Getting old sucks. Just ask Joan Rivers. The comedian, now 77 and still working harder than most people half her age, is locked in a mortal battle against aging. You already know about the legendary amount of plastic surgery she's had during her six decades in the public eye, but Rivers' fight against the clock runs more than skin deep. Early in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, a funny and compelling documentary that follows the comedian for about a year and finds her just as sharp and relevant as ever, Rivers shows us her current date book and compares it to ones from year's past. Demand ain't what it used to be.
There was a time when Joan Rivers was comedy's next big thing. Anointed by Johnny Carson — whose opinion of a comic in those days was worth more than God's — Rivers made her name through numerous Tonight Show appearances in the 1960s and '70s, eventually being named permanent guest host in 1983. It's hard to overstate the cultural relevance of the post in those days, when late night was Carson's exclusive domain. But then the fledgling Fox Network offered her a show of her own in 1986 and Rivers took it, alienating Johnny in the process.
A Piece of Work makes it clear this was the key event in Rivers' life, and it did not go well. The Fox show was a disaster that ended when the network told her she had to fire her husband Edgar Rosenberg as the show's producer or take a walk herself. Rivers couldn't turn her back on her husband and was fired, with Rosenberg committing suicide only three months later. Add to this tragedy the fact that Johnny knew how to hold a grudge. I was shocked to learn that, before Rivers' turn on Celebrity Apprentice last year, she had not appeared on NBC since the early '80s. "Life is mean," she says at one point. In many ways, showbiz is worse.
Of course, the late-night drama was ancient history by the time the A Piece of Work cameras were trailing Rivers in 2008 and 2009. (As was her successful stint as a red carpet host on E! from 1993-2003, which the film barely touches on.) The Rivers in A Piece of Work is scrambling to pay her exorbitant bills (her lifestyle is compared to that of the Queen of England, with the household furnishings to match), working on a stage adaptation of her life, hustling for gigs and hawking all manner of shit on QVC. No job is too outrageous: At one point she's offered $125K for a Joan Rivers cruise; later she accepts a booking in Wisconsin that seems like a bad idea in theory even before it becomes one in practice. Through it all, Rivers just keeps on working, believing that her showbiz wave is bound to crest again at any moment. And she's right.
But to focus only on the serious aspects of A Piece of Work is to miss how funny and entertaining the movie is. Rivers' standup act is still capable of delivering jaw-dropping laughs, and there's plenty of celebrity talking heads on hand as well to distract from the psychodrama occurring just below the surface. I imagine Rivers, who like most comedians is a ruthless self-critic with shyness issues and low self-esteem, will have trouble watching the film. That's a shame, since A Piece of Work is ultimately a loving and engrossing tribute to one of the absolute legends of comedy over the last 50 years. That the film achieves this feat while still providing a warts-and-all accounting of Rivers' life makes it an excellent Piece of Work indeed.
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.