell, because it's--

Not since the 1920s has a book of comic essays sold."

And even though I was a kid, I said, "So what?"

And really, I would say that now. So what? You know?

Then here's what happens. One comes out and sells,

there's a million of them.

Who was trying to buy your book back then?

Everybody. Everybody?

Everybody. Who'd you meet with?

Everybody. I met with everybody.

Everyone tried to buy the book. I met with everybody.

I didn't sell the book because I--

I didn't-- Didn't want them to ruin my book,

which was a book of essays.

So I knew that it would be ruined. I mean, it isn't--

You know, I mean-- And--

The more I said no, which was taken, of course, as a tactic,

the higher the price went.

Until I actually had, well, more than one meeting,

but one meeting I remember,

and I think it might have been Warner Bros.,

because Warner Bros. might have had, like,

a real office here in the '70s, late '70s.

They did, they did.

And I remember sitting at, like, a huge conference table,

where finally, someone who was head of the New York office

said, "All right, well, I suppose you want to direct."

That-- And I was so stunned by that idea because...

That's when I realized that they really didn't believe me.

I said, "No, I don't even want you to make this into a movie.

"Not only do I not want to direct this movie,

I don't want this to be a movie."

And many movie stars tried to buy it.

Women tried to buy it for themselves.

You know, and considering, I'm not gonna go into names,

but who was a movie star at the time,

this would be enough to repel even the most greedy amongst us.

I had every single meeting including one

where someone who wanted to make a musical out of it

and jumped up on the table in the middle of the meeting

to show me how it could be a musical.

And this went on for a very long time because of the saying no.

Yeah.

You know, this was unheard of, you know,

and no one believed me, including my agent.

You know, no one believed me and everyone kept telling me,

you know, "That's really good you said no because now--"

"Now we could really get more."

Right. And even some of the amounts of money I was offered

would be really great now. Yeah.

I mean, that's how much money I was offered.

And the same thing when the second book came out.

Another round of it started.

Now, if I had known that was it,

that would have been the point to--

But I didn't realize that.

But it was worth it for the meetings.

I'll always have these meetings.

The next morning, I was awakened by a telephone call

from said agent informing me that she had just

received and rejected the offer of a sum

in six figures for the movie rights to my unwritten book.

"I think we can get more," she said.

"I'll talk to you later."

I mulled this over and called her back. "Look," I said,

last year I earned $4,000 for the things that I wrote."

"This year, I've been offered two sums in six figures,

"this amount included the book rights to my unwritten book,

"for the things that I have not written.

"Obviously, I've been going about this whole business

in the wrong way."

"Not writing, it turns out,

"is not only fun, but also, it would appear,

"enormously profitable.

"Call the movie guy and tell him

that I have several unwritten books."

You've been on the road

with your hit book, Social Studies,

It's number 11 on The New York Times bestseller list.

What's it been like out there in America?

The exact opposite of here. What?

I love it out there in America.

What particularly do you like about it?

The way they buy books.

They are buying your book, aren't they?

Yes, they are. And I thank them for it.

Do you think that they know

what you're really writing about?

I hope not.

I understand that some people

seem to think it's a self-help book.

It is. It's helping myself.

I'm familiar with education

and art as sort of marginal.

And is this some kind of peculiarly American

kind of anti-intellectualism, you think?

Well, I don't know

how they think about it all over the world,

but certainly in America--

I mean, America has always hated, you know,

eggheads, or whatever, you know.

I mean, when they invent the term "elite,"

they don't mean rich.

America loves rich people. They mean smart.

I mean, "We don't want these elites in here.

We don't want any of you smart people in here."

Do you think some people are born lucky?

That is the biggest piece of luck in life.

Yeah. No one wants to admit that,

in this country especially,

because it agitates against the very notion of America.

But, I mean, that's the idea of democracy,

is to minimize that first second of luck.

When you draw your first breath, you know,

if babies had that type of consciousness,

they would look around and most babies would think, "Mm, no."

"Now this isn't what I meant.

This isn't what I had in mind."

Gender. Gender.

Gender. Very big piece of luck.

Here's what a big piece of luck it is.

Any white, gentile straight man

who is not president of the United States failed.

Okay?

That's what a big piece of luck that is. Okay?

So, what do you think

are the innate differences between men and women?

Testosterone. Testosterone is not learned.

Okay? If it could be learned,

we would be studying, because it works.

So testosterone is actually some sort of chemical

that is in the human body.

And testosterone gives people, men, who have it,

an advantage, because it is what makes men aggressive.

Women having babies is really a disadvantage.

It is a disadvantage to women.

Even though women now seek to have babies,

or in fact do extraordinary things to their bodies

in order to have babies at the age of 40, 50, whatever.

It does kind of put you out of commission in lots of ways.

Which is that once a woman has a baby,

she seems to be so interested in it.

I mean, a woman in a room with her baby

is looking at that baby. Okay?

Is that who you want for your lawyer?

Okay? Men now go around with their babies.

I see them all the time with their babies.

They're always talking about their babies,

but they're not really looking at them.

If they were your lawyer, they'd still be your lawyer.

Because they're really not that interested in the baby.

They just have to do that now, it's like, you know, the style.

So it is very hampering to women,

the fact that they have babies

or that they want to have babies.

You know, that is very hampering to women.

It is very helpful to men that they have testosterone.

