Pretend It's a City (2021) s01e06 Episode Script

1
If I knew now the things I knew,
that I know now, when I was young…
…I wouldn't have made these mistakes.
But I have really bad news for people.
You continue to make mistakes.
It's not like you only make mistakes
until a certain age.
You continue to make mistakes,
and you have less excuse,
because it's very rare that you have
the opportunity when you're older
to make a new mistake.
So instead you find, "I can't believe
I made this mistake again."
-[laughter]
-"Because I knew not to make…
The first time I didn't know,"
and so you give yourself a pass.
Then you think, "Let's face it. This is
the 16th time I've made the same mistake."
And that really… The repeated mistake.
The same mistake over and over again,
what it really just proves to you is
you're bad at that thing, whatever it is.
[rock music plays]
[Fran] Yes?
[man] Does the possible
environmental apocalypse give you anxiety?
[Fran] No. I'm not that young.
-If there's an apocalypse…
-[laughter]
You know, it's like… [Fran laughs]
You know, I could afford to live,
like, maybe four more years.
[laughter]
If I knew there was gonna be
an apocalypse, one more year.
[he laughs]
She's over by the corner ♪
Got her hands by her side ♪
They hit her harder, harder, harder ♪
Oh, till they thought she might die ♪
Well, I got a foggy notion
Do it again, uh ♪
Over by the corner ♪
Do it again ♪
I got my calamine lotion, baby
Do it again ♪
Well, I got a foggy notion
Do it again ♪
Did we have this many people
Public Speaking?
-[Martin] Uh…
-[Ted] No.
-No.
-[Martin] No.
[loud crash]
[Ted] Well, it's a party now.
[Martin] I can't believe it's nine,
ten years since we did that.
-I suddenly turn around, it's ten years.
-It wasn't suddenly you turned around.
[Martin] No. But it felt like,
every time, it's imminent.
Are we on? Are we doing this now?
-[Ted] Yeah.
-[Martin] Anything. We just keep rolling.
-I didn't know that. When did we start?
-[Martin] When they broke the thing.
And when the guys were talking and then
we came down. We're shooting everything.
-[laughter]
-You're supposed to tell the person!
-[Ted] Do you have a guilty pleasure?
-No. I have no guilty pleasures.
Pleasure never makes me feel guilty.
I think it's unbelievable that there's
such a phrase as "guilty pleasure."
In other words…
Unless your pleasure is killing people.
-[Martin laughs]
-But I mean, like, I would never feel…
My pleasures are absolutely benign,
by which I mean no one dies, okay?
No one is molested, you know?
And I think, "No,
I don't feel guilty for having pleasure."
We live in a world where people
don't feel guilty for killing people,
people don't feel guilty for, like,
putting babies in cages at the border.
People don't feel guilty for this,
but I should feel guilty for what?
For having two bowls of spaghetti?
You know? For reading a mystery?
Or people, their guilty pleasure
always is the enjoyment of some form
that is not high art, you know?
So if you say, "Well, I really like to,
you know, read a You're A Wolf book.
That's supposed to be a guilty pleasure.
It's a pleasure. I don't feel guilty.
And, you know, pleasure, to me,
especially the older I get,
the more I think,
-"Any fun you can have, friend, go ahead."
-[Martin laughs]
"Go ahead. Have it."
You know, I mean, um… That's how I feel.
I've always been a fan of fun.
I think people should have fun
as long as fun is not something
that's destructive to other people. Um…
If someone's answer to me,
if I ask, "Why do you do that?"
If they say, "I think it's fun,"
that's, to me, a good answer.
A bad answer is, "You don't really see,
you know, how important this is…"
That's a bad answer. But a good answer…
"It's fun," is a good answer.
[classical music plays]
[Fran] I like parties. This is the thing
you never hear anyone say.
Everyone hates parties,
especially when they're at a party.
"I don't care for these balls,
but one had to come for the girls."
And people have often said about me,
while I'm sitting there,
"Fran likes parties,"
like it's some incredibly weird thing.
"Fran. You know Fran, she likes parties."
I really like parties,
because parties are supposed to be fun.
It's like movies when I was a kid.
Movies are good.
Candy is good. Parties are good.
I mean… [hesitates]
There's nothing wrong with parties!
[classical music plays]
I mean, the last time I saw The Leopard
was a less restored at the Ziegfeld.
And when I went to see it at the Ziegfeld,
I was, if not the only person,
one of a few people who were not
movie directors who were there.
