Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz is an actor, born 1950.
Fran Lebowitz is a writer who appears on screen almost exclusively as herself. Six of the seven credits here are documentaries or talk shows, and that is an honest picture of the job. She is a professional talker: a cultural critic whose subject is New York and whose delivery is flat, certain and very funny, with the timing of someone who has said it before and improved it each time.
Her value to filmmakers is the art world she was inside. Wikipedia's summary places her alongside Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jerome Robbins, Candy Darling and the New York Dolls in the 1970s and 1980s, and that is the well she draws on in Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol and in New York: A Documentary Film, where she is used as a witness rather than a subject.
The two Martin Scorsese documentaries, Public Speaking and Pretend It's a City, do the opposite and simply hand her the floor. The Wolf of Wall Street gives her a small on-screen part, which is as close to conventional acting as this filmography gets.
Movies (4)
TV (3)
Where to start with Fran Lebowitz
Begin with Pretend It's a City, the easiest of these to sit with: short episodes of Lebowitz walking around New York being irritated by it. If it lands, Public Speaking is the earlier and better film, less charmed by her and more curious about where the persona came from.
Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol and New York: A Documentary Film are the ones to watch if you want her as a source instead of a star, and both are worth it on their own terms. Ziwe is the odd one out, an interview that does not go the way either party plans. The Wolf of Wall Street is a cameo and no reason to start a three-hour film, though you will enjoy spotting her.