You know, men don't want women to have power

because they already have it.

People don't want other people to have what they have.

When I was growing up,

I was taught in American history books

that Africa had no history,

and neither did I.

That I was a savage

about whom the less said the better,

who had been saved by Europe

and brought to America.

And, of course, I believed it.

I didn't have much choice.

Those were the only books there were.

Everyone else seemed to agree.

If you walk out of Harlem, ride out of Harlem downtown,

the world agrees,

what you see is much bigger,

cleaner, whiter, richer, safer.

And it would seem then, of course,

that it's an act of God.

That this is true.

That you belong

where white people have put you.

It seems to me that of all the indictments

Mr. Baldwin has made of America

here tonight

and in his copious literature of protest,

The Fire Next Time,

in which he threatens America,

he didn't, in writing that book,

speak with the British accent

that he used exclusively tonight.

In which he threatened America with the necessity...

...for us to jettison...

...for us to jettison our entire civilization.

The only thing that the white man has

that the Negro should want, he said, is power.

You wrote a fantastic piece

in Vanity Fair on race.

And I just really want to know how you felt

about the public discourse

about race in this last election.

You know, I mean, Obama's speech about race,

I thought, was great.

I thought that-- I mean, it seemed astonishing to me

that no one made such a speech before.

Yeah, it was. I mean,

here is the problem of being ahead of your time.

By the time everyone gets around to it, you're bored.

So you know?

I think that--

I think that people are afraid to talk about it,

because they feel they don't want to offend people,

or their usual way of talking about it is, in fact, offensive,

and they're trying to think what would be the non-offensive way?

I think that that's probably true a great deal of the time.

You know, I think it's very important

that there be a black president,

mostly so that we got it over with.

So that, you know, this-- Uh-huh.

This is something that should be in our past.

This shouldn't be in our present. This is absurd.

It's an absurd way to categorize people.

It is. I mean, in that piece that you talked about,

Erroll, my editor,

interviewed me about that. He asked me,

did I think racism would end? Yes. Uh-huh.

You know, could it end?

And I said no, I didn't think it would end.

You know. But I think it could end.

It's possible for it to end, because it's a fantasy.

Fantasy.

Racism is a fantasy of superiority.

A fantasy can end, you know.

It probably won't. But it can.

Whereas, you know,

inequality of women would never end,

because it's biological. It's a reality. You know.

Men are really different from women.

There is really a difference between men and women.

There is not really a difference

between people of different races.

You know, not-- I mean, the difference is skin-deep.

Mm-hm. You know.

So that racism can end. I don't think it will end.

I don't the election of Barack Obama shows that it ended.

I just think it showed that it's not as bad as it was.

You know. Which is really the most we can hope for.

I think that we're astonished

that Americans did anything good.

The history of writing is the history

of when people are actually writing

they do something bad to themselves at the same time.

You know, people used to drink, people smoked.

While you're writing, you're doing something bad to yourself,

and that is to punish yourself for playing God.

This is not the luckiest time to be a writer,

because writers don't have very much influence on the culture.

And there was a time when writers

were right in the center of the culture.

And that is more desirable,

because writers want to influence.

Were the Algonquin Round Table

an influence when you were growing up?

Well, I mean, I read about them. Yeah.

I'm not that old. I know.

They were in-- That wasn't the point.

I mean, I read--

Because they all had happy lives.

But they did. I mean, that life in New York City of those people

was very enjoyable. They did enjoy that life.

That's not true that they didn't.

I mean, they were not happy people

in the way that you're talking about.

But they did enjoy that life.

In that era, people played word games.

You know, I mean, adults, you know, played word games.

The use of language was highly valued

by the culture in general.

So if you were very good at it,

like George S. Kaufman or Dorothy Parker

or someone like that, then you were highly rewarded for it.

Razors pain you

Rivers are damp

Acids stain you And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful Nooses give

Gas smells awful You might as well live.

You've been referred to

as a modern-day Dorothy Parker,

and I was wondering if you agree with that.

And if not, who is it that you seek to emulate,

if anyone at all?

I'm very heartened that someone who, like,

seems, from this distance, to be as young as you are

ever heard of Dorothy Parker.

And I am even, at this point in my life,

happy to be considered the modern-day anything.

But I'm not really a person who's ever been, like,

that big on, you know, I don't know, emulating.

I mean, Dorothy Parker,

if you read her book reviews, you know,

book reviews of popular novels,

you never heard of the writer, you never heard--

They are unbelievably funny.

They're funny now. You don't have to know the writer.

You don't have to know the book.

So they lost all their context,

which especially funny writers

depend a lot on context like that,

and I don't suppose she thought

anyone would be reading them, you know, 60 years later.

But you can. And they're really funny.

You know, they're really, really funny.

For wit, I think Dorothy Parker.

For just plain, laugh-out-loud, unbelievable funniness,

I don't think there's any American writer

that touches Thurber.

I was kicked out of class numerous times

for reading Thurber behind my geography book.

You know, because you could not stop laughing.

I slept in his bed once.

Yeah, they made his house, you know,

his childhood house into a museum

and they invite a writer to go there and you sleep there.

And, of course, I didn't sleep, but I, like--

That's the museum I stayed overnight in by myself.

So I was, like, terrified.

They were issuing a Thurber stamp.

And I thought it was like a literary event,

the issuing of the stamp, but in fact is was a postal event.

