Pretend It's a City (2021) s01e03 Episode Script

1
-[car accelerating]
-[Lebowitz] I've traveled quite a bit.
Um, I used to enjoy it
more than I imagine I would now.
Um, I used to be younger, you know.
I used to be, um…
I can't say that I was ever really
that, um,
you know, that easygoing,
um, but certainly more than I am now.
Um, I've always been easily annoyed,
but now I am in a constant state of rage.
[chuckling]
So basically, you know,
one thing about leaving your apartment
is there's so many other people out there.
So, the great thing about my apartment,
aside from that it's a great apartment,
um, is that, um, I control
if there are other people in it,
and that is very important to me.
And this is something
you cannot do in a hotel lobby.
-[Ted Griffin] Uh-huh.
-I've tried, okay?
You cannot do on a plane.
On a commercial plane.
And you can do it on a private plane,
but I don't own one.
I'm always surprised, when I've been on
people's private planes, that I'm on it.
I always think, "If this was my plane,
you wouldn't be on it."
-[Griffin guffaws]
-So, like, like…
What's the point of having
a private plane if other people are on it?
Yes! I was like…
People say, "Wouldn't you want
your friends on it?" No, I would not.
["Come Fly With Me"
by Frank Sinatra playing]
Come fly with me
Let's fly, let's fly away ♪
If you can use some exotic booze
There's a bar in far Bombay ♪
Come fly with me
Let's fly, let's fly away ♪
Come fly with me
Let's float down to Peru ♪
In llama land
There's a one-man band ♪
And he'll toot his flute for you ♪
Come fly with me
Let's fly, let's fly away ♪
[Martin Scorsese] Here we are.
Okay, well, we just want you to be,
you know, as comfortable--
[Lebowitz] Right.
On the set of Wolf of Wall Street,
I didn't see you till I started
really, really fucking it up.
[Scorsese] Then I had to come out.
You came out.
Everyone went, "God, here comes Marty!"
To me, there's a very sad thing
about going to outer space,
which is that it's in the past.
I mean, something that seemed so amazing…
I mean, when we went to space
the first time.
Not to the Moon.
-Um, just when John Glenn went into space…
-[Scorsese] Uh-huh.
…um, they brought a television set
into my school, which was
shocking,
because television and school,
two different worlds.
You know, I was never, even at that age,
very interested in science, you know,
um, but it seemed like,
"That's a great thing.
That's an amazing thing,
that people could figure out
how to do that", you know.
And so I thought it was a great thing.
You know, and I thought it was,
um, an important thing.
I know that, um, some of these rich guys,
um, now have their own, like, NASA,
because we don't have NASA.
Now, it's kind of privatized
and now Elon Musk has,
like, you know a NASA type,
whatever you call it, rocket ship company,
and they call it space tourism.
-People will be able to, like…
-[Marc Balet] Right.
-…have a good time.
-[Balet] Yeah. You're not signing up?
I'm not signing up,
but I'm happy to sign the tourists up.
[Balet chuckles]
I do not want to go to outer space,
so it doesn't interest me, you know.
But I think that it's a good thing
for a country to explore these things.
-Driverless cars…
-[Balet chuckles]
…you know, this is one of the things
that I have to say surprised me.
Driverless cars.
Because I never thought about this.
Like, when they first started writing
about this, I thought, "Who wanted this?"
Like, I just never thought about it.
There's a lot of inventions that I think,
"Oh, that sounds interesting,"
or I understand why someone
would want that, even though I don't.
But driverless cars,
I mean, I have a car. I drive.
And I-- I thought, like,
I never once thought, "Wouldn't it be
great if this car could drive itself?"
-I've only got a 20. Can you break it?
-Yeah, sure. No problem.
[tires screeching]
People say, "Wouldn't you be scared
in a driverless car?"
-[Scorsese] Yes.
-I think of times
I was scared in a car with a driver.
