WE EXPECT to see comedians unveiled as monsters in close-up, but it’s strange that the first-rate documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work shows a subject who is in some ways free of ego, even from the beginning of the film where she’s seen having the makeup sponged on her face. Access is the essence of a good profile piece; Rivers gave it, and directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg took advantage of it—yet they kept the right amount of distance. (Since Rivers is a self-declared “plastic-surgery freak,” a bit of distance helps her, too. Her face has been prepared for an audience, so to speak; from the seats, it looks great.)
The subject is Rivers on and around her 75th birthday, as she prepares a one-woman show for the Edinburgh Festival. Meanwhile, Rivers is in a state of keenness to make sure her calendar is full: “I’ll show you fear—this is fear” (displaying a blank engagement book). … I don’t want to learn to garden, if I paint, who cares?” An actor in college, Rivers still has the urges to be respected as a stage performer, probably because her great success hasn’t included musical comedy: “If you don’t like me as an actor, you’ve killed me.”
Her material was risky from the beginning, making jokes about abortion in the 1970s on Mike Douglas’ show. Johnny Carson, who may or may not have intended Rivers as a replacement, cut her dead when she signed up with the Fox network after some 20 years of guest-hosting The Tonight Show. Her own husband (and producer) may have committed suicide because of the pressure of the chat-show wars. To stay current, River goes startlingly salty in live shows. Her most heroic moment in the film is doing a gig at an Indian casino in Wisconsin in January. She murders the audience, except for a local yokel who chokes on a Helen Keller gag. One more exposé of the comedian as monster wouldn’t be worth writing about—this, however, is a master class in how standup comedy is done.