And the postmaster general came dressed like a general.

The postmaster general has a uniform.

Where was this? This was at a bar.

This was wherever Thurber was from in Ohio, Cincinnati,

whatever it is.

It was the issuing of the stamp.

That was the actual event.

And there were hundreds and hundreds if not thousands,

of people in line, and I thought, "This is amazing.

So many Thurber fans."

No. They're stamp collectors.

It was like being at a Star Wars convention.

They go to every first day issue stamp thing.

They're all-- They look like Star Wars fans.

They're all like these kind of damp, sweaty boys,

hundreds of them. They--

And they have a certain way that you have to sign it.

They issue the first day cover,

and they want everyone associated with it to sign it.

And if you put your pen, like, in the wrong-- "No!"

"No." It was the most bizarre thing I've ever--

It was really like a Star Wars convention.

They issue the stamp-- I'm not kidding,

like, two months later they change the postage rate.

So nobody used them. So no one used them.

Not even two months.

That's fitting. That's just perfect.

So I have some of the stamps that I got there.

How does Mr. Kaplan plead? Quiet.

Not guilty, Your Honor. There's a first.

We are still exhuming bodies.

Enough. Someone else can sort through the evidentiary issues,

thank God.

Bail is set at 300,000, cash or bond.

Your Honor.

Happy? No? Good.

Next case.

That is my dream job, is to be on the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It is my dream.

For sartorial reasons?

For-- Well, robes. Also, you know,

other people write their work for them, you know.

They just give their ideas and other people write it up.

I think I'd be a fabulous Supreme Court judge

because also, I make snap judgments.

You know, there's no one more judgmental than me.

I don't know why it takes them so long.

Everything up before the Supreme Court,

I know the answer to. Like I think, really?

They're deliberating about this?

Do you believe in--?

No.

Do you believe in getting even?

You mean do I believe in revenge?

Yes. I definitely believe in revenge.

I absolutely believe in revenge.

Which people always say revenge is, you know,

a dish best served cold.

It's good anytime you can get it. You know.

Any chance you have for revenge, take.

Never let that pass you by. I do. I believe in revenge.

I don't believe in forgiveness, however.

It might be ethnic,

because forgiveness is a Christian thing.

I mean, forgiveness, in fact, is Christianity.

That's what Christianity is.

I mean, everyone was Jewish, then came Christ.

He said, "I'll forgive you."

Oh-ho! Well, they all went.

Naturally, it's a much bigger religion.

But the Jewish god is an avenging god.

The Jewish god's a judge, you know.

So I am-- I would say that I am very judgmental.

I'm afraid of gas.

Okay, I don't know, really, what gas is,

but I know it explodes, because that's how the car works.

Okay. I'm not touching something that's going to explode.

Okay? I don't want to, you know.

I do not want to, I do not feel--

My grandparents did not come here steerage to Ellis Island,

so I could put gas in a car.

I'm not putting gas in the car.

It's as simple as that.

I'm scared of it. It explodes,

it smells horrible, I don't want to touch it.

In Long Island once, I got, actually,

into a fight with someone who had like a million, like,

crosses on their-- It was a van,

and they had, like, all these crosses pasted to it,

and like, you know, "Jesus says" this

and "Jesus says" that.

And I said, "You know, I can't put gas in the car.

"I am very afraid of gas.

Could you, like, help me put gas in the car?" "No."

Are you kidding me? Like, the guy was really, like, nasty.

I said,

"Don't you think Jesus would put gas in my car?

"Like, say I asked Jesus.

"You seem to have an intimate relationship with Jesus.

You have things all over your car."

I said, "I personally believe Jesus, if I said,

"'Excuse me, Jesus, would you put gas in my car?'

"He would say, 'Of course.

'It's the Christian thing to do.'"

I own a Checker. Did you know that?

You own a Checker?

I own a Checker Marathon.

That is my car. I bought it new.

I bought it in 1978.

After my first book came out,

which was the first time I ever had money,

and among the last times,

the first thing I did was buy a car.

It is very large. In fact, it's pretty much

the size of the apartment that I had when I bought it.

And the color?

Well, it is such a subtle shade of pearl gray

that straight men think it's white.

You know, when I was in the garage,

I had to say, "It's the white..."

I used to have to say, "It's the white Checker."

Now I have to say, "It's that old big white car

that looks like an old-fashioned taxicab."

I remember when I got this car

driving up to a bookstore uptown

that was partly owned by this guy I knew,

and I pulled up in front of the bookstore in this car.

And he came out and he said, "Once a punk, always a punk."

Because, it was-- You know,

It's such a crazy thing to do, to own a car in Manhattan.

No one who lives in the Borough of Manhattan

who has a car uses it.

Because you want to get that full $8 million a month

out of the garage.

By which I mean, you have rented its own apartment,

which in any other city, it would be--

You could live lavishly.

And now, I'm going to answer questions

from the audience in an entertaining fashion.

You don't have to ask them in an entertaining fashion.

Don't ask them in an entertaining fashion.

When I do things, you know, like a reading,

or an interview on a stage,

I take questions from the audience.

But the truth is now

what people get are answers from the audience.

You know, and it's one thing that I do not want

is answers from the audience.

I mean, answers from the audience

used to be called heckling.

That's an answer from the audience.

You know, I mean,

who wants an answer from the audience, you know?

My feeling always is, "Really, you don't like it?

