DVD review by Steve Bennett

There may be funnier comics than Joan Rivers, but there’s surely none as tenacious.

This revealing and fascinating documentary shows a comic icon so terrified of an empty diary that, at 77 she grafts harder than the hungriest newcomer. She is ruthlessly single-minded in her determination to keep the money rolling in; willing to take any job to ensure she can maintain the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed. Her Manhattan apartment is palatial, like somewhere Marie Antoinette would live ‘if she had money,’ Rivers joked.

But that’s only one explanation of why she hawks herself around so shamelessly – taking demeaning adverts or peddling jewellery on QVC. This film exposes her raging insecurities, the fears that even though she’s a comic icon, one day no one will want her. So she keeps pushing and pushing herself, creating her own industry.

Rivers, of course, has known ups and downs in her eventful life, so it’s little surprise she’s become so doggedly self-sufficient. Not only did she take on the world to perform powerfully abrasive stand-up at a time when it was unheard-of from a woman, but she has seen tragedy when husband committed suicide, struggled with bulimia and learned a hard lesson in the fickle nature of showbusiness when her great friend Johnny Carson cut her off forever after she launched a rival chat show.

Much of this biographical back-story is touched upon in A Piece Of Work as it charts, with flashes of dry wit, her attempts at a comeback two years ago, at the age of 75. It starts with her bringing an autobiographical play to the Edinburgh Fringe and on to London, with the hopes of eventually cracking Broadway. The West End reviews were OK, but not nearly enough to convince New York producers, dashing her hopes of a break and forcing her back on to the road with her stand-up routine.

For all her achievements and almost iconic status as a comedian, Rivers has a delusion that she wants to be remembered as an actress, even though the only role she ever plays is herself – an indication, perhaps, that she feels that stand-up is somehow an inferior art.

We see glimpses of her act here, but you don’t need to be fan to enjoy this frank portrait of a unique character. When she’s heckled on the road in Wisconsin by a punter who takes offence at some typically off-colour remark, she rips into him – not with wit so much as indignant outrage, furious that he can’t see a joke, that life is laughable. After all these years, criticism, even from the darkness of the stalls, still stings her.

This notion that this original ‘queen of mean’ doesn’t like a taste of her own bitter medicine is underlined when – in keeping with her ethos of never turning down a gig – she agrees to go on a Comedy Central roast. She paints on a smile and absorbs every upstart comic’s cruel jibe about her age and her plastic surgery, but once the cameras stop rolling, she’s tearful about the humiliation she’s been forced to endure. ‘They keep telling me it's an honour,’ she surmises glumly. ‘But if I had invested my money wisely, I wouldn't be doing this.

The chapter in River’s life chronicled here ends on a high, as she find herself back in vogue, thanks to her appearance on America’s Celebrity Apprentice. But it’s hardly a happy ending given River’s hard-learned experience of how precarious fame is. You can be sure that once this insightful documentary project ended, she was back badgering her agents to fill every spare white space in that all-important diary.

Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work
Running time: 82 mins
Extras: Lots of unused footage, some substantial, some Just A Minute or so– Joan In Edinburgh; Joan And Her Dogs; Joan Meets With Her Stylist; Joan Talks About Her Will; Joan Spends Time With Her Grandson; Joan Talks About Her Comic Material. Plus Sundance Q&A; theatrical trailer
Released by: Dogwoof, November 15
Price:£14.99. Click here to buy from Amazon for £8.77

Published: 29 Nov 2010