Martin Scorsese's energetic, beautiful documentary about Fran Lebowitz is the best thing on Sky Atlantic
Forget Boardwalk Empire, forget Treme, forget the fifth series of Mad Men it's nicked from BBC2 ? the 90 minute Martin Scorsese documentary on Fran Lebowitz tomorrow night, Public Speaking, is worth the price of admission to Sky Atlantic alone.
It's shot in the style of his early documentaries, Italian American and American Boy ? energetic, sinewy, beautiful ? but perhaps "documentary" is a slightly misleading term. It suggests the existence, even the introduction of a point of view or two other than the subject's own, and when you've got a camera trained on writer, wit, raconteur Fran Lebowitz, there is really no room for such indulgence. "Who do I go to when I want a second opinion?" she rasps in answer to a question from the audience at one of her lectures. "You mean, like ? a cardiologist? That would be the only time."
The film is in essence a monologue occasionally intercut with archive footage of 70s New York and heroes such as James Baldwin, as Lebowitz expounds on . . . well, just about everything. Entire cultural movements, vast swathes of social change are effortlessly distilled into beautiful, brutal epigrams ? "Too many people are writing books, the books are terrible and this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem," she explains to another audience member. The rise of celebrity worship is explained as a Warholian joke "that got into the water supply" and the difference between wit and humour summarised as "warmth. Wit is cold. It is judgment" ? and dispensed from "her" booth at the Waverly Inn.
It doesn't delve into her background or muse on the experiences or reasons for her provocative, combative nature or for her legendary decades-long writer's block, but with every unfiltered word and unfocus-grouped opinion delivered with such gusto she stands as a cultural relic from another age, throwing the denatured pabulum that passes for our own into sharp and distressing relief. Do watch it. She and it may be the most brilliant things you see all year.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/feb/01/public-speaking-fran-lebowitz-scorsese
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