[tires screeching]
[flamenco dancer tapping]
[cab honks loudly]
[Lebowitz] I have been petrified,
you know.
I mean, the scene in that movie of yours,
After Hours, when the cab takes off.
[Scorsese] Yeah, that's really from
an actual cab ride, with the flamenco.
That totally happened to me.
[Lebowitz] When I saw that movie
and that cab took off--
-Griffin's in it, right?
-[Scorsese] Yeah.
Oh my God!
-I could not stop laughing.
-That's it!
Because that was the beginning
of crazy cab drivers.
-Yes.
-I mean, there were cabs before that.
-[Scorsese] Not like this.
-We don't know why this happens,
but, all of a sudden, it becomes a thing
where all the cab drivers are insane,
and they all drive
a million miles an hour,
and they won't listen to you.
You have to beg them. "Please, slow down."
You have to make stuff up.
Like, "I have a bad back," or
you know, when I was younger, I would say,
"I'm pregnant," which scares them.
Now, of course, I couldn't say that,
-unless they're completely blind.
-[Scorsese laughing]
So there are
lots of unbelievably horrible drivers
that if you took all the bad drivers
and also all the drunk drivers,
you know,
and also all the drivers who are high,
um, probably driverless cars
are probably safer.
So it's not like human beings
have such great judgment, you know.
Fran Lebowitz is with us.
The new volume is called Social Studies.
We were speaking
during the commercial break
about something that
is indigenous to New York City.
Before you were a best-selling
celebrity author, you were a cab driver.
Were you a good cab driver?
I-- I don't want to brag.
I was an excellent…
I was, in fact, a superb cab driver.
I did not like driving a cab,
I have to say.
It didn't find it colorful,
interesting, or picturesque.
I learned nothing from it,
and I never want one of those jobs again.
I mean driving a cab, now it's a really
horrible job, but it was a horrible job.
Um, there were, at the beginning,
at that point, a few hippies driving cabs,
but basically,
the New York City cab driver
-was a working-class Jewish guy…
-[Scorsese] Uh-huh.
…with a cigar in his mouth.
You could smoke in cabs then.
And they were very mean to me.
In case any of them are still alive,
they were very mean to me, these guys.
They were-- And I was really surprised,
because they looked kind of like my uncle
or something.
I thought they would be-- but they…
[coughs]
…and I realize now,
even then I might have started to realize,
they were, like, really worried.
Like, "What? Is this
what's going to happen to the profession?"
-[Scorsese laughs]
-"These, like, girls are gonna come in
with the long hair, and, like… [coughs]
…this whole thing is over?"
It was such a good job, you know,
from the point of view of money earning,
um, that those guys,
they worked eight hours a day,
you know, like, five days a week.
They had wives. They had children.
-The wives did not work.
-[Scorsese] Mm-hmm.
Okay? Okay, and they made a living.
They lived usually in Queens or Brooklyn,
which then was a different place
than it is now, um, and it was a good job.
There was a cafeteria on Lower Park Avenue
called the Belmore,
and that's where the cab drivers ate.
It was open all night.
It was open 24 hours a day,
and for some reason,
they must have
had some sort of deal with the cops.
You could leave the cab in front
without it getting a ticket.
So, that's why it was so popular
with cab drivers.
Not because, you know,
they had the most delicious food.
Cab drivers, well known
to be great judges of this.
And when I would go there,
um, no one would talk to me.
So I was, like,
I was very popular
in, like, my high school cafeteria,
but in the cab drivers' cafeteria,
very unpopular.
They wouldn't talk to me.
If I asked a question,
sometimes trying to get some advice,
sometimes they wouldn't even answer me.
You know, there were garages then,
with big fleets of cabs, you know,
and so you would go
and pick up your cab from the garage.
Um, there was a gas pump in the garage.
They put the gas in.
You didn't pay for the gas.
All they did was write down
how much there was
to make sure that it jived
with your trip sheet, how far it was.