I looked around, and it was like
the last time I saw Richard Pryor.
When I saw Richard Pryor at Town Hall,
everyone in the audience was a comedian.
I went to see The Leopard,
everyone in the audience was a director.
So you like films?
Movies? I love movies.
Do you go to the movie theater,
or you just watch them at home on DVDs?
Well, as I said recently,
I don't go to the movie theater very much,
because I cannot stand my fellow man.
[audience laughs]
-Talking to the screen and stuff?
-[Fran] Yeah.
Talking on their phone, talking,
eating three-course steak dinners.
-[audience laughs]
-I mean…
I have a DVD player that someone gave me.
-It's not hooked up to the television?
-No, it's…
-Actually, Mr. Scorsese gave this to me.
-Right.
It's a little one that you're supposed
to be able to just watch on your sofa,
but it's pretty complicated.
[audience laughs]
-[woman] How did you two meet?
-[Fran] Oh, how did we meet?
-Do you want to tell her?
-Do we know?
-No. [laughs]
-No.
[laughter]
People have often asked me
how did I meet Marty, and I, um…
I don't know.
Um, and so I'm assuming
I met him at a party.
And why do I think that?
Because I go to a lot of parties.
-John Waters' 50th birthday party?
-No, I already knew you then.
-You knew me before.
-Yeah.
I do know that I knew Marty
for a long time before I knew him well,
because although I go
to a lot more parties than Marty,
which is why Marty's made a lot of movies,
and I haven't written a lot of books, and…
[Martin laughs]
But, you know, I did notice
that whenever I saw Marty at a party,
we would spend the entire time
talking to each other.
So I was up all night, Marty, because
I drank coffee all night last night.
And that movie that I asked you about once
with Cary Grant, called Penny Arcade,
was on in the middle of the night.
Penny Serenade.
-Yeah, Penny Serenade. You ever see this?
-[Ted] I've never seen it.
There's no Cary Grant movie
where Cary Grant is less Cary Grant.
[Martin] The thing was,
at that time, he was trying to do roles
so that he could
break out of the Cary Grant persona.
He only got one Academy Award nomination,
for None but the Lonely Heart.
But in any event, that was an attempt.
George Stevens.
[Fran] George Stevens, yeah.
I saw him once.
I was walking down Madison Avenue.
Must've been in the '80s.
He was an old man already.
And I noticed as I was walking
down the street that people were stopped.
And walking up Madison Avenue
is Cary Grant
in a white linen suit
with his white linen hair,
and he's, like, glowing.
-[Martin] Mm-hmm.
-And he just… So I thought, "That's bad?"
-[Martin laughs]
-I mean…
[Martin] Okay. Allora.
Andiamo. Run it.
When I was a child,
air-conditioning was not that common,
but it was common in movie theaters.
And, in fact, movie theaters
had these, like, banners outside,
with letters made to look like ice cubes,
and it would say, you know, "Air-cooled,"
or, "Air-conditioned inside."
[Martin] Cooled by refrigeration.
And sometimes people would just say,
"It's so hot. Let's go to the movies."
That would be
why you would go to the movies.
So I did really love going to the movies,
but I can't say, you know…
In fact, I can say quite emphatically
that I was no judge of them.
I did not judge them.
I just thought, "Movies!"
-[Martin laughs]
-You know, I mean, good!
Is there any movie that,
when it's on television,
you could watch it over and over again?
Yes, there are many movies
that I like that much, for sure. Um…
When I was a child, there was a TV show
called Million Dollar Movie,
and it was a movie
that they showed every day.
They'd show the same movie
every day for a week.
So I started watching this movie
called The Boy with Green Hair.
This was Monday.
At exactly 7:30, about a half hour
into this movie, I had to go to bed.
"Please can I see the--"
"No, you have to go to bed."
For the entire week, five days,
I watched the first half hour
of The Boy with Green Hair.
I asked my mother within the last decade,
"Would it have killed you to let me see?"
I was well into my forties before I saw
the end of The Boy with Green Hair.
[audience laughs]
I went to bed at 7:30, which is an early
bedtime, until I was about ten years old.
I asked my mother,
"Why did you make me go to bed so early?"
Because I blame this
for my lifelong insomnia.
That I never went to bed when I was tired.
I was never tired at 7:30.
"Why did I have to go to bed so early?"
And she said,
"To tell you the truth, Francie, by 7:30,
I just couldn't listen to you anymore."
