Modified On March 2, 2011
Can we talk?
The first thing we watched after signing up for the Netflix free trial was “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.”
We love documentaries. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed a wide variety of such movies over the past few years (from “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey” to “Capturing the Friedmans”) and we’re always pleasantly surprised when we’re… pleasantly surprised by some of the revelations in the stories.
We were fully prepared to be surprised by “A Piece of Work”– even though we were very familiar with Rivers’ life story and career trajectory.
Perhaps that’s why this documentary was so utterly disappointing. There were no surprises. Of course, a lot of other folks (inside and outside the business) were probably very surprised by the narrative. So we can’t hold that against the movie.
But we must admit that our expectations were raised by so many positive reviews and upbeat Facebook status reports. One person after another– many of them fellow comedians– raved about the pic. So many of our colleagues went so nutty over it, we figured that, though it might be telling a familiar tale, it must have been insightful or packed with “inside” stuff or perhaps inspirational.
It was none of those things.
It was not “a behind the scenes look at the dark side of show-biz,” as one critic characterized it. Rivers is depicted as living on top of a building in Manhattan, in an apartment that would make Louis XIV envious. She has a “staff.” She probably hasn’t flown on a commercial flight since the 90’s. Yet, she opens the movie by bemoaning her empty calendar.
The film then purports to show us “a year in the life” of a struggling Joan Rivers.
We’re not against someone making gobs of money– or spending gobs of money. But it’s a bit disingenuous of Rivers to:
1. Perform at a 4,000-seat theater
2. Hop on a private jet
3. Hawk her jewelry on QVC
4. Go to a book-signing (signing her book!)
5. Go on (and WIN!) Celebrity Apprentice
6. Field offers for $125,000 for a three-day cruise appearance
And then complain (while brushing back tears) that no one wants her.
Who fell for this?
And the events surrounding her Comedy Central Roast made her look rather thin-skinned. Unusual for someone who profited for much of the nineties by slagging celebrities in a most brutal fashion. She trashed Liz Taylor every chance she got– often on network television– yet she can’t handle a joke about her clit from Brad Garrett on basic cable? At her roast? Old age is no excuse. Apparently Rivers can dish it out, but she can’t take it.
Courageous? A fighter? Are we talking about the same person here? After tepid reviews of the London performance of her one-person show, she bags the idea of bringing it to New York lest she suffer a repeat of the bad reviews she garnered in the Big Apple forty (or fifty!?) years prior. She later tells her assistant (and the camera) that she’ll do anything for a dollar– including shilling for ExtenZe or Depends. Anything except, of course, hanging her ass out over the edge and risking the opprobrium of NYC theater critics. (At least she later brought it instead to L.A.’s west side– to mixed reviews.)
It’s a mystery as to why comedians love the film. Rivers wistfully recalls how she only ever wanted to be an actress (indeed, that is what she is!) and that she fell into standup accidentally, initially doing it because it provided her the cash to go out on auditions. She seems at odds with standup. Sure, she hits the dive club on a regular basis to work out material (which is laudable), but she seems to regard it as secondary to appearances on television, appearances on radio, publishing opportunities and jewelry sales. And her contempt for the Wisconsin audiences makes her appear like an insufferable elitist.
When we watched Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedian,” it made us feel good about being standup comics. When we watched “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project,” we wanted to do comedy well into our eighties. But when we watched the Rivers documentary, we felt little or no connection to the main subject.