Fran Lebowitz superfan Bill Maher had Lebowitz on as the top-of-the-show guest on Friday’s episode of “Real Time,” which means per usual he was gushing over Lebowitz’s wit and persona.
And Maher really, really wants Lebowitz to write another book. So much that he even had some possible solutions to Lebowitz’s famous writer’s block.
See Lebowitz, a highly celebrated wit and author, hasn’t actually written a book for grownups since 1981 and her last published work, a children’s book, came out in 1994. But Maher thinks the solution to this problem is simple. And his inspiration? North Korean dictator Kim Jogn-un.
Lebowitz is currently in the middle of an international tour where she appears before large audiences basically being herself — telling stories and being as witty as ever. And after talking about that for a few minutes, Maher changed the subject to basically beg her to resume her writing career.
“Here’s my question. Now that you’re on this tour, making all this money, has it inspired you, maybe, to go back to writing? I mean you’re on the famous 40-year writing block. I’m always trying to get you because we love your book so much, to write another one. Has this got the juices flowing a little?” Maher asked.
“Well, it sometimes seems, ‘would you rather be sitting in the Seattle airport for 9 hours, or at home writing?’, and so in that case, writing seems less hard,” Lebowitz said.
Maher joked that she ought to consider writing in airports, though she reminded him that “there are other people in the airport.”
“But, I’ve told you this before, many people have, you don’t even have to write, you just have to have a scribe,” Maher said, winding into his Kim Jong-un joke. “Like, Socrates never wrote a word, he had scribes. So I found this picture of Kim Jong-un to give an example. Look at that. That could be you.”
Here’s the image Maher showed:
“That could be you, and just have three other assholes write down everything that you say. Because you speak in material, right? And there’s your book,” Maher added.
“Have you ever thought of being a career counselor? No one’s ever said to me, ‘see Kim Jong-un? This could be you,’” Lebowitz replied.
“This could be you. You could have that, you could have people just doing that. What do you think?” Maher asked.
“I’ll think about it. When I’m in the airport,” Lebowitz quipped.
“Or you know what? Just have a transcription done of these shows you’re doing around the country, right? Just have them — you can get a service to do that. They record it, they transcribe them. Edit out the boring parts, and just put out the book ‘Quotes From My Shows.’” Maher suggested.
“What boring parts?” Lebowitz asked, to which we add: Zing.
“See? No boring parts. That’s how great the book would be,” Maher concluded.