Name: Pretend It's a City
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2021
Duration: TNaNHNaNM
Cast: Fran Lebowitz, Martin Scorsese

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Docuseries on New York City icon, the wry writer, humorist and raconteur Fran Lebowitz. From Martin Scorsese.

"For decades, the critic and essayist has been expressing her opinions, sometimes grouchily, always riotously. A New Yorker to the core, Lebowitz has raised straight talk to an art form, packaging her no-nonsense observations about the city and its denizens into a punchy running commentary, one that spares nobody." (Official synopsis)

2021USANetflix

Documentary

All Reviews (8)

Creator:: Martin Scorsese
Cast:: Fran LebowitzMartin Scorsese

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Pretend It’s a City

Meet Fran Lebowitz and join her on her rambles as she muses about deadly distractions, Times Square terror, subway stoppers and total building fails.

Cultural Affairs

The mysteries of talent are scrutinized as Fran looks at the peril of writing, the joy of Motown and the time Charles Mingus chased her on the street.

Metropolitan Transit

Mean cabbies, arty subway stations, interstellar tourism and spacey bus drivers can get Fran going. Then Leonardo DiCaprio offered her an e-cigarette.

Board of Estimate

It's a living: Fran hates money but loves things, so she must work — though she prefers to read. Winning the lottery may be her only other option.

Department of Sports & Health

Knowing that some are annoyed that she's still alive, Fran understands that smoking is bad for you. "Wellness" and sports sound even worse to her.

Hall of Records

Fran's all about fun — guilty pleasures, not so much. Just give her a party, a movie, a small child or a luminous Cary Grant. You can keep technology.

Library Services

Books opened up the world to young Fran. Today, she can't throw a volume away — but she will trash the writer of a glowing blurb for a lousy tome.

Pretend It's a City / Reviews

IndieWire

This is Scorsese’s version of forwarding you an email with a link and insisting that, trust him, you just gotta read it.

Full review

Hollywood Reporter

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.

Full review

Time Magazine

Deeply pleasurable.

Full review

Decider

Lebowitz is hilarious, and Scorsese captures her humor, as well as her love of New York City, very well.

Full review

A.V. Club

Lovingly admiring, if slightly unchallenging...

Full review

CNN

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.

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Variety

Nothing that Lebowitz says in it does more than provoke, and that's a reflex that fades with overuse.

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RogerEbert.com

Scorsese sets the jumping off points and Lebowitz leaps with often hilarious, reckless abandon.

Full review