"I mean you came to see me, I didn't go to see you."

It isn't like I broke into your house, you know.

I know, for instance,

that there are people who really dislike me very intensely.

Almost no one says anything nasty to me,

because they're afraid I'll say something nastier back.

However, you can be, you know,

speaking at a college in, you know,

I don't know, New Orleans or something--

That's why I thought of because it happened in New Orleans.

And so there was an unusual number of, like,

what seemed to be fraternity boys,

which I would say was not maybe my usual audience.

But there seemed to be a lot of boys in the audience.

Like big groups of boys together.

You know, not like the big groups of boys together

I used to get in San Francisco,

the big groups of boys together that drink a lot of beer

and that you're not that happy to see

when you look into the audience.

Because I could still see them. It was a long time ago.

And it was New Orleans, which is very humid,

and it was also raining, which is, you know, common there.

So my hair was extremely curly.

And after I'd been there quite a long time,

one of these kids, these boys, yelled out,

"Who does your hair?" Which was a very surprising thing.

I mean, because obviously,

he meant my hair was, like, very curly.

And so I just said, "Why, you want to meet him?"

His mother wrote me a letter,

but I mean, like, a month later,

telling me that I had ruined her son's life,

that her son dropped out of school.

"You called my son a..."

You know, not a homosexual, another word for homosexual.

"And he was with his fraternity brothers,

"and they were so hard on him."

You know, and that he had to leave school.

And I thought to myself, "Really? He had to leave school?

He had to leave school?" I mean, can't you take a joke?

You know? You had to leave school?

And I thought, if the school had this type of fraternity in it,

you should be thanking me for getting your son

out of this idiotic school.

I'm not very often nasty.

I'm not very often nasty to people's faces, very rarely.

You know, first of all, you know,

I believe in talking behind people's backs,

that way they hear it more than once.

You know.

Do you have nerves

before speaking in front of people?

No. I reserve all of my fear for writing.

All of it. I mean, really,

otherwise I would say, you know, all of it.

Now of course, that's a very bad thing to do, you know,

if you're, say, supposed to be a writer.

Would be much better to, like, spread your fear out,

you know, so that you could actually,

I don't know, write.

But all my fear I put in one basket.

I once fell asleep in the green room

at Letterman before I went on.

That's how-- They had to wake me up.

"Fran, you're going on next."

Which, of course, means last if you're a writer.

Okay, finally, you know, Miss America is finally off.

You would be, like, the third.

There would be an actual movie star.

Then whoever is Miss America

or, you know, something like that, then you.

No, I have no nervousness at all.

You may be tired of this,

but tell me about the writer's block business.

Because everybody seems to want

to talk about you and writer's block.

Well, I mean, I-- I don't really--

I would not call it a writer's block.

A writer's block, to me, is a temporary thing.

A month. Six weeks. Yeah.

This is more a writer's blockade, I would say.

In fact-- Or a writer's decade?

Yes, I mean, to me this was very much like the Vietnam War.

It was the same timetable.

It was on the same schedule as the Vietnam War.

I don't know how I got into it and I couldn't get out of it.

So I don't really know all the reasons for it.

I mean, I think I had a kind of delayed

and not very positive reaction to success.

And you were able to go around and do lectures

and write a magazine piece here and a magazine piece there.

I basically did three million college lecture dates a year,

which is really a depressing way to make a living.

Yes, you spent a lot of time on airlines.

And I really felt you would slog through these airports

with your little suitcase.

I was like the Willy Loman of literature.

Yeah. You loved writing

until you became a professional writer.

You said that before. You said it again.

What was it about writing professionally?

I have a tremendous resistance to authority,

even if it's my own.

You know, I mean, I think I am really lazy.

I am the most slothful person in America.

No one has wasted time more than I have. No one.

No, I would say that, you know, I don't like to brag,

but I would say that--

Well, let me just put it this way:

I'm the outstanding waster of time of my generation.

I don't need, like, my friends to say this.

My enemies would tell you this is true, you know?

So there's no-- No one's wasted time more than I have.

I mean, I looked up-- You know, it was like 1979.

I looked up, it was, like, 2007.

I thought, "You know, you better get to work, Fran."

What's the best source for unbiased news?

Me.

He asked, in my opinion,

what's the best source for unbiased news.

Me. No, here is the problem.

Here is what news used to be. Information.

That's what news is.

Now every article in The New York Times starts--

No matter what it is, it starts with, like,

"On a rocky road in Afghanistan..."

It's like three paragraphs

till you get to a bomb blew up something in Afghanistan.

The bomb is the news. The beginning is the writing.

Facts, you know, facts are what's important in news.

But no one is interested in facts anymore.

People are interested-- And this I find astonishing.

They are interested in other people's opinions.

So unbiased news, I don't think we'll have anymore,

because no one seems to know what news is.

Okay? And no one seems to know,

and they turn on the news,

and they watch people give their opinions.

That's what they watch on TV, the Internet,

that's what they participate in.

Or how do you--? I mean--

Here's how I feel when someone on CNN says,

"And here is our Twitter number,"

or whatever you call it.

I'm not high on high technology.

But whatever it is. "We want to know what you think."

And I think, "Really? I don't."

Here is the host

of Jeopardy, Alex Trebek.

Thank you, Johnny Gilbert. Sean.

Let's try the Quotable Fran Lebowitz for 400, please.

