Pretend It's a City

Pretend It's a City

Poster for Pretend It's a City

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

"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)

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91 ^%Rotten
tomatoes®
8 reviews

2021USANetflix

Documentary

Creator:: Martin Scorsese
Cast:: Fran LebowitzMartin Scorsese

Streaming (1 Provider)

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Episodes

Pretend It’s a City

Meet Fran Lebowitz and join her on her rambles as... More 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... More 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... More 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... More 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... More 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.... More 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... More can't throw a volume away — but she will trash the writer of a glowing blurb for a lousy tome.

Reckon we have something wrong? Let us know.

Pretend It's a City | Reviews

91%32 reviews

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

All reviews on Rotten Tomatoes

IndieWire

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

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.

Time Magazine

Deeply pleasurable.

Decider

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

A.V. Club

Lovingly admiring, if slightly unchallenging...

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.

Variety

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

RogerEbert.com

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

Pretend It's a City | Release Details

Pretend It's a City is available to stream in New Zealand now on Netflix.