It would have been easy for Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work to take a by-the-numbers approach to its subject. Among the true pioneers of edgy stand-up comedy (she joked about having sex and abortions long before such topics became fodder for Amy Schumer and her ilk), Joan Rivers was instrumental in paving the way for a generation of funny ladies. Piece of Work could have slapped together archival footage, grabbed some obligatory “she’s an icon” interviews with Rivers’ contemporaries and imitators, and called it a day.
But Rivers was a workhorse, and so is this movie. The documentary had the distinct advantage of chronicling a particularly tumultuous year in the comedienne’s life, but, then again, the brash Rivers, 77 at the time of this shoot, appears to thrive on challenge. She is in constant motion, determined to do whatever she can to reinvent herself, whether that vehicle for a comeback be cosmetic surgery or sucking up to Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice.
Even if you’re not a fan of Rivers, it’s hard not to find her compelling. In and out of the limelight over four decades, the actress-turned-comic was such a Tonight Show favorite that Johnny Carson made her his permanent guest host. That close friendship crashed when Rivers left to take on her own late-night talk show on Fox.
The new job did not go well. Rivers’ husband and the new show’s producer, Edgar Rosenberg, clashed with network executives. When Rivers refused Fox’s insistence that she fire her husband, Fox canned the program altogether. Rosenberg committed suicide, leaving the devastated widow with debts and a career in shambles.
Directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg follow Rivers through a grueling year during which she previews a one-woman stage play, fires her longtime manager and endures a dizzying schedule of small-town gigs.
Along the way, the doc reveals Rivers’ complexity with a subtlety lacking in Rivers herself. She has a strength seemingly at odds with her need to be loved. Rivers’ daughter, Melissa, provides a candid assessment of the insecurity she sees as endemic to most comics: “Laugh at me, laugh with me … just laugh.”
The doc supplies a fair amount of laughs. The filmmakers don’t linger on the down times, and Rivers is too self-effacing and with too much showbiz savvy to indulge despair for long. She shows off her file cabinets crammed with 40-plus years of jokes on index cards, and she gives viewers a tour of her jaw-droppingly lavish Manhattan penthouse that she says “is how Marie Antoinette would’ve lived if she’d had money.”
The shambolic structure mines some wonderfully telling moments. Delivering Thanksgiving meals to hard-luck cases in New York, Rivers meets a former avant-garde photographer, Flo Fox, who is now a shut-in. Later that day, Rivers researches Fox online and comes across an old TV interview of the artist as a young, vibrant woman who had begun succumbing to illness.
“Life is so … mean,” Rivers says, shaking her head.
It is a statement of genuine compassion, but you also get the impression that Rivers isn’t just talking about Flo Fox.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 