So you didn't, you know,
I guess in their mind,
you didn't take the cab and go
to East Hampton for the weekend.
-[Scorsese laughing]
-So it's like, you know…
We had to take a test,
you know, a cab driving test,
which they cannot possibly have now.
-[Scorsese laughs]
-Okay, I mean, I don't know.
I haven't tried to get this job
for a long time.
But, I mean, since, you know,
I have actually gotten into taxis
and said, "Grand Central Station, please,"
and they say, "Huh?"
I think, like, "Grand Central Station.
Okay, they don't know where it is."
Um, so we had to, when I say "we,"
I make it sound like it was, I don't know,
Harvard Business School. It wasn't.
And it's not like London,
which has this very famous hard test
with eight million questions,
But, uh, it had a number of things,
you know.
You certainly had
to know the airports, uh,
and you had to know different stores,
different places.
Now, they don't.
Um, and… [clears throat]
…it's a very devalued job now.
Right.
-19 Gramercy Park South, please.
-[cars honking]
-Cabs are very unpleasant. Let's face it.
-[Scorsese] Mm-hmm.
They put those things in.
The screen in front of you.
I discovered when they put them in,
I'm bad at shutting them off.
No, no, no. Look, the plot
of this phone call isn't working for me.
It's ordinary.
I've seen it a million times, okay?
[woman] Excuse me--
-Excuse me. There's not itch to it.
-[console beeping]
He's just got out of prison, all right?
-[woman] Daddy's in Cleveland.
-[Scorsese] He just got out of prison.
I am bad at shutting them off.
I put my finger or thumb on the thing
a million times,
even though I know
nothing could be dirtier than this.
[Scorsese laughing]
Like, you could eat a ten-dollar bill
probably,
it would be cleaner
than putting your thumb on this thing
where a million people have tried to turn
this thing off, and I'm very bad at it.
I have no luck with this thing at all.
I've been very lucky in my life, I know,
in certain ways.
Um, and in certain ways, very unlucky.
And, at my age,
that kind of luck doesn't change.
It's not like I'll wake up and find out,
"You have incredible real estate luck."
Or, "You can get that thing off
in the back of a cab."
I know these things aren't connected.
One seems small, one seems big,
but they're both things
that I am unable to do.
Now, Mr. Scorsese and I are gonna
take questions from the audience.
Um, wow.
-A lot of people.
-We can't see anything.
If you raise your hand,
I will call on you.
-You.
-[audience laughs]
Hello, I’m Laura. 
From Barcelona.
My question is…
I-- I-- I-- also…
Something happened to me. 
I’m on crutches.
Since I have moved to New York,
a police car hit me.
And I’m suing the city of New York,
because people say,
“You have to sue the city,
because you are going to get money."
"A police car just hit you--"
-Is this a question?
-[audience laughing]
-Because it goes on, yeah.
-[light applause]
It's a good story.
[Laura] My question is,
now, you live in New York.
How long will it take me
to get this money from the city?
Okay. All right, here's the question.
She's from Barcelona.
That's not part of the question.
[audience laughs]
She now lives in New York.
She was hit by a police car.
Now she's suing the city
and she wants to know
how long it will take to get her money.
[Scorsese, audience laughing]
Yeah.
Everybody asks me that.
-[Lebowitz chuckles]
-[Scorsese] Yeah. Yeah.
All right, I will tell you this.
-Yeah.
-I live across the street
from one of these law firms
that you hear advertise all the time.
The kind of law firms that say,
you know, "Have you broken a nail?"
[all laughing, chuckling]
-"Dropped an egg?"
-[audience laughing]
[Scorsese] Yeah.
"Money could be owed to you."
["Street Scene" by Alfred Newman plays]
[Lebowitz]
I'm in my subway station one day,
and there's all these signs
that it's closing for…
"station enhancement."
Station enhancement.
Not, "We're not gonna fix the subways,"
which are all broken.
The tracks are broken.
The signals are broken.
