Joan Rivers often asks, “Can we talk?” The septuagenarian comedienne requests permission to blab uncensored about plastic surgery, her daughter Melissa, the latest scandal, and — most often, in self-deprecation — about her own miserable sex life and drooping body parts. On stage, she’s more vicious, potty-mouthed and hilarious than she is on television.
If you go
“Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”
3 out of 5 stars
Director: Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg
Rated R for language and sexual humor.
Running time: 84 minutes
There are plenty of examples of that in “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” If you already like her, than you will find this new behind-the-scenes documentary especially revealing and amusing. It is as frank as her style of humor, and at times unexpectedly sad, as it follows the showbiz veteran through a challenging year in her professional life. Can she talk … and talk, and talk? You bet.
But even for audiences who find Rivers too brash or unappealing for whatever reason, directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg have made an unvarnished look at how unjolly life as a jokester can be. The subject is exposed to be more introspective than her pulled-and-tucked public face would have you believe. In that way, she resembles so many really funny people; the comedy is often a cover, a defense mechanism against vulnerability.
In the case of Rivers, it is also a very profitable way to make a living. Yet she spends much of her time complaining about what a bad run she’s having — before the documentary’s narrative (filmed in 2008 and 2009) climaxes with her career-rejuvenating appearance on last year’s “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Besides being shot around seedy club gigs, a Scotland theater tryout, and a remote casino in the frozen Midwest, anywhere Rivers can get paid to rant and ridicule, the filmmakers also interview her in her palatial New York apartment. With its gilded French decor, as she quips correctly, it looks like “if Marie Antoinette were rich.”
So it is sometimes difficult to sympathize with Joan’s private melancholy. She has every conceivable luxury and a large staff of assistants, butlers and limo drivers to support. So when she worries about getting jobs and never being taken seriously as a writer and serious actress, you just want to scream, “Fire somebody!”
But you forget about her self-pity and celebrity ego after you witness her rapport with her sweet young grandson. Then, all is forgiven when Rivers manhandles a humorless heckler and makes us laugh out loud with a shocking observation. She, like this “Work,” just works.
