SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: Fran Lebowitz, welcome to 7.30.
FRAN LEBOWITZ, AUTHOR: Thank you.
SARAH FERGUSON: People around the world queue up in theaters to hear your opinions and views on things. What’s your opinion about that?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Well, I’m very grateful, because unfortunately I’m not an heiress, although I’d be an excellent one. So I’m very happy they did that.
SARAH FERGUSON: I was thinking about what the words are that describe you, and in some ways you are maybe the last flaneur, you know, the archetype of the person wandering around the boulevards observing modern life. Is it a reasonable description of what you do?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Yeah, I think it’s a pretty good description but I mean, I feel like the, people very often will stop me as I’m walking and say, “I’m sorry to interrupt you.” Because they think that the walking around is some formal thing I do, like I’m in the middle of a scientific experiment.
But also, it’s because everyone else is looking at their phone. To me, it’s like an unbelievable gift. It’s like the whole world says, “Fran, you can have the world. We’re not going to be looking at it. We’re just going to look at our phone.”
SARAH FERGUSON: But they might bump into you.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: They might and sometimes I bump into them deliberately. If they don’t look up at all and they are not a certain person, I’d be physically afraid of, I bump into them.
SARAH FERGUSON: Famously, you don’t have a mobile phone. You don’t have, I think, wi-fi at home.
As someone who is a very acute, very funny observer of life, of modern manners, of mores, can you observe modern life if you’re not part of it, if you never go to the place where a lot of it happens?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Yes. I think not only can I do that because first of all, the thing about the phone is that it’s not the world. It’s your world.
It’s a world of one. If you look up, you will see there are other people, other things going on. So, yes, I feel like I’m in a perfect position for this.
SARAH FERGUSON: You are, to a lot of outsiders, something like an archetypal New Yorker. I do want to talk to you about New York. I heard you say that you look down on non-New Yorkers. What is it that makes you all so superior to us?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Have you ever been there?
SARAH FERGUSON: I have.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: So now you know.
I mean one of the things that, I mean John Updike, who I would not ordinarily quote, but lived in Boston during the era of the New York novelist, said that people who live in New York think that people who don’t are somehow kidding.
I think that, one of the things is that New York is so hard to live in it. It is so hard living there that, if you ever live any other place, like if you rent a house somewhere in the country, you can’t believe how easy life is.
You say things like, “Guess what? Going to the dry cleaner is an error! In New York, it’s a Wagnerian opera.”
Every single thing is really hard and so I think that New Yorkers in some way, even unconsciously, we look down on people who have lives that aren’t hard enough. Your life’s not ridiculous enough, not expensive enough. Not, you know…
SARAH FERGUSON: So it’s the craziness of New York, it’s not because it’s sort of culturally superior?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Well, it is culturally superior, of course it is.
SARAH FERGUSON: So then my question is, the French say that after Paris, it’s the desert. Is it just what every country thinks about its capital? Well, cultural capital.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: I’ve never heard New Yorkers look down on Paris. There are a few others. Paris is okay.
SARAH FERGUSON: You’re prepared to accept …
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Paris is okay but Paris is not the United States. In the United States, when people talk about, I don’t know, LA or San Francisco – that’s ridiculous.
SARAH FERGUSON: Martin Scorsese’s made two films about you. One of them is itself a sort of peon to New York. Scorsese says something very interesting about his work at the moment, which is he’s getting rid of everything that’s unnecessary.
Do you have a view about your work, your thinking changing as you get older?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Well, your thinking certainly changes. I know Marty is very aware of his age. You know, he’s always saying, “How many more movies can I make?”
But Marty, you know, I mean, he’s unlike me in many ways. One way, he’s a very hard worker. I’m not.
So, yeah, you become conscious. You get, at least I, get more and more angry at people who waste your time because I feel like, “Guess what? I don’t have this time anymore.”
When you’re young, you should waste your time because time is the money of youth. You need money more when you’re old. I never really cared, now I don’t care about money, I hate it, I wish I didn’t have to deal with it.
But when you’re young, if you think money’s important, then there’s something wrong with you but you need a lot of money when you’re old but it’s not a good replacement for time but it’s all you have.
SARAH FERGUSON: I want to talk about politics. Do you think that the Democrats – you talk about the Democrats a lot – do you think that the Democrats have learned anything…
FRAN LEBOWITZ: No.