[audience laughs]
Hey, Gramp!
[man] Aye, lad?
[boy] I've got green hair.
[Fran] Within this year,
I was in the elevator
in my apartment building,
and a little boy gets in with green hair.
Not like a teenager who dyed his hair.
But a boy who had a mother who not only
let him watch The Boy with Green Hair,
but let him have green hair.
He's like a seven-year-old boy.
I looked at this little boy and said,
"I like your hair." He said, "Thank you."
I said, "There's a movie called
The Boy with Green Hair. Did you see it?"
He looked at me and went,
"No, there's not."
[Martin] Mmm.
I said, "Yes, there is."
He said, "No, there's not."
I saw him a few days later,
and I said, "There is a movie
called The Boy with Green Hair."
He said, "I don't believe you."
So I thought…
I said, "Well, I'm sure you have
one of these modern devices. Look it up."
Then I never saw him again.
Here is something
that I actually saw in real life.
I saw a little boy.
He must have been about four,
which, in my opinion,
is too old to be in a stroller.
And he had something,
a device of some sort,
and his mother was pushing him.
His actual mother, not a nanny,
was pushing him.
He was looking, I guess, for directions,
and he said, "No, no, it's 23rd Street!"
[laughs]
[Fran] And I felt like saying, "Excuse me.
If your son is old enough to navigate,
he's too old to be in the stroller."
[Olivia] Yes.
I think it's… I have no objection
to children doing this.
Children, of course, are doing this,
because they've had it their whole lives.
I don't think it's gonna change them,
because they're not yet available
to be changed, you know?
When I was a child, my father always said,
"We didn't have television."
I found this to be of no interest.
"So you didn't have television."
You know, I mean… "I do."
It was as simple as that, you know.
[Ted] How do you get along
with young people?
Well, it depends.
I mean, little children, probably
not what you mean, I like very much.
People are always shocked by this.
How much I like little kids.
I like them because they're like
the least annoying group of people.
People think they're the most annoying.
They can be very annoying, making noise.
But they're the least annoying,
because they are the least likely
to tell you something
you've heard a million times.
They're not yet filled with clichés,
you know?
So they're more original than adults.
It gets taken out of them pretty quickly.
And so they don't really know
what things are, so they make it up,
you know, and they… Or they ask questions.
They're generally not trying to convince
you they know something they don't know.
You know, um…
And I just find them very interesting.
If you mean young people
like people in their twenties,
I never really would've
thought about them.
Even when I was that age,
I never really thought about it.
Like some kid did come up to me once
outside a restaurant
and said, "If you want to know
what millennials are thinking,
here's my e-mail, and you can e-mail me."
And I said, "Why would I wanna know this?"
But I mean…
He said, "Well, a lot of people do."
I said, "People trying to sell you stuff.
I'm not selling anything.
If you have a company that's
trying to sell these people clothes
or whatever, then yes,
I'd like to know what you're thinking.
But why would you be the person,
out of all the millions of people
who are 20?
What are you, the designated 20-year-old?
There's not many upsides to being old,
as we know, but here is one.
When you read
we're gonna be out of water in 2050,
you first think, "Oh my God!"
And then you think, "2050? I'll be dead."
[laughter]
Let someone else worry about it!
[laughter]
I don't know if they do it to you,
where you have your own
actually young child.
I don't mean a little child,
but a teenager.
But people that age, the age
of your daughter and somewhat older,
very often approach me to ask me
my opinion of what they should do in life.
Like, "Fran…" And I always think,
"First of all, I don't care what you do."
[laughter]
They're so used to being
the center of their parents' attention.
Anyone they see that age, they think,
"Maybe they'll help me out."
[he laughs]
But that would be a mistake with me,
because, um…
[laughter]
But what they're always asking
is what kind of artist should they be?
But they always say, "Do you think
I should be a writer or a filmmaker?"
And I always think,
"If I were your age, I'd look for water."
I think you should be whatever you call
a person who looks for water,
because apparently…
I don't know why we ran out of water,
but apparently we drank it all.
You know?
It's like, "We didn't leave any for you."
[gentle music plays]
[man] We met at nine ♪
[woman] We met at eight ♪
[man] I was on time ♪
[woman] No, you were late ♪
[man] Ah, yes, I remember it well ♪
-[man] We met at nine ♪
-[woman] We met at eight ♪
-[man] I was on time ♪
-[woman] No, you were late ♪
[man] Ah yes, I remember it well ♪
[announcer] The Xerox
display typing system
lets you create and revise information
right on a screen
before it's committed to paper,
and will remember it all,
even if you don't.