Lynne. What are your guts?

Yeah. Lebowitz for 12.

Sean. What is room service?

Yes.

The media has replaced every institution.

It's replaced every single institution.

There is-- It's the only authority.

I mean, it seems to be an authority, you know,

but I mean it is--

It's replaced all other institutions.

You know, when they first invented television,

apparently there were people that thought

that television would be a failure,

because they thought that people,

if they could see around the screen,

they wouldn't believe what was on television.

In other words, they wouldn't become absorbed by it.

You know, they would be distracted,

because even though a TV screen--

That they would see, like, you know, the lamp and the sofa.

And they wouldn't-- And they wouldn't be absorbed by it.

And that was one fear about television.

Another fear about television was that, like,

say, in the 1950s, intellectuals said,

you know, it's gonna ruin the culture.

But no one could have imagined what really happened.

Which is that the world went inside the television

and became the world.

You know. And so even though that, you know,

everyone says the Internet is replacing television,

it's just a different--

And it's a screen. It's the same thing.

I mean, it's just a different format for it.

I do not have a cell phone. I do not have a BlackBerry.

I do not have a-- What do you call it, computer?

Or any of these things. A microwave oven. Whatever.

All of which seem like the same thing to me, by the way.

You know? Like, if you tell me,

"Well, the microwave oven, can you text on that?"

"Yes." I would believe you.

Okay, so, I have none of these machines.

Which is what allows people

to not be wherever they are. Okay?

But since I don't have them,

and I'm forced to be where I am all the time,

which is why I'm noticing what other people are doing.

Most people aren't noticing where they are

because they're not really any place.

They're-- If you are, like, doing this,

that's where you are.

I don't care where you're doing it, that's where you are.

So the experience of the street, say, in New York,

which I have commonly, you know, every day,

I'm one of the very few people in the street

having the experience of the street.

Walking in New York is a mode of transport.

That's how I get around. I walk everywhere.

So when I'm walking I'm, like, not strolling.

I'm not exercising.

I'm getting somewhere and, of course,

because it's New York, I'm late.

So one of the things I don't have time for is strollers.

If you look at who's in these strollers,

half the time the children are so big they don't even fit.

In other words, their legs are dragging.

These children, they're 5'10", 5'11",

they're lolling in the back.

I mean, the first person who invents a stroller

with a shaving mirror,

that person is gonna be a millionaire.

Because when I was a child,

the worst thing a child could call another child

was a baby. That was the worst thing.

Now apparently that is the goal of all children,

is to stay babies.

And it is apparently the goal of the parents,

maybe who figure, "We went to all this trouble

"to have a baby. Let's keep them a baby.

I mean, it cost 40 grand to have these two babies."

Or maybe more. Probably that's a naive estimate.

I don't know, I've never done this.

People are probably watching this and saying,

"Forty grand, what is she, some hick? Not here.

Here it costs 80 grand."

You know, they have these, like, twins.

They keep them in the stroller

till they're like 16, 17 years old.

They have this look on their face like,

"Walk? Not me. I'm not walking."

I'm wondering what the New York

of your dreams would be like,

if we got rid of the tourists, you know?

The New York of my dreams?

I mean, everyone, no matter how old they are,

says New York used to be better.

This has always been true, by the way.

In 1812, people said, "Wasn't New York better in 1790?"

So people always say New York used to be better,

and it can't always be true. Okay?

Now, I have been very careful not to do what many people do,

which is, one of the things,

when you say something used to be better,

that's implicit in that is that,

well, when it used to better,

here's one thing that is always true:

You were younger.

If you ask me, "Was New York better in the '70s?"

I would say, "Absolutely,"

with the caveat that I know that I was in my 20s in the '70s.

So I know that it's better

to be in your 20s than in your 50s.

I know that. I'm aware of it. Okay?

I do think, objectively, New York was better,

because it was less boring.

I don't know.

Everyone seems to have a very high boredom threshold.

Okay? Also, you could smoke.

Which is one of the reasons it was less boring.

Because if you're a smoker, when you're smoking,

no matter how boring it is, at least you're smoking.

Smoking is an addiction.

People act now like it's some sort of moral failure.

But, I mean, in fact, I mean, it's a very strong addiction.

You know. This is-- I mean, let me put it to you this way.

I could be starving to death. I wouldn't leave my apartment

at 3:00 in the morning in a snowstorm

for anything but cigarettes.

You know. And I remember once, you know,

being in a Duanereade, this drugstore,

to buy cigarettes at, like, 3:00 in the morning.

And the clerk had to say,

"Oh, you know, Marlboro Lights, they're on sale."

And I thought, really? Why? Why are they on sale?

I mean, you know, it's, like, is there a heroin sale?

You know, a sale is to entice you, and I'm here--

It's 3:00 in the morning, it's snowing. You know.

They could be a million dollars, I don't care.

All the things they say now about cigarette smoking,

they used to say about homosexuality. Okay?

They used to say you can't be around children.

It was really always the secondhand nature

of homosexuality that scared people.

Okay? You--

Gay bars were illegal.

They were in backrooms.

They were raided by the police.

But you could smoke in them.

It was against the law. And it was beyond the pale.

I mean, it was illegal,

and when they would raid a gay bar--

This is even when I first came to New York,

which was like '69, something like that.

