Public Speaking

Fran Lebowitz is known as a writer who has barely written for forty years. She talks instead: on stage, at the table, in question and answer sessions. Martin Scorsese's documentary is built on exactly that oddity. The camera mostly catches Lebowitz at a table in New York's Waverly Inn and lets her talk. Archival footage cuts in: James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Toni Morrison, and a New York that no longer exists. Her talk moves between nostalgia and anger, and the heaviest passage is her account of how the AIDS crisis erased a generation of critics and artists. It was broadcast on HBO on 22 November 2010 and had a limited theatrical release in 2011. Scorsese and Lebowitz later worked together again on the series Pretend It's a City. Who it's for: Viewers who like talk as a form, the New York intellectual scene, and sharp-tongued portraits. Who it's not for: The film is almost entirely one person speaking, with no formal variety, and there is no voice in it to push back on Lebowitz's certainties.