The_Film_Cricket
In 1993, I sat in the audience for one of Joan Rivers' stand-up shows, seated way back in the nosebleed section – practically in the rafters – from my vantage point she was a tiny blur on the stage. Her voice, however, was not. It was loud, raspy, boisterous and unmistakably Joan. Her comedy was obscene, crude, vulgar, at times shocking but it was also unmercifully funny – you don't survive in comedy for forty years by being mediocre.Joan Rivers died this week leaving behind a legacy that was as funny as it was groundbreaking. She wasn't dainty. She wasn't a lady in any traditional sense. She was loud and had a big mouth, and part of the reason for that is that her career blossomed at a time when women typically didn't do stand-up. Women in comedy mostly found themselves in situation comedies, mostly in the straight man role. In other words, she had a fight for it and she had to create a persona that would get everyone's attention.It is reasonable to assume that the best way to experience a comedian is to see them on stage. That is the best way to experience their talent. In order to get under their skin, it takes a special kind of lens. For Joan Rivers, it was an extraordinary 2010 documentary called Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, a movie that not only exposed her talent but helps us understand who she was as a person. I didn't know Joan Rivers except in a few bits on television now and then. I never really understood the person under the boisterousness until I saw this film.The film followed one year in the life of this living legend who, at 75, showed no signs of slowing down. Through a face rendered almost immobile by innumerable trips to the plastic surgeon she reminded us that she spent her life dancing as fast as she can, as if she was fearful that she would vanish. At her rapid pace, she never lost her edge. This despite a career and a life that wasn't always sunshine and roses. From failed marriages to banishment from "The Tonight Show", to health problems, to her husband's suicide, to a near-addiction to plastic surgery, you can imagine that a conglomeration of these experiences would bring anyone else to a nervous breakdown. Joan seemed to keep dancing in order to stay afloat.What the movie reveals is a woman whose boisterous personality masked a great deal of insecurity. Early in the film she shows one of her date books from years past, filled with scheduled shows and many, many crossed-out appointments, some crowded onto the same day. "That's happiness," she says. Then she turns to a page full of empty dates and says seriously "That's fear. If my book ever looked like this, it would mean that nobody wants me, that nobody loved me." There is a painful truth in this scene, that somewhere buried under that brash personality was someone who needed her public life in an effort to feel needed.Joan Rivers was a tireless worker, moving like a runaway train to remain at the top of her game even into her 80s. In the film, she goes through her overly decorated home where she shows us a joke file, set up like a library card system where she kept the jokes that popped into her head. She was determined to keep herself fresh and original. Early in the film we see one of her stand up routines. There she is, 75 and still loaded with boundless energy. There she is, crude and obscene, but there she is, full of energy and hysterically funny.Rivers, who had been working in show business for more than four decades, established herself in the arena of stand-up comedy by discussing topics - tampons, sex, abortions - that women didn't discuss even in private. She was working in an extremely male dominated arena, doing material that even most of the men backed away from. During a clip of one of her early trips to Johnny Carson's show, the host suggests that men prefer intellectual women. "Oh please!" Joan says, "No man ever put his hand up a woman's skirt looking for a library card!" What I see in Joan Rivers, and what this documentary displays most honestly, is that comics are always needy. There's some discomfort inside of them to always keep themselves new and different for fear that they will become a has-been or worse stale and dated. Joan Rivers was a woman racing to stay ahead of the train. She created the persona of a loud, overbearing Jewish woman who spoke her mind. It was a persona that never left her. She is fearless and determined that she would never give up. Late in her life, her personality didn't change. What you could see was a woman who had lived a life that would have killed a lesser person. She was straightforward, and you got the idea that she had outlived and outfoxed all the games life plays. If life dealt her a bad hand, she didn't falter. She just grabbed the mike, and kept doing the thing that she did best.
Herag Halli
This is an amazing woman with an even amazing career. The film is well done with incredible candor and introspection that only a comedian would share. Nothing is off limits-the conference calls with her manager (Jimmy Sammeth who seems to have a love and hate relation with her) and personal assistant on the speaker phone in disparate attempt to land a gig to support her "Industry" and her opulent life style. I don't know of any comedienne ever lives or lived like her. The apartment is ritzy with gilt galore and classly decorated and she is the queen who has to do her raunchy routine to pay for the luxury. I have seen her live..she really does not have new or good material but people see her at least once, for the pure shock value. She is not afraid to show very unflattering scenes(even scary!) where she appears without makeup for a woman who thrives on vanity and plastic surgery. It becomes quite evident by the end of the film that she really does not have any close friends or family. Her daughter Melissa (not a very likable personality herself!) has no real love for her and her manager Jimmy Sammeth, who ends up quitting (it is ironic that the only tears she ever sheds in front of the camera is for him, and not for her husband who committed suicide in a philadelphia hotel.) Comedians become subtle and subdued as they get older but Joan, is the reverse. She is more daring and raunchy than ever. There were two other comedians, who maintained an extensive joke files like Joan..Bob hope and Milton Berle and they performed to their 90's. She says the actors fade out when they get to be fifty but comedians never fade..once a comedian always a comedian. The best scene in the movie is when she is sitting in the limo making faces to a voice over when she muses to a failed Play. The only thing I am not sure, is the therapy sessions with her daughter Melissa, was real or taken from a movie. I really enjoyed the movie. The two women producers have a great potential. They should do the same with Jerry Seinfeld!
ldavis-2
"A Piece of Work" begins with Joan Rivers looking like a refugee from "Night of the Living Dead" before tons of make-up transform her into something resembling a human being. This peek behind the pose may seem brave to some. To me, it confirmed that Rivers has turned herself into Leona Helmsley! A few more gos under the knife, she'll turn herself into Michael Jackson!"A Piece of Work" actually has a lot to say about the nature of celebrity. Rivers has money and fame, but what she really wants is status, which is why she attends a Kennedy Center tribute to George Carlin, although, as she points out, the tribute represents everything Carlin was against, namely rich Republicans (yuk, yuk). That Carlin made millions off of his feigned disdain for the establishment is lost on Rivers. That you have to earn respect in order to get respect is lost on her, too.Kathy Griffin prattles about how Rivers paved the way for her, but that's the extent of the props, which is telling yet not surprising. Like Helmsley, Rivers is an utterly unlikeable creature who makes Snooki look dignified. The tirade during one of her routines about her daughter nixing an offer to pose for Playboy made me want to wash my ears out with soap! Little wonder her manager bails on her every chance he gets, her staffers put up with her only because she pays them, and her daughter (a wanna-be A-lister herself) can't stand being in the same room with her for longer than five minutes. Only once, when she and her grandson (whom she seems to adore) visit an ailing photographer does Rivers seem to get that the world does not revolve around her. But maybe, that was just part of her act.
