Fran Lebowitz: Public Speaking

It actually premiered on HBO back in November, but Martin Scorsese's Fam Lebowitz documentary, Public Speaking, is currently available On-Demand and will be released on DVD May 24th:

[...] Indeed, as Lebowitz says in one interview among the many here, she is first and foremost a public speaker, a woman who takes talking to a high art form after she dreamed, as a child, that people would care about her opinions. Public Speaking chronicles a truly iconoclastic author and thinker whose satirically barbed wit is hilarious and controversial on the page, as well as onscreen. In her interviews she pontificates most vocally about her experiences as a New Yorker, as a writer, journalist, feminist, smoker (yes, she actually takes the protection of cigarette smoking rights up as a cause), and gay rights activist. What it adds up to, in her words, is a devotion to maintaining individual freedom. Most poignant, however, are the scenes in which she places herself historically within a New York cultural framework, as she remembers first writing for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, then publishing her first hit novel, Metropolitan Life.  - Trinie Dalton

Full disclosure: I've been a fan of Fran Leobowitz since I first picked a copy of The Fran Leobowitz Reader when I was in my early twenties, so it's not exactly possible for me to offer an unbiased review. Listening to her talk, though, is the best way to experience Fran Lebowitz, which is why this documentary is so effective.