The cars are broken.
Every single thing is broken.
There aren't enough trains.
They break. They're old.
They don't fix them.
Um, but the station enhancement,
and there were big posters, um,
with lists
of all the things they were gonna do.
The station was closing for five months.
Five months!
So I look.
I'm starting to read this poster,
and there's a guy standing next to me who,
at the end of reading it, I become aware
we're reading at the exact same speed.
And so it's all the things
they're gonna do to the station.
And at the bottom of this list,
I'm not making this up.
It's impossible
to be a satirist in this era.
-It would stump Jonathan Swift.
-[Scorsese] Yep.
The last sentence was, "Art installation."
So I get to this just at the same moment,
I guess, as the guy standing next to me,
and he goes,
"Art installation? What's that?"
I said, "I don't know,
but isn't that the thing that drives you
the most crazy about the subway?"
"Don't you stand for hours,
waiting for the train that never comes,
thinking, 'You know what's wrong?
Not enough art.'"
William Wegman has installed
some mosaics of dogs…
which I'm guessing I paid for.
So, I mean, these are cute, okay?
But really?
Like, and this took five months?
And…
But that's it.
In other words, the tiles--
the broken tiles are still there.
The original schmutz, still there.
The broken cement on the floor,
still there.
They didn't touch it.
So I think,
"How could this take five months?"
And then you think about,
you know, your contractor…
-[Scorsese] Yeah.
-…who renovated your apartment.
They must have used him.
This is why it took five months.
You may love mosaics of dogs.
You may not like them.
But no one,
I am certain
that even William Wegman would say,
"Do you think this is essential
to the lifeblood of New York
that we have these dogs
in the subway station?"
I mean, it is not, you know? It's nice.
You know, there's certain things,
like, you think, like,
"If we've taken care of every
important thing, okay, let's do that."
-[Scorsese] Mm-hmm.
-You know? But we haven't.
We've taken care of no important things.
No. Let's do this other stuff first.
[Scorsese]
Maybe they think it's for the spirit.
The spirit, yes.
But no one in the subway system
has any spirit left.
-[both laughing]
-Okay? They've beaten it out of us.
Like, it would take one subway ride
for the Dalai Lama
to turn into a lunatic, raging person,
yelling, "Who cares about this art
in the subway station?"
[Scorsese laughing]
[1950s MTA narrator]
To ensure the unequaled safety record
of the New York City Transit Authority,
the men of the system
are perfectly trained for their jobs.
At the Transit Authority's
testing facilities,
these men learn to drive in city streets
during heavy traffic
and under difficult conditions.
Their skills are carefully evaluated
by trained experts.
[Lebowitz] I think that if you're over 14,
you don't have time to wait for the bus.
If you're eight or nine, you can think,
"The bus is gonna take an hour and a half,
but I can waste that, because I'm nine.
I have plenty of time to waste."
But if you're not nine, you think,
"I'm really sorry, but I'm too old."
"I don't have time to waste
waiting for the bus."
I'm one of these people
that if I start waiting for the bus,
there are many people waiting,
but while you're there
with what becomes a kind of community
of people waiting for the bus.
Um, some people give up.
They just walk away.
Some people take cabs.
I'm a person who thinks,
"I'm not leaving this investment."
-[Scorsese chuckles]
-"I've already waited 25 minutes."
"If I leave,
I'm gonna lose this 25 minutes."
"I'm never getting it back,
let's face it."
Finally, the bus comes.
I asked the driver when I got on the bus,
"Can you please tell me," I said to him,
"what's the nearest stop to 27th Street?"
He said, "I don't know."
[Scorsese laughs]
So I said, "I'm sorry?"
"You don't know?"
I said, "You don't know
what is the nearest stop to 27th Street?"
He said, "What do you expect?
You expect me to memorize all the stops?"
[Scorsese laughs loudly]
I said, "Yes. Yes, I do!"
"I expect you to memorize
all of the stops."
