Fran Lebowitz - Interview magazine columnist - Interview

Interview, Oct, 1994 by Marc Balet

The inimitable columnist of our first decade recalls what it was like to write for Interview in the days when it was the new kid on the block

MARC BALET: When did you first start writing for Interview?

FRAN LEBOWITZ: Well, I can never remember. I either started in '70 or '71. It's lost in the mists of time. I was either twenty or twenty-one. When I started, it was called inter/VIEW: A Monthly Film Journal. It was a black-and-white quarter-fold that was almost entirely movie stills and movie reviews; there was very little writing in it. I think that even the cover was a movie still.

The first column I did was called "The Best of the Worst." It was a movie-review column. I was paid ten dollars a review, so I would do around ten so I could have a monthly income of $100. I concentrated on movies that were considered grade-B movies. This later became quite a trend, and now every suburban newspaper in the country has one of these columns. But I feel confident in saying that this was the first one. I reviewed those kinds of movies that really never played New York. They screened them in New York, but they played in drive-ins.

Now that kind of sensibility is everywhere. It's like Nick at Nite. But at that time, it was quite a restricted sensibility--basically a camp sensibility, which now seems meaningless. But really, if you ask me, what we have now is day camp.

MB: Who was working there besides you?

FL: Bob Colacello. Glenn O'Brien. Glenn was the editor when I came, but Bob had been the editor previously.

MB: And then Bob became the editor again.

FL: Yes. I think Bob wrote a good review of one of Andy's movies, which is just what it took to get you in the door. Then he hired Glenn. And I think originally Glenn was the art director, which was basically a matter of arranging movie stills. One of the salient features--and one of the jokes--was that many people would often review the same movie. They would review whatever movies they wanted to review, or that they got invited to, and their reviews would often conflict. There were also interviews, mostly with old--and I mean old--movie stars. But the column that I remember, because it was my favorite--and which remains my favorite--was one that was a kind of homage to a Diana Vreeland column that had been in Vogue. It was called "Why Not?" and was done by this guy named Sylva Thinn, a drag queen dressed kind of like Greta Garbo; he always wore pants, which was really, in a way, quite witty for a drag queen. And he was among the first, but unfortunately not the last, to have green fingernail polish. And he was really funny.

Interview was a very pure magazine back then. Although there was a constant attitude at the Factory that you want to be commercial, you want to be mainstream--the same idea that made Andy name the Factory the Factory--it was really a pose. Clearly, if you wanted to be commercial and wanted to be mainstream, you would not have a magazine like this. It was read by really few people. It was really funny, but it was read by the sort of people who would understand what "Why Not?" was--and who would care what it was. It's a funny thing to say about Interview, but, in a way, it was innocent, by which I mean everyone was constantly going around saying, "I want to be famous, I want to be rich, I want to be successful," but no one really thought they would be. Or maybe they did, but no one had access to the mass audience.

Interview never got mentioned. There was a big division then, but there is no division at all anymore: A kid in a basement in St. Louis can start one of these little splintery magazines based on his interest in his shoelaces, and it will be picked up by the mainstream media within a very short period of time, whereas Interview went along for years without any real attention from any kind of established press.

Interview was in New York City--it wasn't like it was out in the middle of nowhere. By the time my first book [Metropolitan Life] came out in 1978, I had been writing regularly in Interview for seven years--every single month, a full-page column in a New York publication. But when my book came out, no one had ever heard of me--by which I mean no one associated with any big newspaper or magazine or anything. I was considered this big discovery despite the fact that I thought that because I was known by the people who hung out at Max's [Kansas City], I was already a big success.

That could never happen now. It's impossible tlat that would happen, because not only are things picked up by the mainstream media that are real, things are invented that aren't real. Two people get together in a coffee shop in Seattle, and the next thing you know, it's in The New York Times "Styles" section.

MB: Did Interview help form you to some degree?

FL: Oh, without question. The sensibility of the Factory and the sensibility of Interview. Yes, because I was very young, still at an age where something could influence me. It would be inconceivable now that anything could influence me to that extent--or really at all. Things can only affect me, by which I mean they can depress me. But any place you're in when you're twenty-one is going to affect your sensibility. Interview formed a lot of my tastes, a lot of my takes on things.