Fran Lebowitz smokes like a chimney.
Fran Lebowitz smokes like a chimney.
And is a totally different person from Annie Leibovitz, who knew?
Before I was a parent or a rower, waking at six AM was a heavy burden indeed. Two things would get me up at that hour: a photo shoot or cooking for God’s Love We Deliver. This amazing organization still provides meals to homebound people of all stripes. And what meals! The love in the title is baked into every component of a life sustaining package, delivered to people who need it most. I maintained a cooking shift there once a week for years until I moved out of the City. The delivery shift arranged to see where the food we cooked actually went ( to homebound AIDS patients) was harrowing. I’d been cooking there a year or so before I saw any of the clients who were the recipients of all our largesse. The late 80s were a time before most AIDS drugs, when HIV was only beginning to be understood. It presented a vast and omnipresent problem during those years. God’s Love helped me redefine the term, both of them. Being able to actually do something active to ameliorate such a vast problem, even if only to a relative few people, felt powerful and important.
One morning I staggered into the kitchen, donning my apron, hat, and volunteer nametag from the board. I got to work chopping carrots before I noticed there seemed to be prep for some sort of photo shoot going on. Not unusual, God’s Love was always trying to drum up support by getting publicity from various media. “Photo shoot for some magazine…” I was told, “Abby someone” I think I heard no matter what they actually uttered.
Thus I was absolutely flabbergasted to turn to grab a whisk and find myself standing face to face with Annie Leibovitz. You know, John Lennon naked in fetal postion atop Yoko Ono on the cover of Rolling Stone, Demi Moore preggers and naked on the cover of Vanity Fair, Whoopie Goldberg in a tub of milk. That Annie Leibovitz: the greatest portraitist of our age.
“Hamenah, hamenah,” I managed to mutter, suavely I’m sure. And we actually fell rather naturally into discussion. It was hard to concentrate on the (actually quite interesting) conversation at hand because she kept using my name! It was like that Far Side cartoon, where the animals are listening to the humans and all they hear is “blah blah blah” until their name comes up, then “Rex!” or “Fido” breaks through the static. I was quite sure I hadn’t introduced myself, yet here we were chatting away like besties.
Leibovitz’ people had set up a surprisingly tiny lighting scheme consisting of one flash head aimed into a frosted glass ball, about a foot in diameter. The only other piece of kit was a scrim stretched on a frame, about two feet by three feet, hung between the ball light and the subject. This setup was unique (I had literally never seen anything like it, before or since) and genius. The scrim acted like a big flattering softbox on her subjects, while the ball illuminated virtually the entire rest of the space. I saw the finished photo in Vanity Fair and liked the effect so much I got on the (then barely nascent) internet and found and ordered the ball light. I went on to employ that lighting setup myself on scores of shoots. It’s quite clever, requires only one light, and produces gorgeous, flattering effects. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.
In the moment, the renowned photographer was charming and personable, with the disconcerting habit of frequently inserting my name into our leisurely conversation about her lighting. I learned three things from Annie that day. First, that cool lighting. Not lost on me that it was amazing looking yet took only one fixture to create.
Second, I really liked her affect on set. I noticed she never even appeared until everything was set up, tested, and ready to go. She could swoop in, be charming and delightful to everyone around her, pick up the camera and take the picture. Or, sit around chatting for twenty minutes, not a care in the world, then take the picture. No mucking with settings, Polaroids, or lights. She completely engaged with her subjects, the camera and lighting were made effectively invisible, almost an afterthought. Such a good trick, and a byproduct of hiring good assistants.
Oh, and the third thing I learned from Annie Leibovitz? If you’re chatting with a lowly volunteer somewhere wearing a nametag, use their name! Repeatedly. At the least it will throw them off their game, at most will transform a mundane day volunteering in the kitchen to a memorable chance for enlightenment (literal and figurative) and an experience a fan might not soon forget.