SARAH FERGUSON: ..about those people Hillary Clinton called “the Deplorables”?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: I think that it’s very difficult for people who are reasonable to understand these Republicans.
So I always say to people, it’s very easy. First of all, they’re not Republicans. They’re anarchists. You know, I know the left in the United States, a lot of them pride themselves on being anarchists, but they’re not.
The Republicans are anarchists. They are destroyers of government, destroyers of democracy.
The Democrats are always trying to analyze them, “Why do they think this? Why do they think that?” And I said, you know, a six-year-old could tell you what’s wrong with these people. They are mean and they are stupid and it’s as simple as that.
SARAH FERGUSON: Let me just ask you this because Bernie Sanders has been saying and he said, in fact, on our program recently that he wanted Australians to understand that all of those people voting MAGA, voting Trump, are not racist – they’re people who have suffered financially.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: He’s wrong. He’s wrong. He’s often wrong, Bernie Sanders, by the way. So he is wrong. They are racists.
Racism is the central appeal of Trump, misogyny and racism. Racism first, and then misogyny.
SARAH FERGUSON: You said recently the ideal age for a president is around 50. Does that mean that Joe Biden shouldn’t run?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Well, I hope that he hasn’t decided to run. I really do because he is too old. I think he’s too old.
However, he’s running. So since he’s running, and since the other candidate is going to be Trump, to me, lots of kids say they’re not going to vote for him. “I’m not going to vote for Biden. I don’t like his policy on this, I don’t like his policy on that. I’m just not going to vote.”
Are you going to vote for Trump? “No.”
And I say – life is not a menu. There’s no other choice and so it’s not like you can go into a restaurant and say, “Yes, I’d like the trout, but no cilantro.” That’s not a voting booth.
I don’t know why he is running. I guess it must be, it must be, it is very hard to be the president, but it must also be fun.
SARAH FERGUSON: I found one inconsistency when I was reading about you, what I thought looked an inconsistency. It’s about dying hair. So let’s move from the end of democracy to hair dye because I think that’s …
FRAN LEBOWITZ: They’re related.
SARAH FERGUSON: Completely obvious move, here’s my segue. So you dye your hair. I dye my hair. But I think that you said that men doing the same thing are repulsive.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Repulsive.
SARAH FERGUSON: Why? What’s the difference?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Because we are, we mean humans, are used to artificial women.
SARAH FERGUSON: You’re not artificial. You haven’t changed your face. You are Americans…
FRAN LEBOWITZ: I haven’t.
SARAH FERGUSON: Changed your face.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: No, I haven’t but…
SARAH FERGUSON: You have a consistent wardrobe that is for you, not for others.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Right, but artificial women are something people don’t even really notice. Most women wear make-up, even girls do. Some men wear make-up and you notice it right away.
SARAH FERGUSON: But why is it repulsive?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Because it’s greedy. In other words, “Oh, we gave you the world, men. That’s not enough? You also have to have dark hair?”
Also, you can always tell. I mean you can tell women do it too, but you don’t register it in the same way. It’s not that I, every, I’m 73. No-one my age has still dark hair. No-one.
So my hair went gray at a very early age. It’s one of the things that I inherited from my mother. In fact, the only thing I inherited from my mother’s family.
But with men, and it always looks, Ronald Reagan had that orange hair. You know, it’s like, come on.
SARAH FERGUSON: But if we’re taking back women, taking part of the control that belongs to men for a very long time, can’t we give them hair dye in return?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: No. They have everything else. A friend of mine says, “Men. They own the joint.”
SARAH FERGUSON: Another thing you said recently which I must say I really liked. You say you’ve got two needs – cigarettes, and revenge. Cigarettes, that’s obvious. Revenge – that’s more interesting. Do you like your revenge eaten hot or cold?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: You know, it’s always good. People are always saying it’s not good – the desire for vengeance is not a high human desire but it’s very satisfying.
And it’s even when people don’t know. Sometimes I’ve had revenge on people that I think they don’t know, and I’m thinking, “Are you wondering why you didn’t get that fellowship? I know why you didn’t get it.”
SARAH FERGUSON: Can you hold a grudge for a really long time?
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Forever. Holding grudges is, I think, just another word for holding standards.
SARAH FERGUSON: Fran Lebowitz, thank you very much indeed for talking to us.
FRAN LEBOWITZ: Thank you.