"Every single one!"
He said, "There are a lot of stops."
I said, "I expect you to memorize them."
-You're a bus driver!
-[Scorsese laughing]
It's not like, "Oh, I understand.
You're performing Richard III."
"That's so much to memorize."
"How could you do that
and also memorize all the stops?"
"But you are a bus driver.
That is your job!"
I said, "You have two things in your job.
You have to drive the bus, okay?"
"Which I could do, okay?"
"And you have to memorize the stops,
which I could do."
Okay, Richard III,
no, I can't do that, but I could--
How many stops are there?
There's not 10,000 stops.
There's not a restaurant in New York
where every waiter and waitress
in that restaurant
can memorize 4,000 specials.
Sometimes I'm just agog.
-They tell you a million specials.
-[Scorsese] It's amazing.
By the time they get to the end,
I can't remember what's at the beginning.
And so you find yourself saying,
"You said trout at one point."
And right away, they go right into it.
I think they should take
all these waiters and waitresses,
most of whom think they are gonna do
Richard III, but they're not,
and make them bus drivers, okay?
Because they obviously
have fantastic memories.
They can memorize, and not that they
just memorize the dishes,
-they memorize how they prepare it.
-[Scorsese] Yes, exactly.
"And it has cilantro, and it has this…"
And then, someone will say,
"How much cilantro?"
I'm not one of those people.
But there are people
that, you know, are very finicky.
"Um, where did you get the cilantro?"
I'm always thinking,
"I'm never having dinner with you again."
-[Scorsese laughs]
-Like, I don't even know what cilantro is.
It's tasty. I've tasted it.
Okay, good. Cilantro, fine.
Um, but,  [coughs]
this is what it's like to take a bus.
[Scorsese] Well, the city is changing.
[Lebowitz] One of the ways you can tell
is the lights are on in the building.
[Scorsese] Hmm.
[Lebowitz] Was it Roosevelt Island
where the hospitals were?
[Scorsese] Yeah, right there.
-See that long stretch?
-That's where the typhoid hospital was?
Yes, yes, tuberculosis and typhoid
and all that.
They put them there. Yeah.
Someday, this will be yours.
I was gonna say. That was my line!
[both laughing]
-[Lebowitz] Do you see the plane? Where?
-[Scorsese] It looks like a dragonfly.
-I don't see it.
-Right there.
Landing.
-Where?
-In the airport.
-Which is?
-[Scorsese chuckles]
[Scorsese] So LaGuardia
is right next to Rikers?
-[man] Yes.
-Oh, my.
[Lebowitz] But it doesn't land at Rikers.
-Okay.
-And if it did, the prisoners would go,
-"Delta. What do you think? No."
-[Scorsese laughs]
-[Lebowitz] I see it.
-Yeah.
-[Lebowitz] Is there only one plane?
-Two planes.
[Lebowitz] Two. So it is like Delta.
Yeah. [Scorsese laughing]
"Where's the plane?" "Well, we only
have two, so where are you going?"
"Well, you have to wait, because it has
to go to 16 other cities first."
Now, where is the place in our society
where you least like to be
in the presence of your fellow men?
Is there an environment
that makes your skin crawl?
-Yes, a plane.
-A plane?
Yes, I can't believe they let
all these people on the plane.
[audience laughs]
Why is it so horrible on the plane?
It's the other passengers.
How has air travel changed
in your lifetime?
Well, when I first started flying,
I was not a child, by the way.
I was an adult when I started.
-It was very luxurious to fly.
-Of course.
You know, it was really luxurious.
I know that sounds impossible.
But the reason for this
was because airlines were regulated,
and the regulation was
they could not compete on price.
So all plane tickets were the same price.
New York to LA
was the same price on any airline,
which is why, if you missed your plane,
another airline would take your ticket,
no problem.
Uh, and so they had to compete on service.
So there were advertisements for airlines
that said, like,
"We have steak, lobster, a piano bar.
