Fran Lebowitz wants to have a conversation with Tucson

The newly seated Republican-controlled Congress was entering its third day of voting in early January to decide the speakership and Fran Lebowitz, the acerbic and quick-witted author, social commentator, journalist, actor and raconteur, had seen enough.

“Clearly the Republicans don’t care about the country,” she said during that phone call on Jan. 5 that came after witnessing the political theater playing out in the House with hardline Republicans pushing and the presumptive speaker Kevin McCarthy giving in to their demands. “But if it wasn’t really bad for the country, it’s pretty enjoyable for the Democrats.”

Expect her to expound on her post-McCarthy election opinions and a whole host of political and social issues when she takes the stage at Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St., on Thursday, April 6. Rialto Executive Director Cathy Rivers will spend about 30 minutes interviewing Lebowitz before she opens it up to the audience for questions.

Lebowitz said there’s no restrictions on what questions the audience or Rivers can ask and she will have no idea about them in advance.

“I refuse to look at the questions so I don’t know what they are going to ask me,” she said. “With the questions from the audience, which is my favorite thing, practically in the world, it used to be – you know I’ve been doing this really since I was 27 and I’m 72; that’s really a long time – it used to be that in presidential election years, I get a lot of political questions, but not the rest of the time. But starting with Trump, the questions are minimum 50% political and sometimes more. And that is true not just in the United States but also true in Germany and Scandinavia, where I go frequently. The whole world has become more interested in politics … and that’s because the politics are so bad.”

Lebowitz said voters and young people are largely to blame.

“Look how long it took for people who are young to vote,” she quipped. “I have never understood it because you have much more at stake in every election. The younger you are, the more you have at stake.”

Interestingly, a big swath of her audience these days and likely including her Tucson audience are in their 20s, introduced to her through her 2021 Netflix documentary series “Martin Scorsese Presents: ‘Pretend It’s a City.’”

In the series, which they filmed in 2019 and expected to air in 2020, she and her longtime friend Scorsese wander the streets of New York musing about the city they both love, tourists, money, subways, the arts and Times Square. Netflix delayed the release until January 2021; she was told it was to allow time to add subtitles for the 191 countries that have Netflix.

Not that she would have tuned into the streaming service.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“To have Netflix you must have Wifi, which I don’t,” said Lebowitz, who famously doesn’t have a cell phone or computer and could care little about what’s trending on social media.

During our conversation, she also admitted she’s scared of cacti — “Wherever I stayed the last time I was there was against a mountain and there were all these cacti and at night the shadows. I was terrified.” — and she believes in New York, the weather should be reported by Vogue magazine.

“We’re not farmers; we don’t need to know the weather. Farmers need to know the weather. We want to know: What should I wear,” she said. “We should have (Vogue editor) Anna Wintour saying ‘Don’t wear those shoes; it’s gonna pour.’ ‘Don’t wear that sweater.’ That’s the news that we need to know.”

But she digresses.

She can’t shake an image she saw on TV from those Congressional speaker votes of the controversial New York Rep. George Santos sitting off by himself in the House next to a little boy.

“Usually on the opening day of Congress they bring their children. I’ve never understood that; I think it’s silly,” Lebowitz said. “They bring their children including babies and so obviously somebody brought this little boy, and I mean a little boy, like 6-year-old boy. And they (Santos and the boy) were dressed exactly alike and I thought, I can’t believe no one is commenting on this. … The little boy is dressed as a little boy in this sweater and this guy Santos is dressed as a little boy with this sweater. ‘How about a shirt and tie? How about grow up? How about you’re in Congress?’ And the little boy ... kept looking at this guy and I felt like he looked like he was thinking, ‘Why are you dressed like a little boy?’”

The conversation with Fran Lebowitz is presented by Arizona Arts Live.

Tickets for the 8 p.m. event are $45-$59 through rialtotheatre.com.