My Aunt Cissy read the entire New York Times every single day of her life. She continued this habit long into the twilight of dementia. It never ceased to amuse me the indignation exhibited by my aunt virtually every time I visited her in the last several years of her life. As soon as she laid eyes on me, Cissy would breathlessly exclaim, wide eyed with wonder, “Did you hear?! They have banned smoking in Central Park! What is this city coming to?” Never mind that Cissy never smoked, hadn’t ventured down to Manhattan from Westport for decades, and could absolutely not have cared one whit for whether one could light up in the parks or anywhere. Somehow, when her brain slipped away from short term memory, this one odd item about one of Mayor Mike’s pet peeves was the one that stuck. When greeting her, I would simultaneously laugh and reel at the absurdity of it: wonder why that story would cause such a militant eruption in a heretofore law-abiding unquestioning denizen of New York.
That experience never ceased to remind me of another person, a portrait subject who most assuredly was appalled and enraged by the anti-smoking strictures imposed on an unwilling and testy populace, whether or not she still smoked, ‘lo these thirty years later.
Legendary wit Fran Lebowitz is of course an entirely different person than the famous photographer, unrelated despite the similar last name. I mention it not only because I wanted the chance to tell that story about Annie, but because I actually did relate that story to Fran, who was much amused by it. Sharing a last name, Fran has spent a lifetime being confused for the legendary photographer, and vice versa. The two reportedly routinely receive mis-routed messages for each other. Lebowitz also wryly noted the nametag trick, allowed as how she would make it a point of honor to never even glance down at someone’s nametag but then sheepishly admitted she just might make use of it one of these days.
One of the quiet charms of the celebrity photo beat is the chance to hang out with supremely interesting people you would certainly never encounter otherwise.. Fran Lebowitz is definitively one of those. She is so delightful, charming, and (yes!) inclusive with her irascible and cutting wit that the session flies by while you’re chatting away about a myriad of subjects. Jerry Garcia had the same vibe. Lebowitz is so quick and so funny that it can be hard to keep up. I always thought Dorothy Parker said: “If you don’t have anything nice to say you come sit by me,” but research reveals it was Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She didn’t say it either, she embroidered it on a pillow which is even funnier. Fran seemed kind of mean, but so conspiratorial and warm you indeed felt like you wanted to go sit by her. Quite diminutive, smoked like a chimney, back when one could do such a thing. And immediately upon meeting began a tirade of witty thoughts on any number of subjects and doing such a job of it one felt like you were the only two people in the world, sitting together on a bench remaking upon everyone else.
I remarked upon our matching Brooks Brothers Oxford cloth shirts and she launched into a tale of buying the entire run in her size. My father was a fan, and in fact I had inherited several thick Oxford cloth shirts which I cherish to this day. But it never occurred to me to purchase several hundred of them, no matter how much I liked them. Research indicates that Lebowitz has switched her sartorial allegiance to fancier purveyors than the Brooks Bros. I suspect even that change would have been accompanied by much hilarious wailing and gnashing about how it wasn’t Fran but Brooks Brothers who had declined in quality thus necessitating the switch. And what did she do with all those warehouses full of shirts? Too bad our sizes differ so mightily as I would have made an offer on them. An offer no doubt turned down with the snide cutting edge Ms. Lebowitz seemed to imbue every topic. I couldn’t get the smell of cigarettes out of my clothing for weeks, but it was worth it for a couple hours of being mightily entertained by Fran’s Parkeresque rapier wit.
Somebody, Martin Scorsese in fact, finally figured out what to do with Fran. As I learned that winter afternoon some decades ago, all you do is turn on the camera, point it Fran Lebowitz’ way, and ask her about something or other. That is exactly the tack Pretend It’s a City takes and it’s terrific. So go watch that, dig these photos, and remember, you can’t beat Brooks Brothers oxford cloth shirts and you certainly can’t smoke in Central Park, no matter what Aunt Cissy thought.