When they would raid a gay bar, the next day,

the names of every single person in the bar, the patrons,

was in The New York Times, not just some tabloid,

and every single person was fired from their job that day,

and it didn't matter, what your job was.

If you were a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital,

you sold shoes at Bloomingdale's,

you taught third grade at PS10,

you were fired from your job.

And the reason: You were homosexual.

That was the reason for firing.

That wasn't like, "Well, we're going to pretend

it's about something--" No. It was respectable to do that.

Now, gay bars have, like, plate-glass windows,

they have valet parking, the cars pull up,

people are sitting in the windows.

But you have to go outside to smoke.

I mean, if you had told me, when I was 14 years old,

that the behavior in which I engaged

that would be considered most deviant

would have been cigarette smoking,

I would have had a whole different adolescence.

I have a shelf full, more than a shelf full

of books written by doctors about homosexuality,

explaining how it's contagious it's deviant, it's--

Just the way, I guarantee you,

I won't live long enough because I smoke,

but you will live to see them admit that this data

on secondhand smoke is fudged.

If secondhand cigarette smoke, this little stream of smoke,

if that is that dangerous,

imagine what happens when you turn on

the engine of your car.

Do you feel that gay rights is progressing in this country,

to be as equal as--

I mean, to be part of the civil rights conversation?

First of all, I don't think these things are alike

the way other people do.

I think there has always been a difference between these things.

And I think there is a difference

between being marginalized and being oppressed.

I know-- I know every bad thing, believe me.

I'm not saying it's nothing.

I'm just saying it's not slavery. Okay?

It's not the same thing.

In my lifetime, it's inconceivable

that it's even gotten to the point

where people use the word "gay."

That's progress, by the way. I mean, if you like the word.

I personally don't use it in private, but--

--I mean, do I think gay marriage is progress?

Are you kidding me?

Like, this was one of the good things about being gay.

I mean, I am stunned

that the two greatest desires, apparently,

of people involved in gay rights movements

is gay marriage and gays in the military. Really?

I mean, to me it seems like these are

the two most confining institutions on the planet:

marriage and the military.

Why would you be, like, beating down the doors to get in?

Usually a fight for freedom is a fight for freedom.

This is like the opposite.

You know, this is like a fight for slavery.

I find it completely shocking.

I mean, if it was on the ballot here

I'd vote for it because I know people want it.

But, personally, not me.

Nor do I want to go in the Army.

I mean, people used to pretend to be gay

to get out of going in the Army.

I always had this theory

that if you want to move someone else as an artist,

you want to,

you yourself necessarily must have been deeply moved

by what it is that you're writing,

but you must keep exploiting that emotion in yourself

over and over and over and over

till you've become completely cold about it.

I mean, so that you no longer laugh, say,

about whatever it is that made you laugh,

or you don't weep for whatever it is that made you weep.

You see it like it was some extraordinary specimen

but you know that it had that effect on you, personally.

So that you know that if you can reproduce it,

you can make it have exactly the same effect on--

On someone else.

People used to say all the time

there must be something about homosexuality

that makes you more artistic.

Because there is such a huge,

I mean, beyond excessive number of homosexual artists

relative to the number of homosexuals.

But, of course, it isn't it true.

What is not true that being homosexual makes you artistic.

What is true is that being put in prison,

or being, like, kept out,

or being-- Being depressed.

I mean, or being-- Being forced to observe.

When Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature,

she took a bunch of friends with her to watch her get it,

because I guess what's the fun of winning a Nobel Prize,

if people don't see you get it?

And at the Nobel Prize ball,

which is an incredibly elaborate event,

even more than it sounds like,

with flags flying on the-- It's really beautiful.

The whole city stands out to applaud economists and writers.

It's just like New York.

And it is very formal.

It's like white tie.

And we all walked in together, all of Toni's friends.

And there's someone who's in charge

of seating the Nobel Prize dinner.

And everyone was sitting at the same table, except me.

Well, not Toni. Toni was sitting with the king.

As I sit down, I realize I'm the only adult at the table.

It is all-- All the people who win the science prizes,

they're very young, you know.

And it was all-- It was their kids.

I was sitting at the children's table

at the Nobel Prize ball.

It's, like, it took me years to get out of that table

in my own family at Thanksgiving,

and now, I'm sitting at this children's table

at the Nobel Prize ball,

where the next oldest person to me was 12.

And this was what the Nobel Prize ball dinner,

which is like six hours, was like for me.

"Put that down. Take that out of your pocket."

It would be like--

And they're reading the menu

and the food comes and the little boy next to me,

the 8-year-old says, "What's that?"

And so I said, "Mm, it's steak."

It was a reindeer. Oh.

And so he goes, "Really, it's steak?"

I said, "Yes, it's steak." Okay, he eats it.

As soon as he's done eating,

his older brother goes, "It's reindeer!

You ate Bambi!"

And the kid, like, looks at me, and he's furious,

and he goes, "You lied to me."

And I said, "That's okay. I'm not your mother.

You're never gonna see me again."

"You lied to me! How could you lie to me?

I'll never trust you again!"

I said, "You'll never see me again.

You're 8 years old. You live in Kansas."

That was my experience of the Nobel Prize ball.

Teaching manners to these children from Kansas.

And I really needed to know manners too,

because at a certain point,

I got up and walked over to my publisher's table,

who's also Toni's publisher,

although they've had better luck with Toni,

to ask his wife something. And she was--

She said, "Get down. What are you doing?"

