Jay Kerr

Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work (Directors: Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg): Joan Rivers is the type of sub­ject you’d expect Nick Broomfield (Biggie and Tupac, Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam) to take on instead of Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback, The Trials of Darryl Hunt). How do you go from making films about gen­o­cide and death row to the queen of comedy?

Stern first met Rivers through her family. After spending some time with Rivers and get­ting to know her better, Stern and Sundberg decided that Joan Rivers would be their next pro­ject. The idea of doing a film about a comedi­enne appealed to them and would be a nice change from their pre­vious work.

Try to Google “joan rivers” and Google will sug­gest “joan rivers plastic sur­gery.” Joan’s face is a piece of work, a lot of work. The film opens with sev­eral close-up shots of her face without any makeup and it isn’t pretty. It sets the tone for the film which gives us a raw, honest look at an aging performer.

Rivers claims that the first thing she does in the morning is her makeup, and jokes that even she can’t bear to look at her­self until she is made up. At one point in the film she arrives at a meeting with her face swollen after receiving col­lagen injec­tions. Rivers is con­sumed with her image and hates the thought of growing old and fading into obscurity.

I was struck by how much energy this 76-year-old comedi­enne has. She keeps an incred­ibly busy schedule and wor­ries con­stantly about her book­ings and appoint­ments. She jokes with her per­sonal assistant about whether she should put some sunglasses on before she looks at her day timer, wor­ried that pages will be blind­ingly white, blank. Rivers will do com­mer­cials, book sign­ings, standup comedy and pro­mote just about any­thing so long as it pays and keeps her in the spot­light. She’s a self-confessed work­aholic and the last thing she wants to do is sit by the pool and relax.

Stern and Sundberg spent 14 months with Joan Rivers, plenty of time to get to know the real Joan which I think comes across in the film. If you’re unfa­miliar with her standup comedy you might be sur­prised by some of the explet­ives coming out of her mouth. She is incred­ibly funny, quick and witty when it comes to her audi­ences. I was impressed with how she handled a heckler at a show in Wisconsin.

At the same time she comes across as a very caring and fair person. She delivers tur­keys to fam­ilies on Thanksgiving, sup­ports many family mem­bers and friends fin­an­cially, and always makes time for her adoring fans. It’s easy to look at Joan Rivers as a freak but this film takes us behind the mask and provides us with a unique look at her human side.

Official site of the film

(8/10)

Second Look: Drew Kerr

Co-directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg pre­vi­ously explored sombre sub­jects such as Rwandan gen­o­cide and the story of a death row inmate in some of their pre­vious films. Their latest doc­u­mentary tackles a decidedly less heavy sub­ject in the trail­blazing comedi­enne, but don’t be fooled by the notion a movie about some­body that makes people laugh for a living will be devoid of its own share of (rel­at­ively) darker areas. Comedians have his­tor­ic­ally been a fairly screwed up bunch and Rivers is no excep­tion, as the film cap­tures by chron­ic­ling her roller coaster career that has met with numerous per­sonal struggles along the way.

The film was shot over 14 months, during which we see Rivers cel­eb­rate her 75th birthday (she is now 77) and wear the many hats which make up her almost 50 years in show busi­ness: stand-up comedian, QVC (and any other product that’ll use her) shill, author, TV per­son­ality, phil­an­thropist, and act­ress. The film­makers had the good for­tune to be shooting during a short, but eventful period that is fit­fully emblem­atic of her entire career. Early scenes show a rest­less Rivers fret­ting over the empty pages in her day planner that sym­bolize another pro­fes­sional valley, and by the end of the movie we’ve seen her hit a career peak with a high pro­file win on NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice, which turns out to be even more sat­is­fying because of Rivers’ claim that she was black­balled from the net­work after leaving her job as the per­manent guest host on The Tonight Show to host her own late night show on Fox in 1986 (when she called Johnny Carson to inform him of her decision he was so mad he slammed down the phone and never talked to Rivers for the rest of his life). Along the way, the viewer also sees Rivers’ per­son­ally crushing defeat from the failed 2008 London run of her auto­bi­o­graph­ical play, which she had aspir­a­tions would even­tu­ally make it to Broadway.

The 1987 sui­cide of her hus­band, Edgar, is obvi­ously brought up, although nothing ter­ribly enlight­ening about it is revealed, having already been heavily dis­cussed by Rivers over the years. The seem­ingly over­pro­tective nature of the rela­tion­ship with her daughter, Melissa, is addressed, but one only need to have seen a single episode of The Celebrity Apprentice (on which Melissa was also a con­testant) to have gotten a good sense of it. And then there’s the plastic sur­gery aspect of Joan Rivers…clearly, no writing piece on her would be com­plete without it. Rivers’ propensity for going under the knife has become her trade­mark and she has gotten plenty of mileage out of it in her career. A cur­rent print ad cam­paign for Snickers fea­tures Rivers face with the tagline “When I’m hungry, I get my face lowered”. Frankly, I’m not even sure what the hell that means, but she’s obvi­ously poking fun at her­self. The opening shot of the movie fea­tures an extreme close-up of Rivers’ sig­ni­fic­antly reworked face, sans makeup, and it’s not a pretty sight, folks. It was cer­tainly a ballsy move to have sub­jected her­self to such visual scru­tiny, espe­cially in the age of HD. I’d love to know how much trouble the film­makers had in con­vin­cing her to do it, or if she actu­ally sug­gested it (I tried asking the dir­ectors at the post-screening Q & A, but didn’t get picked by the mod­er­ator to ask my question).

Joan Rivers turns out to be rich fodder for an in-depth bio like A Piece Of Work, based on her legendary career, still sharp wit, work­aholic nature, frank opin­ions, and fas­cin­at­ingly com­plic­ated personality.

(7/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs10, celebrity, comedy, joan rivers, plastic surgery

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