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Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
As a title, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work conforms to expectations even as it slyly hints at the film’s larger and perhaps unexpected insights. Certainly, the titular comedienne/red carpet fashion critic prides herself on being a handful, whether she’s tossing off politically-incorrect observations in her stand-up act or doling out motherly advice (often unsolicited) to daughter Melissa. But directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg don’t seem that interested in making a compilation of “wacky Joan’s follies;” indeed, Rivers occasionally shows a striking degree of vulnerability as she reminisces on the highs and lows of her public and private lives. What fascinates Stern and Sundberg is Rivers’ insatiable determination to keep her career going, a desire that stems less from narcissism—though there’s a bit of that too—than from an almost primal need to perform. She’s certainly a piece of work, but it’s the work that gives her peace.
This is not to say that the jobs are always available, much less desirable: QVC promotions; stand-up gigs in far-flung regions of the U.S.; a stint on "The Celebrity Apprentice." As the directors chronicle her throughout 2008, Rivers acknowledges the tackiness of many gigs with a wink and a sardonic one-line, but accepts them all the same. Her underlying fear is not derision so much as irrelevance, illustrated early on when Rivers points to a sparsely-marked datebook. “Let me show you fear,” Rivers says to the camera, in a lightly mocking tone that does not attempt to disguise its fundamental sincerity.
Stern and Sundberg treat Rivers’ workaholic nature with a good deal of respect, if also a bit of ambivalence. A particularly effective passage charts Rivers’ travels over a particularly grueling 24-hour period, in which she hops from one gig to another—often in different states—without stopping for more than a couple hours of sleep. For a woman pushing seventy-six, it’s an impressive feat, and the directors’ clearly admire Rivers’ keep-a-goin’ chutzpah. But to what end? Her need to work flirts with the obsessive, and the film hints at the ways in which Rivers’ career frequently overtook all other aspects of her life (including her relationship with her daughter). For Rivers, her relentless schedule acts partially as a stubborn assertion of her talent as a performer and comedienne, which both the public and members of the show-business community often overlook in favor of mocking her forays into cosmetic surgery and home-shopping shilling. More poignantly, the film suggests that Rivers works hard to stave off the specter of old age. As friends and colleagues pass on, Rivers tearfully notes, she loses not only their company, but the collective memories that a whole generation of performers happily share and swap.
Running a swift 84 minutes, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work possesses a nice sense of proportion and scale, effectively interweaving interviews with archival footage and vèritè style documenting of Rivers’ daily life. Their on-the-fly approach yields some real gems, including Rivers’ heated back-and-forth with an audience member after making a joke about physical disabilities during her stand-up act. Rivers profanely defends the use of humor as a means of grappling with life’s tragedies on-stage, while openly worries about having offended the man backstage. Such moments of doubt and insecurity crop up throughout the film, and it makes one wish that Stern and Sundberg might have burrowed a bit deeper into other corners of Rivers’ life. They touch upon her fraught relationship with Melissa and the suicide of her husband, passages that feel sympathetic if a bit perfunctory. And though the movie begins with extreme close-ups of Rivers’ face—at once showing its age and stridently defying it via medical enhancements—the directors gets pretty reticent when exploring Rivers’ multiple plastic surgeries. When a radio interviewer asks whether such operations devalue a person’s inner beauty, Rivers cuts her off by asking, “What’s the real self?” It’s as if Sundberg and Stern took this cool dismissal as a warning, as they largely drop the subject from the film soon after this scene.
Of course, to make a film about Rivers’ face-lifts is to perpetuate the downplaying of her storied career and still-sharp wit, which Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work admirably showcases. Sure, some of the jokes feel a bit calcified by now, but the copious amount of stand-up footage in the film attests to Rivers’ continued vitality. Indeed, Rivers feels “on” even when she’s off-stage: throwing out one-liners and chuckling to herself, comedian and audience wrapped up in one. If her insistent need to entertain at all times makes her a bit slippery as a documentary subject, it also underlines the film’s most resonant observation. For Rivers, performing is an all-consuming life occupation. The jobs may come and go, but the work is never done.
Matt Connolly
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