Hollywood Elsewhere will eventually watch all seven episodes of Pretend It’s A City, Martin Scorsese‘s Fran Lebowitz documentary. Why haven’t I begun? Because I know Lebowitz’s schtick. She’s smart and flinty and cool to hang with, but I have a pretty good idea what she’s going to say so I can take my time. No worry or hurries.

I’m not saying Lebowtiz is boring — far from it. She’ll always be excellent company. But…well, here’s the N.Y. Times Ginia Bellafante in a 1.22 piece called “Everybody Loves Fran. But Why?”

“By nearly any measure of my affinities, I ought to love Fran Lebowitz the way I love lasagna or quickly finding a cab in a thunderstorm. But for a long time now, whenever she has entered my frame of vision, she has come at me like a mime on the subway — an unwelcome spectacle of the familiar.”

I understand writers having trouble putting pen to paper, but how does an author of two worthwhile life-in-New York City books, “Metropolitan Life” (’78) and “Social Studies” (’81), quit writing altogether? All she has to do is hire someone to transcribe everything she’s ever said in interviews and on talk shows, and then use that material to build upon. It couldn’t get much easier than that.

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