She said, "Get down." She pushed me down on the floor.

And I said, "What are you talking about?"

She said, "You know you can't stand up

"if the king is sitting down.

You know that, Fran."

I said, "I don't know that." She said, "You know that."

I said, "How would I know that?"

Like, this is one thing my mother forgot to teach me.

"And, Fran, if you're ever having dinner in the same room

with the King of Sweden, make sure you don't stand up."

I mean, she said, "You cannot-- Stay there.

You're gonna cause an international incident."

So then she goes, "Go back to your table."

I said, "How can I go back to my table?"

And I walked back. I was like Groucho Marx.

I walked back to my table like this.

So apparently, although I have always thought

that I, you know, had good manners,

not good enough for this.

Nice to have you with us, especially since

you're going through a hard time.

A little bit of controversy about your children's book,

Mr. Chas and Lisa Su Meet the Pandas.

What's going on?

Well, I've heard from a great number of panda experts.

You're probably surprised, as I was, to discover

there are a great number of panda experts.

I mean, I've actually gotten letters that say,

"Pandas don't eat pizza."

Really? "Pandas eat bamboo,

which, in fact, is why they're rare."

Because there are apparently fewer and fewer bamboo trees.

Okay. That's why there are no pandas.

That is right. So clearly, they should eat pizza.

"These pandas talk."

So I was obviously--

Which is another-- I was trying to pull the wool

over the eyes of the American public.

Now, you've been writing real adult books.

Not real adult books. I shouldn't say that.

You've been writing adult books

and you've been writing children's books.

What is easier to do?

Children's books.

Really? Why is that? Yes.

The whole thing is much less complicated

and there are pictures that take up a lot of the space.

So, what happens when--?

what happens when you go on TV shows, say,

like this one and you say

writing children's books is easy?

Easier. Easier.

Do children's book authors now get mad?

Are you going to get letters from them?

Yes. You will?

I've gotten letters from them.

You've offended them now. Yes.

But they write in crayon on short cardboard, so--

All right. It's not that threatening.

It's not a threatening thing.

I am interested in that arc of creativity

that's associated with age.

So I'm wondering why it is

that some artists are better later in life.

Not all writers become better, Toni. I mean--

Of course not. No. I mean, first of all,

some writers run out of material.

I mean, some-- You know--

Fitzgerald. I mean, I know he died.

But if he had lived, is there any doubt in your mind

that he would have become a worse writer?

He would have not become a better writer, Fitzgerald.

He wrote The Crack-Up, though.

Yeah. Very late.

Before he died, though.

To require someone to turn out masterpieces is psychotic.

You know. I mean, you know, to say things like,

"Fitzgerald, he only wrote one great book."

You know, I mean, Really? How many do most people write?

You know. Most writers who write a million books,

don't write even one good book.

You know, so I'm not saying that it's not

an incredibly valuable thing to have done.

I mean, Toni Morrison's new book, you know,

is, I think, her best book.

You know, she's 76.

I think there's an idea that has to do, really,

with people's idea of artists

that has nothing at all to do with art,

but just people's-- A romantic idea of the artist.

So a romantic idea of the artist,

the artist has to be young,

because no one has a romantic idea of an old person.

I was interested in older people.

I always had friends much older than me.

I had friends so much older than me

that by the time I was 40,

many of my closest friends died of old age already.

But it was because they were older than me.

In other words, because they could

teach me something, you know,

but not because I thought they were going to do the new thing.

That was my job.

You know, that's how the work used to be split up.

There's nothing new because the culture is soaked in nostalgia.

You know, I believe that that must be caused by people my age.

I mean, that cannot be caused by 17-year-olds.

I mean, whosever in charge, whosever driving,

they're the one that has the accident.

I mean, if you're young, everything's new to you.

So you don't know that it isn't new.

You know, so that you go to an exhibit

of a, you know, young artist and everyone says,

"This is amazing." And you look and you think,

"This is surrealism. This is a hundred years old."

But you have to first know that, you know.

Otherwise it seems like a new invention to you.

Um, but, uh...

There's an endless recycling of the culture of the last 30 years

that is really death-dealing.

You know, I think it's just horrible.

Really awful.

You know, and that is a sort of change I would like to see.

You know, I think that is the job

of people who are young.

That's your job. Do something new.

The action spreads

on Monday and Tuesday.

As enemy flags are fixed to war memorials,

the issue of war is joined to law and order.

Mr. Vidal,

wasn't it a provocative act

to try to raise a Vietcong flag in the park?

There are many acts which provoke.

But if you're going to have freedom of assembly and speech,

you must be able to say it. That is the whole point.

But I assume that the point of American democracy

is you can express any point of view you want.

Shut up a minute. No, I won't.

Some people were pro-Nazi,

and they were well-treated by people who ostracized them,

and I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people

to shoot American Marines and American soldiers.

I know you don't care-- As far as I'm concerned

the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.

Failing that, I would only say that we can't have--

Let's not call names.

Listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi

or I'll sock you in your goddamn face.

Gentlemen, let's--

Let the author of Myra Breckinridge

go back to his pornography

and stop making any allusions of Nazism

to somebody who was infantry in the last war.

You were not in the infantry.

As a matter of fact, you didn't fight in the war.

Now you're distorting your own military record.

You have every right in this country

to take any position you want to take

because we are guaranteed freedom of speech.

