Fran Lebowitz

Due to her writer's block, Lebowitz has largely supported herself with television appearances and speaking engagements. She has said, "It’s what I wanted my entire life. People asking me my opinion, and people not allowed to interrupt.” She tours as a public speaker, represented by the Steven Barclay Agency. In addition, she has made several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and had a recurring role as Judge Janice Goldberg on the television drama Law & Order from 2001 to 2007. However, she does still write journalistic pieces; Lebowitz has been employed as a contributing editor and occasional columnist for Vanity Fair since 1997.

Lebowitz has been critical of the gentrification and changing culture of New York City. She explained that the main difference between "Old New York" and "New New York" was the influence and dominance of the culture of money. While New York was always an expensive city, people who were not rich could live in Manhattan and "...you didn’t have to think about money every second." This was because, among other reasons, "...there were a zillion bad jobs. That doesn’t exist any more. I mean, I could wake up one afternoon with zero money—I don’t just mean in the house, I mean to my name—and know that by the end of the day, I would have money."

What is culture without gay people? This is America, what is the culture? Not just New York. AIDS completely changed American culture... And with AIDS, a whole generation of gay men died practically all at once, within a couple of years. And especially the ones that I knew. The first people who died of AIDS were artists. They were also the most interesting people... The knowing audience also died and no longer exists in a real way... There’s a huge gap in what people know, and there’s no context for it anymore.

Lebowitz has been called the "opposite of lean-in feminism." She said in a 2019 interview,

If [feminism] really worked, there wouldn’t be feminism anymore. There’s a couple of things that have changed so much for the better, and the life of a girl is a billion times better than when I was a girl. There’s no comparison. It’s so much better, and yet it’s still horrible. That will tell you what it was like, okay?

In another interview, she explained, "I didn’t pay much attention to it, largely because it never occurred to me it would work. I was, unfortunately, largely right." However, she had also said, "The way girls are raised now. It’s so different... when I was a child. If you wanted to do something and you were not allowed to do it, very often, the answer to why not would be: because you’re a girl." On the Me Too movement, she said,

In May 2019, Lebowitz said on Real Time with Bill Maher that President Trump should suffer the same fate as Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist the CIA believes was tortured and murdered on orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Lebowitz walked back her comments later in the same program.

It never occurred to me this would ever change. Being a woman was exactly the same from Eve ‘til eight months ago. So it never occurred to me that it would change. Ever. I can tell you that it’s probably one of the most surprising things in my life. The first forty guys who got caught — I knew almost all of them.

Lebowitz identifies as a liberal Democrat but is often critical of Democratic politicians and policy. She has been a vociferous critic of the Republican Party for many years and more recently of President Donald Trump. She has said that Trump's appeal to his voters is "racism pure and simple", and described Trump campaign rallies as reminiscent of those held by the Ku Klux Klan and George Wallace. She has called Trump "a cheap hustler", "stupid", "lazy" and "a little crazy, but mostly he's dumb." Of Trump's election in 2016, she said, "It was horrible. I felt that strongly affected emotionally for at least a month. My level of rage, always high, is now in fever pitch all the time." She joked that "If there's one upside to all this [Trump's election], it's that it's gotten Trump out of New York."

Lebowitz is a lesbian. She has spoken about romantic difficulties in some interviews. In 2016, she explained, "I’m the world’s greatest daughter. I’m a great relative. I believe I’m a great friend. I’m a horrible girlfriend. I always was."

As an adolescent, Lebowitz was deeply affected by James Baldwin. She explained: "James Baldwin was the first person I ever saw on television who I heard talk like that—by which I mean, he was the first intellectual I ever heard talk... And I was just flabbergasted. That made me read him." She also enjoyed watching television appearances by Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, though she did not agree with Buckley.

In 2010, Lebowitz was introduced to a new generation of audiences, when she was featured in the documentary Public Speaking. On November 17, 2010, Lebowitz returned to The Late Show with David Letterman, after a 16-year absence, to promote the documentary. She discussed her years-long writer's block, which she jokingly referred to as a "writer's blockade." On November 22, 2010, HBO debuted Public Speaking, Martin Scorsese's documentary about her containing interviews and clips from speaking engagements. She also made an appearance as a judge in Scorsese's 2013 film, The Wolf of Wall Street. In July 2019, she announced that she was collaborating with Scorsese again on an as yet untitled Netflix series in which Scorsese will interview her about New York City and other subjects.

