Fran Lebowitz - Interview magazine columnist - Interview

Interview, Oct, 1994 by Marc Balet

In talking about New York being different and Interview being different, yes, I am nostalgic for that time in the sense that I look back upon it with pleasure. I think, just like all middle-aged people, that the world's gone to hell, that these kids just don't have a clue. This is just the way middle-aged people have always felt at that age. But sometimes people are right. You know, whatever you do when you're twenty, whatever is new, is always exciting. So I'm not saying that someone who is twenty now is not as excited by things as I was. I just think that the source of excitement is less exciting to me, but it seems that even if I was twenty, it would be the case, but that's impossible to say.

In a sense, a lot of that life back then had to do with staying out all night and hanging out all the time, and there was a tremendous, breathtaking level of promiscuity. If you ask if I would do that now, I would probably say, "No, I wouldn't. I'm too old." I might occasionally partake of it, but basically, I don't think that I would stay out every night, all night long, as I did then, because I think it's a young impulse.

Most people who I know my age are sleepier, or can fall asleep more easily, and I happen to be one of the few people who still stays up all night. And I know people who say there are still places to go all night and have fun. Occasionally I'll make a foray and take a sampling of these places, but they seem totally dull to me.

MB: Well, because you've seen it, been there, done it already.

FL: Yes. Basically, this is not an era where there are a lot of new things, so a lot of what you see you've already seen billions of times.

And I would say the other two things that are less fun are sex and drugs. People still, obviously, have sex and use drugs, but they certainly can't enjoy them with the same abandon. I mean, I think a key element to rampant promiscuity is no consequence. People can go and live like it's 1972, but there's no way they can totally ignore the risks they are taking. It isn't that we were a big risk-taking generation--it just wasn't that risky.

MB: Well, taking drugs is a risk, really.

FL: I'm mainly talking about sex. Taking drugs is risky. And by the time I was in my early twenties, I already knew dozens of people who were dead from drugs. I stopped taking drugs when I was nineteen, so I went through this era straight, which is why I am the one who remembers everything. Everyone is always calling me to ask, "What was the name of that club? What happened that night?" I remember things because I was the only person who wasn't stoned.

But when you're very young and people die, even if they're your exact same age, even if you're doing the exact same things as they were doing, you just think it has nothing to do with you. You'll say, "Well, of course they died. They were crazy." People would say, "So and so overdosed. He got some bad stuff." Like there was some good stuff. "Oh, he got the bad heroin." Like you had the good heroin. Basically, you just didn't feel threatened by the deaths of your contemporaries, because you didn't feel vulnerable, even if you were doing the same things that they were doing.