[both] Ah, yes, I remember it well
With texting and social networking,
e-mailing, phone calls,
how are you with that?
Are you a texter or you talk on the phone?
I am none of these things.
-None?
-No. I don't have a computer.
I don't have an iPhone
or a cellphone, iPad.
-No cellphone?
-I have a regular phone.
I have an address. That is sufficient.
When they first invented computers…
I mean, computers in people's houses, um…
They were called word processors,
and a friend of mine got one
and said, "You have to see this."
I went to her house
and she showed me this thing.
What it looked like to me,
and what it was at the time,
was a very fast kind of typewriter.
-Yeah.
-I didn't have a typewriter.
I never had the old machines.
So I didn't have a typewriter,
I wrote with a ballpoint pen.
I thought, "I don't need this.
It's a fast typewriter.
I don't even have a typewriter.
I don't know how to type.
So I'm not getting into this."
So, of course, not knowing…
I didn't know the whole world
would go into this machine.
-You know…
-[Martin laughs]
So it did, but it was little by little.
I wasn't really noticing it.
And now the whole world is in it,
and now people say,
"And now you don't know
about these things," you know?
But it isn't true, because people
constantly tell me about these things.
So I know about these things.
I know as much as I want to.
I know more than I want to.
To me, it's like the Kardashians.
-[Martin] Yeah, I know.
-You know?
I've never seen the Kardashians,
but I know about the Kardashians, okay?
And that's how I feel about the Internet,
which I know…
…in some way,
is connected to the Kardashians.
[laughter and applause]
All the things I know about the Internet
are either things that people have told me
or showed me,
because people are always acting like,
"Poor Fran, she has no ability
to find this out. Let me show you, Fran."
These are people,
I don't even know them half the time,
so I'm delighted to see them
approaching me like this.
But in the last week, two different
people, both younger than me,
but one not much younger than me
and one much younger than me,
one explained to me what Instagram was…
…and the other explained to me
what Twitter was.
And it made me so angry that I said,
"Let me explain something to you.
I don't not have these things
'cause I don't know what they are.
I don't have these things
'cause I do know what they are.
That's why I don't have them."
So I was at a dinner party recently,
and someone was…
There was an art dealer there.
In fact, it was his dinner.
And he was saying that people are buying
art on the Internet and that's ridiculous,
they don't have the experience of the art
if you buy it from the Internet.
It's not a real art experience. I said,
"To you, it's not a real art experience.
To people who do this,
that is their experience.
That's what they care about."
These are new people.
These are different people.
They're people who call people friends
who they've never met.
He goes, "They're not really friends."
To them, they are.
I mean, we had a huge sex scandal here
with Anthony Weiner.
-There was no sex.
-Yeah.
-He lost his career in a sex scandal--
-[Olivia laughs]
-And he didn't even get laid!
-And he didn't have sex.
-[Olivia] Yeah.
-To me, that was astonishing.
I mean,
if you are going to lose your career…
At least in a sex scandal,
when you lose your career, you have sex.
[Olivia laughs] Yeah. It's true!
So we have sex scandals with no sex,
friendships with no friends,
art that they don't see.
So this is basically
a completely different sort of person.
[woman] Okay, I have a sister who's two,
turning three, and she has her own iPad,
and she uses this all the time.
I don't even have an iPad.
Do you think this will take away from how
she interacts with people in the future?
Do you think this is kind of foreshadowing
future generations?
She said she has a sister who's two,
who has her own iPad,
and she doesn't even have an iPad.
-Your parents like her better.
-[woman] I know.
Okay? I mean, I am not really worried
about the people who are two
because the people who are two,
I will not have to deal with those people.
I'm more worried
about the people who are 22. Okay?
So, yes, she will be different,
that is true. But she may not be worse.
She may be better. We don't know this.
It's possible this will make them better.
It'll make them better at the world
of iPads, because that will be the world.
I believe
that you can only really understand
people that are your contemporaries.
That you can't really understand
people who are not.
And so that, uh, you can…
I profoundly understand
some people my age.
I mean just from looking at them.
And when I say my age, I mean
within ten years of my age either way.
I know what their clothes mean.
I know what they think their clothes mean.
I know what they think they mean
when they tell me what music they like
or what books they like.
But I don't know this
with people who are young.
The thing about young people
is that they all just seem young.