We have a stripper. We have a lounge."
But, no kidding, how many people here
flew on the old Pan Am
before they went out of business?
I flew the old flight to the West Coast
and went to San Francisco.
Clipper of the Skies, it was called.
[Pan Am narrator]
A new concept in air transportation.
The travail has been taken out of travel.
This is the atmosphere
on a jet clipper flight.
Delicious food adds to the enjoyment.
It's prepared
in four simultaneously operating galleys
where dishes can be cooked
in five-minute ovens.
[Lebowitz]
Recently, three women in their fifties
were arrested on a plane
some place upstate.
Uh, one was a lawyer. One was a doctor.
One was a real estate broker or something.
They were together. One got in a fight
with the flight attendant.
The others chimed in,
and they were taken away in handcuffs.
A friend said, "Isn't that amazing,
that people that age
would be thrown off an airplane?"
And I said, "It's only people that age
that get thrown off an airplane,
because we're the only people
that remember when it was great to fly."
So when they say to us,
"Don't put that there,"
you say, "Are you kidding me?
Where's my lobster?"
[audience laughing]
Whereas the people who are 20, they've
always known it to be a sordid experience.
-A flying bus.
-A horrible, sordid experience.
I mean, why should it take,
you know, six hours to go to LA?
If they let the Concorde go to LA,
you wouldn't have to stay overnight.
-[Scorsese laughs]
-That is an important national goal,
as far as I'm concerned.
If I was the president, I'd say,
"We have an important national goal here.
We are gonna make it possible
so you can go to LA from New York
and not stay overnight."
-[Scorsese] Have a meeting. Come back.
-You don't have to stay overnight.
I was in the lobby with luggage
at, like, 6:00 a.m. to catch a plane,
and someone in my building,
I mean, a neighbor, who--
Some people, at 6:00 a.m.,
they're coming back from the gym.
-[Scorsese laughs]
-Well, that's why they have money.
On the other hand, you call that a life?
Okay? At 6:00 a.m.,
they're coming back from the gym!
Okay, so they'll say,
"Fran, are you going on vacation?"
And I think, "Are you insane?"
-[Scorsese laughs]
-So I said, "No."
"Vacation? No."
"Oh, where are you going?"
I don't remember where I was going.
I said, "No, I do these speaking dates."
"No, I'm going to work."
I-- If you see me
with luggage in the lobby,
-I'm going to make money, okay?
-[Scorsese] Mm-hmm.
I'm not going to spend it.
I spend it here. Here's where I spend it.
I go, I get on the plane.
I go to these places. I make money.
The money comes back.
I give it to the building.
I stay in the building.
You know, it's like the money that I earn,
I do, so I have this home.
Okay? I have to keep going out
so I can stay here.
But as far as wanting to go places,
I can't believe people do it for fun.
When I'm in airports and I see
that there are people going on vacations,
I think,
"How horrible could your life be?"
-Like, how bad is your regular life…
-[Scorsese laughing]
…that you think, "You know what'd be fun?"
"Let's get the kids, go to the airport,
you know,
with thousands of pieces of luggage,
stand in these lines,
be yelled at by a bunch of morons,
leave late, be squished all together."
"And this is better than our actual life."
["Ca Plane Pour Moi"
by Plastic Bertrand playing]
[Scorsese] And action.
One count, engaging in conspiracy
to commit securities fraud.
Two counts, securities fraud.
One count, engaging in conspiracy
to commit money laundering.
Twenty-one counts, money laundering.
One count, obstruction of justice.
Bail is set at $10 million.
[Lebowitz] Yes?
[woman in audience] What are your thoughts
on electronic cigarettes?
[Lebowitz, audience laughing]
Well, being on the set of your movie,
-when Leo walked into the courtroom…
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
…he was smoking a cigarette.
And I thought--
and we were in a real courthouse, okay?
So I know that movie stars
have a lot more latitude
than people who are not movie stars,
but I thought, "They're letting him
smoke in a real courthouse?"