Since the mid-1990s, Fran Lebowitz is known for her decades-long writer's block. The last book published was Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas (1994), a children's book about giant pandas living in New York City who long to move to Paris. Since that time, Lebowitz has worked on various book projects that have not been completed. This includes Exterior Signs of Wealth, a long-overdue, unfinished novel, purportedly about rich people who want to be artists and artists who want to be rich. Her book, Progress, was first excerpted in Vanity Fair in 2004. It has yet to be completed, as of April 2020. When discussing her writer's block, she said: "My editor—who, whenever I introduce him as my editor, always says, 'easiest job in town'—he says that the paralysis I have about writing is caused by an excessive reverence for the written word, and I think that’s probably true."

In 1987, Lebowitz published a piece in the New York Times titled "The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community."

Of Giuliani's law enforcement policies she said, "When Giuliani was the mayor, every five minutes an unarmed black man was shot in the back." Lebowitz abhors New York City's high number of tourists, calling the shift in the 1980s toward promoting the city as a tourist destination "an incredibly horrible idea". She has cited tourism as a cause of New York's housing shortage because hotels are built rather than apartment buildings, and described the negative effects of gearing the city's economy towards tourists: "You cannot lure these herds of hillbillies into the middle of a city, and not have it affect the city."

In the 1980s, many of her gay male friends died of HIV/AIDS. Lebowitz has discussed the impact of the "plague years" on American culture. In particular, she has spoken about the cultural void that was left behind from losing a generation of talented artists and intellectuals. Many of these men not only produced art and intellectual culture, but they also were the passionate audiences that nurtured such culture. As she explained in a 2016 interview:

Through her public appearances, Lebowitz has reached a wider audience who have come to know her trademark style. She is known for her clever quips and observational humor on a range of topics, including New York City, gentrification, art, literature, and politics. She typically wears men's suit jackets (made bespoke by the Savile Row firm of Anderson & Sheppard), white shirts, cowboy boots, Levi's jeans, and tortoiseshell glasses. She often speaks of her treasured pearl-grey 1979 Checker cab, the only car she has ever owned, which she describes as "the only monogamous relationship I've ever had in my life." In September 2007, Lebowitz was named one of the year's most stylish women in Vanity Fair's 68th Annual International Best-Dressed List. She is also known for her massive book collection, 10,000 volumes in all, including at least one shelf of soap-carving books, and her refusal to use many technologies, including cell phones and computers. A heavy smoker, Lebowitz is an as an advocate for smokers' rights. She has not used drugs or alcohol since she was 19, which she says is because she reached her "lifetime supply" of both by that age.

In 1978, her first book, Metropolitan Life, was published. The book presented a series of comedic essays, with titles such as "Success Without College" and "A Few Words on a Few Words." She often detailed things that she found irksome or frustrating in a dry, sardonic tone. Following the publication of Metropolitan Life, Lebowitz became a local celebrity, who attended Studio 54 and appeared on television. This was followed by Social Studies (1981), another collection of comedic essays. She explored topics such as teenagers, films, and room service in the book. Years later, The Fran Lebowitz Reader (1994) was published, which included both books.

At age 21, while she was working as a writer of book and movie reviews for a small magazine called Changes, Andy Warhol hired her as a columnist for Interview, where she wrote a column called "I Cover the Waterfront." This was followed by a stint at Mademoiselle. During these years, she made friends with many artists. She was a friend of Peter Hujar, who she met in 1971. She also knew Robert Mapplethorpe, who often gave her photos. She trashed many of his photos in the 1970s.

After being expelled from high school, Lebowitz earned her GED and then decided to move to New York City. Her father agreed to pay for her first two months in the city on the condition that she lived at the women's-only Martha Washington Hotel. In 1969, Lebowitz moved to New York City. To support herself, she worked various odd jobs as a cleaning lady, chauffeur, taxi driver, and a pornography writer. She refused to waitress, even though it was a common job for many young women in New York City, due the sexual harassment and expectation to sleep with the manager at many restaurants.

Frances Ann Lebowitz (born October 27, 1950) is an American author, public speaker, and occasional actor. Lebowitz is known for her sardonic social commentary on American life as filtered through her New York City sensibilities. Some reviewers have called her a modern-day Dorothy Parker.