Fran Lebowitz is perhaps the only person to leverage a decades-long writer’s block into a legendary creative calling. | dG1faDBCV0xVNmlMQzg
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00:00Hi, my name is Stern Leibovitz, and these are my five points of culture, whatever that
00:12means.
00:16I wish that I had even expected sources of inspiration.
00:19I feel like you never know.
00:20You can be walking down the street, make a thing of something, you can be reading, and
00:23I don't mean you have to be reading Middlemarch, you know, look it up.
00:27In general, most things are annoying.
00:29You have to agree, or you don't have to agree, but I would agree with myself that something
00:33that simply isn't annoying, I'm grateful for.
00:36I spent last week at the Met in the restoration studio with a Rembrandt.
00:41I was like four inches from this painting for like three hours, and I was with the woman
00:46who restored it.
00:47And I said, what do you do?
00:50She said, we clean.
00:51I clean it.
00:52I said, really?
00:53With turpentine?
00:54She said, yes.
00:55I said, you put turpentine on a Rembrandt?
00:56She said, yes.
00:57I said, did you ever think, what if I sneeze?
01:01So that was very inspiring, but that would be everyone, well, maybe not everyone, but
01:05most sighted people would be inspired by this.
01:11A writer who's important to me, a current writer, I don't know what you mean by important.
01:15There are many, well, there are several current writers whose work I really like.
01:19Wally Shawn, Debbie Eisenberg, Lynn Tillman, I mean, I love Colson Whitehead's work.
01:24There are quite a few writers that I like.
01:29Last year, I think I saw Yuja Wong twice.
01:31She's fantastic.
01:32I used to go to the New York City Ballet all the time.
01:34Now, a long time ago, when Balanchine was alive and Jerry Robbins were alive, and Baryshnikov
01:41was dancing, and Maria was dancing.
01:45During that era, there were, I would say, ballet lunatics in the audience.
01:50I mean, people who otherwise would be hospitalized.
01:55So knowing that you have a very erudite audience is a very good thing for an artist, even though
02:02it may not be a very pleasant thing.
02:05How often those things go hand in hand.
02:08This is the greatest thing I've seen, at least in a year, new.
02:11And this is Marty's new movie, called Killers of the Flower Moon.
02:14Not just one of Marty's greatest movies, one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.
02:19There's nothing, not even a shot, not a second, not a line of dialogue that you ever saw before.
02:24You're young, so there may be many things like that, but I've never seen this before.
02:29I know people talk about clothes all the time, but very few people seem to have any knowledge
02:34at all of clothes.
02:35Understand there's a difference between fashion and style.
02:37So things may be in fashion, but maybe you shouldn't wear them.
02:42I would really like adults to dress like adults.
02:45And that used to be a good thing.
02:47And so children look cute in children's clothes, but adults don't.
02:51They look either deviant or like a slob.
02:55Usually more like a slob.
02:59The culture needs more knowledge and less opinion.
03:03I mean, you're entitled to your opinion, but I want to hear it.
03:10My least favorite thing is people who keep saying, you know, do you think New York is over?
03:13No.
03:14Or people who say, you know, where would you live if you couldn't live in New York?
03:18And I always think, why couldn't I live in New York?
03:20Okay, the reason to live in New York is because everyone can live in New York.
03:25Everyone can live in New York.
03:26I mean, no one can afford to live in New York, and yet everyone can live in New York.
03:31Being a good conversationalist is important to me.
03:33I mean, important to me and my friends.
03:35You know, having a sense of humor is also important.
03:38And a sense of humor doesn't mean you're funny.
03:41It means, you know, things can be funny.
03:43People don't know this about me, but people show me their babies to see how smart they
03:46are, and I can always tell.
03:48And I can tell if babies, you can make babies laugh.
03:52If they can't, if they don't laugh, forget it, this baby's not smart.
03:57Don't spend a lot of money educating this kid.
03:58It's not gonna, it's not gonna work.