Pretend It’s a City (2020)
A review of Pretend It’s a City (2021) by Martin Scorsese.
I’m going to be that heathen and admit two major things about myself until now. First: I had never seen anything by Martin Scorsese. I know he’s such a big and famous director, that all of his movies get major hype, but I’ve never brought myself to do it until now. But now I popped that cherry!
The second thing is that I had no idea who Fran Lebowitz was until now. I’m not a New Yorker, and I personally am not glad I am one. Love the city, went to college there, but I quickly learned that lifestyle was not for someone like me. I’m more of a quiet girl who wants my own garden and to frolic with nature.
I also grew up in a way where I never interacted with any pop culture, especially when it came to New York City. My parents never took us to visit, my father specifically hated it despite never having been, and I never watched any films or television shows about the city.
It was like this great mystery that everyone loved except me, because I genuinely knew nothing about it. Then I moved there for college randomly and got thrust into that world.
Pretend It’s a City reminded of college in a humorous way, so let’s get into this review!
Content
Despite this being a show about Fran Lebowitz, I watched this because of the fact it was about New York City and her experiences having lived there for many decades now.
A comedian and writer at heart, her dialogue is quirky, comedic, and straight on the nose. She makes a lot of jokes about NYC (like how people come up to her wishing they lived in 1970s NYC and she’s like “I didn’t want to live in 1930s NYC when I moved here”) that are so accurate, especially if you’ve lived there even briefly. The subway will never be fixed it seems, that’s for sure, and it’s a common opinion among us normal folks.
My usual problem with American television is that it’s too damn long. I can’t pay attention for multiple seasons on end, I don’t have that kind of attention span at all. That’s why I turned to Korean and Asian dramas, because they’re usually one season and only sixteen episodes long.
That’s my cup of tea, even if some of them are too corny romantic for me. I didn’t have this problem with Pretend It’s a City. Most of it is interview-style, so I could easily listen as I cooked dinner or did my Bengali homework. There’s like one of several shots, of this variation: Fran walking on top of a model of New York City, Fran walking on the streets of NYC, and/or her and Martin talking to the camera interview-style.
I also decided I highkey want to become Fran. One of the most memorable bits for me was how she started talking about the kid on his bike, where he was steering with his elbows and then was using his hands for texting and eating a slice of pizza.
She discusses about how it’s amazing that in a city of eight million and a ton of people like this, there aren’t any more accidents. Fran doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t seem to really believe in technology. That’s the goal I want to have: to not give a shit to the point where we reject innovation. It isn’t always good.
Now, after the pandemic, this is a snapshot into NYC directly before the pandemic. As much as you want to deny the city has changed, it really has. There’s no going back from “the before times.”
There’s only a new future that we’re going to pave. The series was shot in 2019, before Toni Morrison died, as she actually appears in the series. She died soon after. It’s also only seven episodes long, which is perfect.
Overall Thoughts
I absolutely adore this series, and will probably watch it again. Even if you’ve never heard of Fran Lebowitz, I imagine you’d come out of this with a completely different perspective and possibly another one of her fans.
I know I did! It’s a short, fun watch that can be background noise and it truly made me miss the city a lot. Will I move back? Nah. But it’s fun to relive through the witty commentary of Lebowitz.
