Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Sometimes I wonder if being a humor theorist makes me a bad spectator. Because I’ve aleady read countless comedian autobiographies, it didn’t surprise me much to learn that Joan Rivers was a savvy businesswoman, tough-as-nails workaholic, and tremendously vulnerable person. So I think I missed out on some of the poignant moments that surprised the rest of the audience. But I was still majorly impressed. This week’s Daily Show fiasco reminds me how hard it is to be a female standup today — today, and Joan Rivers started forty years ago.

For that reason, I wished they’d included more footage of her early stuff. It’s understandable tha this wasn’t the focus, since this was intended to be “a year in the life,” documentary. But it was the historical clips that really made me respect how edgy she was, telling abortion jokes before that was OK, writing her own material, etc. There were plenty of clips from her current standup act, too, which still she performs most nights in New York. I thought these were hilarious, and so did the rest of audience — this was weird, this was an arthouse thater, and here were all these granola liberals laughing their asses off at Joan’s raunchiest jokes

Mostly, though, we see Joan hustling to get gigs, and boy does that lady know how to hustle. She’s always looking for work, and she never turns down a paying gig. Like when we see her agree to do the Comedy Central Roast for the money even though she’s not really looking forward to it. She correctly predicts that there will be nothing but plastic surgery jokes –and after that, it’s heartbreaking to watch mediocre young standups, who don’t know her from Adam, making fun of her at all. Another very striking moment was when she was about to perform at the George Carlin memorial, and she nervously laments that everyone else has teams of writers.

Joan Rivers now and then -- seriously, you shoulda heard some of the stuff she used to say!

We also get to see some of her family life, such as her stint on Celebrity Apprentice with her daughter Melissa, some moments with her grandson. The interior of her apartment is another high point, half French boudoir and half business, including an enormous cabinet full of meticulously-filed jokes.

There’s no doubt that this documentary is both entertaining and enlightening, and you certainly don’t need to like Joan Rivers to enjoy it. She, like most comedians, is pretty self-aware; she makes no bones about who she is, and she works damned hard to keep up the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed. So my guess is that, even if this movie doesn’t convince you she’s funny, it will convince you to respect her a lot more than you thought you could.