And that is a really kind of ridiculous
way to categorize someone.
[bear grunts]
[grunts noisily]
[growls]
When I was young,
I used to travel quite a bit.
I used to enjoy it more than I do now.
Once, I went on this trip to Alaska,
and we went to this park
called the Glacier National Park.
So I hired this guy, his name was Bruce,
who is either a bear hunting guide
or, if you just want to take a hike
and maybe see some bears,
you can also hire Bruce,
and you don't have to kill the bears.
So we're setting off on this hike.
There's, like, eight of us.
I am maybe the least athletic,
but it's not the heartiest group of people
on the planet Earth.
So then Bruce brings us all together
and explains about the bears.
"Now, if you see a bear,"
he said, "don't run…
…because bears can run,"
I can't remember, "60 miles an hour.
There's no way you'll outrun a bear,
and the bear will then catch you
and eat you, so don't run.
Just stay there,
stand on your toes,
put your hands in the air, and sing."
Because the singing
is to make the bear think, "What is this?"
And this has nothing to do, apparently,
with what a good singer you are.
"And then the bear will, like, go away,"
says Bruce.
So I said, "Bruce,
let me assure you
that if I saw bear, I would run,
because I would not have
the presence of mind.
You need
an incredible amount of discipline,
seeing a bear
and standing there and singing!
This is not me.
I would panic. I would run."
He said,
"You would be attacked by the bear."
Now, Bruce had this giant gun
in his holster. I'm not kidding.
Like a holster, this big gun.
And so we start the hike.
It was a time of year
when salmon swim a certain direction.
-And the bears eat the salmon.
-[Martin] A big deal.
And these streams
were filled with ripped-up salmon.
You know, on the one hand,
it was some sort of incredibly,
you know, natural Russ & Daughters.
And on the other side, it was like
you see that bears, they're like people.
When there's so much extra stuff,
they just say, "This is the part I want."
Because they were ripped up,
like… "This? No, I don't like this."
It was just like,
"I don't know. I don't want that.
You want this part? I don't want that."
There were hundreds
of these ripped-up salmon.
The whole thing was terrifying,
but at a certain point…
I kept saying, "You see a bear, Bruce?
Do you see any bears?
Bruce, these salmons were ripped up.
They were ripped up by a bear."
I was in a state of hysteria.
Really worried.
So I was on top of Bruce.
I had my hand on his shoulder.
I had my other hand around his waist.
He would stop, I would stop. "Bruce!"
If he went two feet away from me,
I would go, "Bruce? Where are you, Bruce?"
And then Bruce said, "Fran…"
He was quite exasperated with me.
He said, "Fran,
I feel I have to tell you something."
I think, "He's gonna say
there's a bear right there."
He goes, "I have to tell you something.
I'm a married man."
I said, "What?" He said, "I'm married.
I just want you to know that."
I said, "The reason I'm on top of you
is not because I find you irresistible.
-It is because you have a gun."
-[Martin laughs]
"And because I feel that,
if we saw a bear,
you would not stand on your toes
and sing, you would shoot the bear.
It's what I want to happen
if there's a bear."
I don't ever want to die
in a way that is amusing to other people.
Because I know
that if I was eaten by a bear,
that instead of people, when they heard
about this, thinking, "That is horrible,"
they would think, "Isn't that hilarious?
Fran was eaten by a bear!
Of all the people to be eaten by a bear!"
And I thought, like,
"I do not want my death to be hilarious."
-[Martin laughs] It's funny.
-Yeah, it would be funny, you know?
And if I wasn't Fran and I heard that,
I would think, "That is really hilarious."
But I don't want to die like that.
I don't know what you asked me,
but that's the story of the bear.
["La Dolce Vita (Finale)" plays]
No one young enough to be in school…
…is aware that they will lose their looks,
okay?
This is something that doesn't happen
till you do.
-[laughter]
-Okay? Because…
Like, if I see someone
that I haven't seen in a long time,
I think, "What the hell happened to you?"
You know? And I realize that they're
thinking the same thing about me.
The only reason
I don't think that about me
is because I see myself every day.
Although as briefly as possible.
But I mean…
I found these contact sheets
that were from a shoot for Vogue.
And I see that I had written all over it.
I'd sent it back to Anna Wintour
and I'd written,
"Anna, these photographs are horrible.
We have to re-shoot this."
I looked at them and thought,
"If I woke up today looking like this,
I'd be ecstatic!"
[laughter]