We've just listened to a rather grotesque example of it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome Fran Lebowitz.

I heard that the Bush administration had appointed

something called the Iraq Study Group last week.

I mean, even if you were, say, I don't know,

in the third grade--

--and you had a math test coming up,

when do you think would be the best time to study?

Before the test?

Or three years after the test?

Where do you think the Iraq Study Group meets?

I think, Windows on the World.

Don't boo me. I'm not even getting paid.

I did have the experience in my lifetime of once being booed

by a quarter of a million people, okay?

And this is the experience.

This is caused by Joe Papp.

There was this big movement to get the Jews out of Russia.

I mean, big among Jews,

not among Russians or anyone else. No one noticed it.

And Joe Papp organized a kind of a rally

that was in front of the UN

that was in favor of Soviet Jewry being let out of Russia.

And because Joe Papp was the head of the Public Theater,

he had at his fingertips, like, you know,

all the famous actors.

So he got all these actors to appear at this rally

to read letters from refuseniks, people in Russia.

And he called me and said, would I participate in this?

He had come to see me give a reading of a book I was writing.

And I said okay, you know, that I would do it.

And he said, "But, you know, here's the thing.

"I went to your reading. You can't be subtle at this.

"You can't just like lift that eyebrow like I saw you do,

"you know, in that bookstore.

"You have to be able to act, you know, like Gregory Peck.

Can you act like that?" I said, "No, of course I can't.

No, see, here's the difference.

"Gregory Peck, he's an actor. I'm not an actor. I can't act."

Because you're supposed to be like the person

who's writing the letter.

But I was very much looking forward to--

Because I looked out and I didn't know

how many people there were.

There was what looked like a billion people at this rally.

And I, of course, had never had

such a large audience myself.

And I love to talk in front of people.

So I thought, "This is great.

"Look at how many people there are here.

This is fantastic."

And so then right before I go--

Gregory Peck, he was excellent.

I can't think of who the other actors were.

But all excellent, you know. They were all great.

But they also all talked a little bit

before they read the letter.

And Joe Papp comes over and he goes,

"You have to say something before.

Do you have something to say?" I said no.

So he said, "Well, just think of something to say."

I said, "Okay."

So I have my letter,

which I tell the name of the person who wrote the letter.

And I say, "I'm sure that when--"

And I don't even remember who was head of Russia at the time,

whoever was the head of Russia.

"--I'm sure when, you know, so-and-so,

"the head of Russia, sees this on TV,

"and sees how many people are here,

"that he'll immediately acquiesce to your demands.

"Because I know that I, for one,

certainly would not want this many Jewish women angry at me."

A quarter of a million people boo, all at once.

I mean, it's a sound I cannot describe to you.

And two of the rabbis, you know,

jump up and like walk off the stage.

And I have like no idea really what's happening.

Like, to me, I think, "Well, it's not that funny,

but it's not the most unfunny thing in the world."

And then I like look. Joe Papp is like--

So I'm thinking, "Do you want me to leave?"

"No." So then I had to read this letter with them booing.

So that was my worst audience experience

was being booed by a quarter of a million people

and having to be taken off the back of the stage by cops.

Okay, because there was so much anger at me still,

even after I read this delightful letter,

from like the good Jew who wanted to get out of Russia

as opposed to me, the bad Jew, who made fun of people.

Cops actually took me and they took me

out of the whole neighborhood in a police car.

Okay, so, after that, really, what could happen to you?

You know, very little, I must say.

You are just so fantastic.

Thank you. What is this?

Say It As It Is. I love it so much.

This isn't me.

What?

Who's this?

Fran Lebowitz?

What is this? I have no idea.

It's not me.

What do you mean?

This must be a different Fran Lebowitz.

What is this?

Is this your booth or is that your booth?

Well, I think of this as my booth,

but all over New York there's hundreds of thousands of people

who think they have a table in a restaurant.

"That's my table." You know. "That is my table.

Don't move my table. That's my table."

And people, "That's my dry cleaners.

They moved my dry cleaners."

This is a kind of ownership that people in New York feel,

despite the fact that no one, you know,

owns less than your average New Yorker,

but no one feels they own more.

Now, did you pose for this, by the way?

I did not. I didn't even know it was gonna be painted.

Okay.

And then one night I was eating here,

and I saw a man sitting across,

and he kept looking at me, looking at me.

And I see him talk to the waiter.

And then I hear him say, "Ask Ms. Lebowitz

if she'd like to meet the man who drew her."

And it was Mr. Sorel. And he came over.

And he did it from a photograph, he said.

At first I thought, "Well, I don't know,

it's a little harsh."

Now I think I look younger.

At a certain point,

the worst picture taken of you when you were 25

is better than the best picture taken of you when you're 45.

There's no-- There's no question.

Okay, so when you do need a second opinion,

who do you go to?

Why would I need a second opinion?

You mean, like, a cardiologist? That kind of second opinion?

I go to a cardiologist when I need a second opinion.

Thank you very much. Good night.

Whether people seek my advice or not,

it's really pleasurable knowing everything.

Now, I'm sure that people think,

"She doesn't know everything." But they're wrong. I do.

So knowing everything is really pleasurable,

especially watching other people

who don't know everything. You know?

So that it's like I feel like

I'm in the stage of life,

what I would call "the last laugh" stage of life.

You know? And the last laugh, it's good.