Dispatch From Franchella: My Evening With Fran Lebowitz

(Image courtesy of Brigitte Lacombe)

A writing workshop instructor once told me a story about how, years ago, he bumped into the late Philip Roth walking through Manhattan. He didn’t offer many details, other than the adage: never meet your heroes. And so, attending Fran Lebowitz’s talk at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in September was a considerable risk. 

Lebowitz isn’t my hero, but I have indulged in her mythology. She’s the acerbic truthsayer, the ultimate New Yorker, Andy Warhol’s frenemy, and, notoriously, a “writer who no longer writes” due to a decades-long “writer’s blockade.” During the darkest hours of the pandemic lockdown, I curled up in bed and consumed Fran’s digital footprint: the Netflix docuseries Pretend It’s a City directed by her old pal Martin Scorsese and dozens of clips of her weighing in on subjects from Jane Austen to bus drivers. I never got around to reading her books—I guess I’ll save that for the next pandemic. Like with any binge, it ended in dread. I loathed that as a writer living in Los Angeles, I was contributing to the cultural supremacy of someone who likely believes the media industry should be confined to ten blocks in Manhattan. 

Eventually, I summoned my dignity and moved on. But that didn’t last long.

As Dirt’s Daisy Alioto once wrote, “Fran Lebowitz might not be on the Internet, but she embodies the Internet’s practice of playing a version of oneself.” Attending Lebowitz’s talk, moderated by PBS SoCal’s Maria Hall-Brown, was a chance to study one of the all-time great personas. 

The evening began with nervous anticipation. Two zoomers, seated in front of me, giddily traded quips: “this is going to be so great, she’s a breath of fresh air,” “she’s blunt, she’s Fran.” I was amongst my people.

Lebowitz walked on stage with Hall-Brown wearing her usual dark-blue blazer, rolled-up jeans, and Tecovas cowboy boots, specifically, “The Jamie.”