Is she real?By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Joan Rivers is asked, "Don't we want to be loved for our real self?" To which she tellingly replies, "What's the real self?"
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is not funny even though you'd expect a year in the life of one of the world's funniest ladies to be so. But it is as documentaries go one of the best ever: It is uncompromising in depicting how a 75 year-old icon is working every minute of her day, not to sharpen her craft necessarily, but rather to make money to keep up a lavish lifestyle best exemplified by her Versailles-like apartment in New York.
Truth is, however, that she likes what she does better than anything else, a workaholic who makes people laugh. In the process she is ribald, abrasive, bitchy, and irreverent, attributes she displayed almost 50 years ago, when highly educated ladies just didn't do that kind of thing. But from the Tonight show with Johnny Carson through Celebrity Apprentice, she has done it all in comedy while taking gigs from Wisconsin to Juno, all to stay alive in a profession that eats its young and discards its seniors every day.
When she says, "Let me show you what fear is" and explicates by revealing a blank appointment page, she is speaking for every worker in show business?most of whom face periods of inactivity regularly and bravely. Her fear of bombing with her act is almost as palpable and never more apparent than when she painfully puts down a heckler but suffers remorse for what it did to him, her audience, and of course her self confidence.
Yet the two most devastating events of her life, the suicide of husband Edgar and the ultimate rejection by Johnny Carson may have affected her most in 75 years. This doc is much more about suffering than laughter.
Rivers holds her acting talent above her comedic, a telling admission about the calculating, opportunistic foundation of her career, with comedy an avocation. Directors Riki Stern and Anne Sundberg skillfully keep the tension of uncertainty on Joan, as if the camera should be as close as possible to Joan's face to capture that actress's honesty.
"Actress" and "honesty" don't always go together, and they are in question here. How honest is any portrayal by a comic who keeps thousands of jokes on file and surgically alters her face as many times as she may change jewelry? On this topic, I remain skeptical; on the matter of this doc being successful deconstruction of show business's vagaries, it's a powerful work in progress.
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com