The jokes, the surgeries and the age are not the problem.
Let's say right off the bat that "A Piece of Work" is a fast paced, skillfully
crafted documentary. No negatives that I can think of could be called up for
this piece of work by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg. The problem, and it's
nearly insurmountable, is their subject: Joan Rivers.
Making clever
use of film clips from her past, Stern and Sundberg show her life trajectory
from stand-up comic to permanent stand-in for Johnny Carson. At a peak moment in
that success, Fox offered Rivers her own show to be produced by her husband
Edgar Rosenberg. Carson, so instrumental in her success, saw it as betrayal and
never forgave her. It is to this day a knife in her gut. The Fox stint went up
in flames and Rivers' career never fully recovered until she won the reality TV
brass ring on Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice.
In her own view, Rivers is an actress playing the role of a stand-up comedian.
From the '50s to the present she made her name as a shrill, foul mouthed comic
trading on thoughts and images thought in earlier decades to be unspeakable on
TV. As the shock escalated, so did the audience reaction. What will she say
next? That was the teaser that drew them in. Some of the jokes are funny, but
they often come wrapped in verbal cruelty that targets specific people. Still,
Rivers comes close to the core of comedy when a man in the audience puts her
down for a Helen Keller joke, "You wouldn't think it's funny if you had a deaf
child." Yes she would, and she makes a quick, angry stand for humor as a tool
that helps us deal with tough times.
Her stock
jokes often dwell on her repeated plastic surgeries and her age - she turned 75
during this filming. The jokes, the surgeries, and the age are not the problem.
The problem is that Rivers is a one trick pony. She has spent 50 years designing
a carapace that is a loud and shameless scream for approval. A loyal staff works
on "The Career" while Rivers stares angrily at the empty spaces on her calendar.
She repeatedly insists that she is a "a funny person," that she is happy only
when on stage. But when she is up there, she is bitter about her husband's
suicide, even made a movie about it, and about her catalog of rejections, all of
which she feels are undeserved.
You will have
to decide for yourself whether Joan Rivers belongs on stage or whether she is a
caricature of the early boundary stretcher. In today's culture, raw shock
doesn't go very far. It has nothing to do with age...no one tires of Elaine
Stritch. It's that this pony's one old trick has faded. Even if you admire her
determination, there is something grotesque and very sad in self-delusion.
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