Then he got closer and closer,
and I did not smell the smoke.
I'm thinking, "If he can smoke
a cigarette, I can smoke a cigarette."
-[audience laughs]
-So he was smoking an electronic cigarette
and then, during one of the breaks,
uh, he said to me,
"Do-- Do you want one of these?"
"Did you ever try one of these?"
I said, "No."
He said, "Let me give you one,"
which he did.
He gave me one. He said, "Try it."
I said, "I want a real cigarette."
He said, "Try it," so I pretended.
I tried it. I said, "It's great."
[audience laughs]
So he gave it to me,
and then I forgot about it.
Uh, and then, I was on a plane,
on my way to LA,
and I was at that point where you think,
"I'm gonna kill someone."
[audience, Scorsese laughing]
And then I remembered
that I had this fake cigarette,
which, by the way--
Oh! Leo told me, "You can't--"
I said, "Can you smoke these on a plane?"
It's the first thing I asked.
He said, "No."
I said, "On a regular commercial flight,
you can't smoke these?"
He said, "No." I said, "How do you know?"
"Did someone tell you that, or…?"
[audience laughing]
So he said,
"No, I was on a commercial flight,
and they wouldn't let me smoke it."
So I think,
"Well, if they wouldn't let him smoke it,
then I know
you can't smoke them on a plane."
Um, although I did think, "Why?"
Um, so I was on a plane,
not a commercial plane,
but you couldn't smoke.
So I thought, "Oh! I have this cigarette
that Leo gave me."
So I used it on the plane,
and it does take away that murderous edge.
[audience laughing]
You know,
where you think, on the one hand,
it is very nice of this guy
who owns a plane to give me a ride to LA.
On the other hand,
why won't he let me smoke?
[audience laughing]
So I think
they're not as good as real cigarettes,
but they're better than no cigarettes.
And though you're not allowed
to smoke them on a plane,
if you do smoke them on a plane,
no one notices.
[audience laughs]
So you can smoke them on a plane.
Especially in the bathroom.
You can't smoke a real cigarette
on the plane in the bathroom.
The second you light it,
something goes off in the cockpit,
and they come and yell at you.
[audience, Scorsese laughing]
This is something I know for a fact.
[Scorsese] Warning.
Smoking is injurious to health.
Fran Lebowitz and Leonardo DiCaprio do not
endorse the use of electronic cigarettes
and are not liable
in the event of accidents that may occur
while using electronic cigarettes.
["La Dolce Vita" (Finale)
by Nino Rota playing]
When you drove a cab,
do you remember any fares from back then?
I really don't.
You know, I do remember, um,
that a lot of people,
uh, tried to tip me with joints.
Okay.
And, you know,
they would be, like, young too
and so they would think
that was a great thing to do.
And I would say six or seven times,
maybe more, you know,
people would, like, give me a joint.
"And this is for you."
And I would say the same thing.
I'd give it back.
First, the one thing you did not
want to have in the cab was drugs!
Because you could be stopped by the cops!
And I also would yell at people
for smoking pot in the cab.
You were allowed to smoke in cabs,
by the way.
Because I thought,
"We're gonna get stopped,
I'm gonna go to jail,
'cause you're smoking a joint." Um…
And I would say, "Here's the thing.
I don't want this in the car.
And the other thing is
I do this for money.
-[Scorsese] Hmm.
-I'm driving this cab for money.
It's not some sort of, like,
you know, festival in here.
I'm doing this for money, and I cannot
take this joint into a delicatessen
-and pay for a sandwich with it.
-[Scorsese] Mm.
So, basically, this cab driving
is a sandwich-buying enterprise for me,
so take it."
I didn't want it in the cab.
That was a really common thing
that people tried.
People kept telling me then
there was a woman cab driver,
but I never saw her.
I always looked for her in the Belmore
so someone would speak to me!
But I never saw her.