I grew up knowing Joan Rivers as a comedian, but knowing her best as a woman with bad plastic surgery who sold crappy jewelry on QVC and did a shrill red carpet show on cable with her daughter. This documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, tries to show that she is much more than just those things. She is a much more complicated person who lives the life of a queen, is desperately paranoid of not being able to work tomorrow and has lost most of her friends over the years. This is not entirely a bio-doc, per se, but rather an examination of the comedian: who she is today and why.
Joan is a workaholic who takes basically any job that is offered to her, from the Donald Trump Celebrity Apprentice show (which she won), to stand-up gigs in remote Wisconsin casinos (in the winter!). She lives in a gigantic apartment in Manhattan with 20-some-foot ceilings, gilded pillars and a staff of housekeepers. She has an agent, a manager and an assistant, not to mention her daughter Melissa who is frequently around. Her life seems like somewhat of a Mobius strip, where her fancy lifestyle forces her to work all the time and her working all the time gives her money to afford the fabulous lifestyle.
We see her history and how she got her start as a favorite of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. When she was offered her own show on Fox that would compete directly with him, she left him (having been a frequent fill-in host for several years) and he dropped her forever. To make matters more tragic, her show never happened and she was left with no show, a lost friend and an unwritten ban from NBC late night TV. Clearly in retrospect this was a bad decision, however it is sad that Johnny dropped her the way he did - and did so in such a permanent way.
The sadness pervades her life and career, from her husband's suicide to the loss of a dear friend who serves as her manager and then vanishes during the filming (it's unclear what happens to him at all). She has outlived many of her contemporaries and her material is basically unknown to the younger generation of comedians. In one uncomfortable scene, she is driving to her own Comedy Central Roast and talking to her assistant about how all the jokes will be about the plastic surgery. Then there is a montage of bits by comedian after comedian making fun of her face and her surgeries. These jokes are cheap and clearly don't really spend the time to get to know her hilarious routine, which is about sex, gender roles and families (to name a few topics).
Overall this is a good and very funny movie and is interesting in its treatment of Rivers. You have to imagine she had some say in what went into it, but it still feels frank and unflinching (if slightly on her side). She is a generally sad person, I think, who keeps herself busy as way to deal with her shit. She has an interesting life - and is funny as hell.
Stars: 3 of 4
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