MOVIES: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg, 2010)

Stern and Sundberg followed Rivers for a year to make this documentary, and they appear to have nearly total access, making for an informative, entertaining look at the legendary comedian.

I had not seen much of Rivers' early work, and have never been a particular fan of the more recent work I have seen, so the clips from her early years were a revelation to me. I think Rivers has not been well served by the cultural changes over her 45 years in the business. In her early years, when there were still some cultural restrictions on how blunt one could be (and especially on how blunt a woman could be), she could be no more than risque, and was spectacularly funny; as years have gone by and standards have loosened, I think she's gone from risque to vulgar. It's easier to get cheap laughs with vulgarity, but it's much harder to be genuinely witty or clever.

That aside, there is certainly much to admire in Rivers' career, not least her remarkable dedication, persistence, and simple refusal to ever give up. Her agent sums it up best, I think, when he says, "You're never going to be struck by lightning if you're not willing to stand out in the rain, and nobody will stand out in the rain longer than Joan Rivers."

But there's also a surprising amount of self-pity, more than would seem to be justified by her level of success; for all her longevity, she seems convinced that no one really respects her achievements or takes her seriously as a performer.

The film is almost entirely from Rivers' point of view, and the few other people the directors do interview are her friends and colleagues; it would have been nice to hear from the other side (and as blunt and abrasive as Rivers can be, you know she must have been burned some bridges in her day). But it's still a marvelously entertaining look at a geniune comedy legend, and I'm very glad to have seen it, if only for those glimpses into the brilliance of her early years.