Pretend It's a City

Pretend It’s a City feels like a gift from the universe — a small, affectionate token that a lover might drop in the mail while traveling the world just to remind you that she’ll be back, and that she’s worth the wait. ... Watching it I felt a strange permission to imagine life returning to normal, as I know it will sometime this year. In my mind, I pretend I’m in New York, and I’m walking up Sixth Avenue, and by chance I look up from my phone — and there’s Fran Lebowitz walking the other way, judging me.

Whether pointing out the irony of art auctions (“people applauded the price” but not the painting) or mocking her horrific luck with real estate, Fran Lebowitz’s delivery is masterful. So, if the first episode hooks you, this is worth binge-watching.

“Pretend It’s a City,” Martin Scorsese’s six-part documentary appreciation of Fran Lebowitz, is more than merely delightful, although it’s certainly that. It’s also something of a historical document. ... It’s easy to see why Scorsese wanted to put her time in a cinematic bottle.

Where [How To With John Wilson] was willing to wander around the city and find unexpected moments of strangeness and beauty in his endless filming, Lebowitz has her opinions already set in place, and you either agree with them or you don’t. She couldn’t care less. “Oh, Fran,” Scorsese says at one point, and that bemused vibe colors the entirety of the lovingly admiring, if slightly unchallenging, Pretend It’s A City.

Its seven episodes, each of which is centered on a different theme (money, wellness, books), are refreshingly loose, the conversations between Scorsese and Lebowitz often meandering. ... The endurance of her infuriating, stubborn, and hilarious self feels like a balm in a wildly shifting world. There is something delicious, too, in hearing her complain—and be unabashedly petty—during a time in which to do so is a faux pas.

Lebowitz is hilarious, and Scorsese captures her humor, as well as her love of New York City, very well. You may not want to binge Pretend It’s A City, because one can only take so much “New York humor,” even those of us who know the city well. But it’s certainly worth taking in an episode or two at a time.

Deeply pleasurable.

Pretend It's a City is a tribute to two things Scorsese loves, Fran Lebowitz and New York City, and that affection is contagious for much, if not quite all, of its running time. Even the places the series lags a bit are more a product of exhaustion from spending that amount of time with any other person, a sentiment I'm fairly confident Lebowitz would acknowledge.

This is Scorsese’s version of forwarding you an email with a link and insisting that, trust him, you just gotta read it. When viewed in full, this can’t help but feel more of a curio than a passion project for either of its main contributors. Still, those who share either of this pair’s love for the city or their views on its gradual evolution will likely enjoy the opportunity for time spent in their virtual company.

Pretend It's a City certainly yields its share of amusing thoughts and wry observations, many of which are worth recording for posterity. But it would take a great pretender to act like it's worthy of the time devoted to them.