Ignore self-esteem, full speed ahead

PUBLIC SPEAKING (2010)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

In less than 90 minutes, without missing a beat, "Public Speaking" is as enveloping, entertaining, bitingly funny and insightful as any American or European comedy I've seen in years. It is a documentary version of "My Dinner With Andre," and just as quixotic and absorbing. The fact that this is a Martin Scorsese documentary is already a major plus for Scorsese fans alike.

From the first frame to the last, we are introduced into a world of a most unconventional woman, a writer and public speaker who is inspired and provocative. She is not a comedian or comedienne but she is as funny as any one of them, exchanging ideas and insights into our culture that are more surefooted and more of a bitter pill for us to swallow than, say, anything coming out of loudmouthed Joy Behar. The unconventional woman is Fran Lebowitz, an author of two books and a children's book and that is the level of her accomplishments in the past thirty years. Before you can say Harper Lee plus two, Fran proves she can be just as witty and sardonic in her commentary when she speaks than when she writes. Her topics include having "writer's blockade"; the dumbing down of America thanks to the AIDS virus that spread through the gay population, particularly in New York's artistic community; her first job as a writer for Andy Warhol's "Interview" magazine; her admiration for the late author James Baldwin; the tourist attraction of a Disneyfied Times Square where all the porn shops disappeared; the lack of investigative journalism and how one's opinion is not nearly as important as reporting the news; fighting for smoker's rights, and a host of other topics. Most illuminating is her topic on the lack of progression in solving racism, which is exemplified through old footage of James Baldwin denouncing America's treatment of blacks while the late William F. Buckley's only retort is that Baldwin is speaking with a British accent.

There is so much more that it is almost a cheat to list everything Fran discusses. She is a dynamic marvel to watch and listen to - someone who speaks her mind and declares she is "always right." I wouldn't disagree, especially when she mentions that it took too long to have a black President. Yes, indeed, far too long and it is a sorry state of affairs that America has been backwards in progressive politics. Most of this film is simply Fran at the Waverly Inn in Greenwich Village talking to an unnamed male and Martin Scorsese. Some might consider this a dull way of presenting a subject but she is too invigorating a presence and too rapid-fire and too passionate a speaker, not unlike Scorsese himself, to assume that simple stable camera set-ups aren't the best way to present her. There is also a deliberate nod to Scorsese's own "Taxi Driver" as Fran drives around the city at night. Mostly, she prefers to walk everywhere, which is why she is often late to her public appearances. She is a real New Yorker, one who likes looking at people and hates strollers! She has no cell phone and thus no ability to text, but she keeps looking and observing. At times, the whole film resembles a Woody Allen picture with Fran's pungent commentary proving to be as controlled as Woody Allen's. Both come from an ancient New York, one that doesn't exist anymore.

I think the point of "Public Speaking" is that cell phones take away from observing minutiae and human behavior, thus maybe contributing in some way to dumbing down our ability to speak and write without abbreviation. Fran Lebowitz pays attention and has written about our culture and our people, and has educated herself in her own way (reading the books that interested her in school rather than the required reading list). I hate to live in a world where Fran Lebowitz doesn't exist.